The Toronto Star - A Season to Remember: How Canadas Team Gave Us the Best Summer in Twenty-two Years

The 2015 Blue Jays joined the pantheon of Toronto baseball champions, winning the American League East title and advancing to the post-season for the first time since 1993.

BY EVERY MEASURE, 2015 was a miracle year for the Toronto Blue Jays.

In dramatic style, they went from being a baseball team with a losing record in mid season to a squad that won the hearts of Canadians across the country and came within just two wins of playing in the World Series.

This was a team of destiny, in a season filled with amazing late-inning comebacks, memorable home runs and two stunning 11-game winning streaks.

In 2015, the Toronto Blue Jays showed they were a team to be feared by opponents and loved by their fans. They won the American League East title, ending a 22-year playoff drought that was the longest in North American professional sports, and reached the American League Championship Series.

Writers and photographers from the Toronto Star have been with the Toronto Blue Jays all year, from spring training to the last out of the season.

The Toronto Star is pleased to salute the 2015 team with this book and to relive some of the magical memories of one of the greatest teams in Blue Jay history.

We hope you enjoy it.

John Cruickshank, Publisher

Toronto Star

ROSIE DIMANNO Toronto Star

E leven games in October.

Eleven games of heart-pounding playoff fervor.

Blue Jays games that made a city, an entire country, vibrate with unprecedented excitement and rekindled passion.

Not since 1993, when the club went all the way to a World Series championship for the second consecutive year, had baseball been so meaningful, so exhilarating, so glorious.

Different from 93, though, when the Jays were expected to win by duplicating their achievements. We dont rebuild, we re-load, crowed Joe Carter, he of the game six walk-off home run thats been frozen in memory.

Expectations of the 2015 Jays had started highas in the season before, and the season before that, when many among the baseball cognoscenti had picked Toronto to prevail. Those predictions had fallen flat and woefully short, while what had been sacrificed to acquire alleged destiny-changers cost Toronto dearly in prospects (see Noah Syndegaard and Travis dArnaud, New York Mets).

Again, promise had been overtaken by reality and the mutability of baseball as another sluggish year unfolded.

But this version of the Jays reloaded too, stunningly, at the non-waiver trade deadline, GM Alex Anthopoulos amassing marquee trinkets from across the baseball world, moves both daring and astonishing, which declared: Were in it to win it.

Incoming: Troy Tulowitzki, David Price, Ben Revere, Mark Lowe and LaTroy Hawkins.

Outgoing: A passel of unproven yet highly regarded talent.

All in, now: That was the operative premise.

Three days before the July 31 trade deadline, the Jays were 50-51a lowly fourth place in the American League East, eight games back of the Yankees, with a desultory fan base that had been down this road-to-nowhere too many times before. Anthopoulos had pulled off some key off-season moves as he manoeuvred to correct clubhouse deficiencies, searching for that elusive alchemy of character and mettle, most especially in acquiring Russell Martin even if catching was not a pressing need, swinging a pivotal deal for Marco Estrada and somehow pick-pocketing Josh Donaldson from Oakland. Because Anthopoulos wouldnt take no for an answer.

When the regular season ended, the Jays were 93-69 and the Yankees six games behind in the rearview mirror. En route to a mini-pennant, the imperious Toronto line-up led the majors in run-scoring with 891167 more than the AL-topping Kansas City Royalsand free-swinging their way to No. 1 in home runs with 232. Price, the most coveted pitcher in baseball, went 9-1. The long-balling meat of the orderJose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Josh Donaldsonjacked a collective 120 homers. And Donaldson was serenaded with MVP! MVP! chants at both the Rogers Centre and all the foreign ballparks where the Jays devotees trooped, often drowning out the local factions.

It was easier to get a ticket on the road. Toronto had 27 sellouts in 2015, including 20 of their last 21 games.

Suddenly, the Jays were the thing in town, and across major league baseball, as commentators and pundits turned their eyes northward, in awe of the teams swagger, its revived and revitalized place in a citys consciousness. At the Rogers Centre, through those concluding two months, the deafening roar of the crowd made it seem like the playoffs had already arrived. They lustily cheered everything, from a starting pitcher warming up in the pen to a strikeout to a piece of defensive brilliance from Ryan Goins to a spectacularly Spidey catch by Kevin Pillar.

We were the North, to borrow a branding phrase. And we were the centre of the baseball universe. Or at least it felt that way.

It was a magical season.

Pitcher R.A. Dickey

You can understand the jubilationJay-bilationwhen Toronto nailed a post-season berth with a 10-8 victory over Tampa Bay on September 26. A weird twist of the schedule meant the Jays had actually secured playoff inclusion in the wee hours of that Saturday morning. Number-crunching scrutineers had done the math. The Jays were guaranteed at least the second wild card spot even before that tilt with the Rays started, so it made for a somewhat anti-climactic celebrationin theory, not inside the whooping champagne-sodden locker room. Said Bautista, Its like if the weatherman says theres 100 percent chance of rain but it hasnt rained yet.

While not the longest championship-deprived franchise on the continent, Toronto had borne the longest post-season drought. Sports enthusiasts have had precious little to go giddy over hereabouts except for the Raptors and nothing that triggered this kind of chest-beating euphoria since the Maple Leafs 1993 playoff run.