It's merely by coincidence that this part of the 1985 series is published two days after the current versions of the Jays and Yankees had a four game series in the Bronx in mid-September.
Part 3: Four Games In
The Bronx
As I mentioned at the end of the
first part of this series on the 1985 Blue Jays, I had a teacher in Grade Four
who was Blue Jay mad. Her name was Mrs. Abby. She was tall, had frizzy curly
hair and had those big round eighties-style glasses that darkened when exposed to
sunlight. Most important, she wore a Blue Jays jacket. The kind that I had seen
the players and coaches wear on TV. The blue one with metal buttons up the
middle and the old-school Blue Jay logo over the heart.
When I walked into her class on
the first day of school, the passion I was beginning to have for baseball and
the Jays was about to explode. The bulletin board on the side wall was divided
into two parts. The first had pictures of people in the news. The only ones I
remember are Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Liberal leader John
Turner, who Mulroney had defeated in the election of 1984.
The second part of the board was
covered in pictures of Blue Jays players from newspapers and magazines. I only
remember two posters that were there: a CIBC promotional poster featuring Ernie
Whitt and Willie Upshaw hi-fiving each other. And then, on the back wall, was
my favourite poster I have ever seen and wish I could somehow get a copy now. It
was a 24 x 36 picture of a ticket to a game. The ticket read:
1985 World Series: Game 1
Toronto Blue Jays
Vs
National League Champions
Every day I walked into the
class room in September and most of October, I would look at that poster and be
convinced that the Jays were going to be World Series Champions in 1985.
The first step Toronto would
have to take to get to that spot, would a be a four-game series against the New
York Yankees in Yankee Stadium in The Bronx. In the 1980s, the Bronx was
somewhere you didn’t want to be due to high crime rates, murders, assaults,
etc…
And as a young baseball team
looking to make an impression on the rest of baseball, Yankee Stadium could be
an intimidating place to make such an impression. In fact, most of the baseball
writers and commentators were predicting this would be the series that would
bring the Jays’ post season expectation crashing down, as the battle-hardened
Yankees would prove too much for them.
The Yankees were led by
centre-fielder Rickey Henderson, right fielder Dave Winfield and first baseman
Don Mattingly. They had been nine and a half
games behind Toronto at the beginning of August, and had slowly—but
steadily—closed the gap to two and a half heading into the September series between
the two teams, starting on September 12.
The series kicked off on a
Friday night. The Jays, having just swept the Detroit Tigers earlier in the
week, had their ace, Dave Stieb, starting against the Yankees’ Ron Guidry.
Toronto jumped out to a 3-0 lead on a two-run homer by Ernie Whitt in the top
of the third and an RBI single by Jesse Barfield in the fourth. The two teams
both scored a run over the next couple innings, giving the Jays a 4-1 lead
going to the bottom of the seventh.
That’s when the wheels fell off.
A six-run Yankee rally, started by a throwing error by Toronto shortstop Tony
Fernandez, and capped off by a grand slam home run by Yankee catcher Ron
Hassey, propelled the Yankees into the lead, which they held over the last two
innings. The Yankees won the game 7-5 and closed the gap to one and a half.
In order to quiet the critics,
who after the seventh-inning collapse were already writing the Jays’ obituary, Toronto needed to have a better outing in the second game on Friday night. They got it.
In a tight, pitching duel, the Jays won 3-2. Designated hitter, Al Oliver,
drove in all three runs with his two hits. With New York leading 1-0 in the
third, Oliver tripled with two out, scoring Lloyd Moseby and Rance Mulliniks.
Oliver’s single in the fifth would drive in Moseby with the Jays’ third run.
Reliever Gary Lavalle picked up
the win for Toronto, pitching three innings and allowing only two hits, while
closer Tom Henke pitched an inning and two thirds to record the save. The
series was now even and the two and a half game lead was restored.
On Saturday afternoon, the third
game of the series was tied at two going to the sixth inning. With one out,
Garth Iorg, playing second base in this game, singled and Whitt followed with a
walk. A Rance Mulliniks double scored Iorg to make the score 3-2. And infield
hit by Fernandez loaded the bases. Moseby singled in two runs and Cliff Johnson
followed with another two-run single to build the Jays’ lead to 7-2.
The Yankees scored two runs in
the eighth to pull within three runs at 7-4, but got no closer. Jays’ starter
Jimmy Key pitched a complete game to pick up his thirteenth win of the season.
With their second straight win, the Jays had guaranteed themselves at least a
split in the four-game showdown.
But on Sunday afternoon, the
Jays came out flying, not wanting to settle for a split. They scored six runs
in the third inning by bunching together five singles and two doubles, and the
Yankees committed a fielding error to help score the final run of the inning.
Another Yankee error and a pair
of singles led to two more Toronto runs, giving them an 8-0 lead. The Yankees
scored five runs over the final two innings, but Henke came in the game with
one out in the ninth and got both Mattingly and Winfield to fly out and end the
game with the Jays ahead 8-5.
This series was perhaps the most
crucial of the season as, by winning three of the four games—especially after
the first game loss appeared so devastating—in enemy territory, the Jays proved
that they could perform when it mattered against the best the American League
East had to offer. The lead was now up to four and a half games. Two weeks
later, after sweeping the Milwaukee Brewers in a three-game weekend set, the
Jays would enter the final week of the regular season with a seemingly
comfortable five and a half game lead.
