An 'Iron Mike' trivia contest, Cito Gaston-Joe Carter Day, and a 'Killer' punchline

There is a chance to win a book embedded in this post. There is also a semi-rant about how the Blue Jays' greatest glory has been misunderstood. But it comes with a link to some podcast episodes!

Oct 23, 2024

Knowing a Hockey Person is knowing they relish a chance to get out to a ballgame. The spirit of that is why the summertime NHL draft should always sync with the nearest MLB team being in town.

Why is that? It will come back around at the end. First, a bit of KBO related to October baseball and SportsLit.

K is for Keenan

You can win a copy of the memoir from championship hockey coach Mike Keenan. The Stanley Cup-winning Keenan is the most recent guest on SportsLit. So.

Follow SportsLitPod on X (né Twitter);
Tag SportsLitPod with your answer to the question, “who are the two former players he coached that Neil Acharya asked him about in the rapid-fire section?”

Need a hint? Or something to listen to for a little? The episode is available. The answer to the trivia question is contained within. A copy of a good book is up for grabs.

B is for BBHOF Needs Cito Gaston

Happy Joe Carter Day, or Sager Asks To Be Ratioed Day.

Take nothing away from what Joe Carter did on this date in 1993 or the memories. How-ev-er, it is neither the most important nor impressive home run from the Blue Jays’ Glory Years. I point this out every few years, and people seem to feel so attacked one would think they hit the home run against Mitch Williams.

The Carter home run gets more pub for reasons. It is the second and last time a batter ended the World Series with a home run. It came in a home game, and the Jays bandwagon was teeming since they were defending champions. It wouldn’t get that full again until October 2015. Outcomes do not get any more decisive.

However, it evokes the Anne Murray ballad, An-tic-i-pat-ion. Diehards knew what the Jays needed to do, and how likely they might have it in them.

The ’92-93 Blue Jays had Four October Comebacks under Cito Gaston, the manager who should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Joe Carter home run wasn’t predictable but the odds were piquing.

Before that happened, they had to cast off whatever labels and baggage the media had put on them through postseason and final-week failures. Cito Gaston and his confidantes, not all of whom were coaches, built the intel to help the Blue Jays unlock the magic of championship teams. That happened in 1992, not ’93, and it’s intellectually dishonest to act like the second one is better or bigger.

The point goes to realizing human perception and being in the right place at the right time plays tricks on people. History and math always opens the neural pathways toward the truth.

Let’s remember what odds and which closer they were staring at in those games (per Baseball-Reference).

1-in-5 vs. ‘Wild Thing’ Williams
1-in-12 vs. Jeff Reardon, then the career saves leader
1-in-50 vs. with Williams potentially closing
1-in-100 vs. potentially Dennis Eckersley, a hall of famer / 1-in-14 vs. Eckersley

For those who need a refresher, the Blue Jays went into their last at-bat of the potential closeout game trailing by one run.1

Gaston and other baseball men around him had coached up Jays batters. They had overcome much more against better closers than the ‘Wild Thing’ with a badly bunged-up shoulder that throttled down his fastball to less than 90 mph. That was obvious then.

The obvious, now, is that the Philadelphia Phillies sent out a pitcher who would not even make a Wild-Card Series roster today with that condition. But we do not even need that revision. People who followed the Jays intently liked their chances in a one-to-tie, two-to-win scenario against a closer who was effectively erratic when he did have his heat, and Williams did not have it.

This Jays’ group passes around intel, and channels it into big comebacks. They also know managers can only mess with a batter’s headspace. The Phillies are using corrupted softwareods. The Jays have righty-batting Rickey Henderson, Devon Whyte, and Paul Molitor ready to set the table. All three were Top-5 run scorers in 1993.2

If one batter or more extends Williams, then either mid-order RBI man Carter, bench bat Darnell Coles, or down in the 6-hole, Roberto Alomar, will have a chance to belt the game-winning hit.3

Quote Homer Simpson: “I like those odds!”

What do the Phillies have? They have Curt Schilling hiding his face in the dugout while Williams labours a bit.

Oct. 11, 1992: 1-in-100 vs. potentially Dennis Eckersley, a hall of famer, then 1-in-14 vs. Eck

The most important and impressive Blue Jays home run came off the bat of the aforementioned (Redacted). He is banned from baseball. Lawyers who do the type of forensics and investigations work that confirms the likelihood of allegations do not miss the mark, full stop.

Blue Jays fans accept the lesson about not confusing ability with character. However, none of that was public knowledge when he delivered the adrenaline shot that made the Blue Jays’ October-proof.

It came 377 days before the Carter home run. The critical Game 4 of the best-of-7 pennant playoff against Oakland. Either the Jays push the archrival Athletics to the brink by winning for a 3-1 lead — or fall back into a 2-2 tie and risk releasing the fanbase’s collective butterflies about another October collapse.

When (Redacted) steps in against Bob Welch to open the eighth inning, the Jays have a 1-in-100 chance of winning. They are down by five runs with six offensive outs left in the game — and should they rally at all, the Athletics can go to Eckersley.

Eckersley comes in mid-eighth inning. This is Peak Eck. He has not pitched in three days. He is on course to win a league MVP-Cy Young double, which only two starters have accomplished since.4

Also, Oakland manager Tony La Russa is a genius. Many pieces of physical media say so. And true genius requires other people to be especially persuasive.

These Jays enter the ninth against Eckersley in a two-to-tie scenario — and they are the away team, so they need pitching and fielding to force extras.

The Blue Jays’ win expectancy is 1-in-14. Henderson is on the field — but he is in left field for the A’s. It is Whyte-Alomar-Carter.

And (Redacted) lines the game-tying two-run home run. Of course, The Genius Tony La Russa still has three chances to wring the winning run out of his team.

See him call for Mark McGwire to sac-bunt the potential winning run from second base to third base with one out in the ninth inning. And bunting always pays off with the next batter driving in the runner.5

Except… even though the bunt is a sure thing, who makes the final out two innings later? Mark McGwire. The same McGwire who hit 70 home runs in 1998 and supposedly saved baseball, while using steroids, then got hauled in front of the United States Congress to talk about steroids in baseball when U.S. lawmakers might have better spent the people’s time on the Iraq conquest and climate adaptation?

Other situations involved remoter odds, and legions more doubts enshrouding the energy around this time. There is no understanding sport in the present if the past is misrepresented.

1-in-12 vs. Jeff Reardon, the career save leader at the time

Cito Gaston was a professional hitter. He once hit 29 home runs playing in San Diego when their park was Death Valley, then a bad start the year after led to him becoming a role player.

Clearly, that formed his affect when he became just the fourth Black manager in the AL and NL. He threw out ‘The Book’ and let players and pitchers show they did not live in number chains. He nouned the verb compete. Who has a good compete, and who is looking into the dugout with a yer-sure?

Oddly enough, Gaston’s coaching staff and the first Black quarterback to lead a pro football championship team have people in common. Bench coach Gene Tenace and hitting coach Larry Hisle each hail from Portsmouth, Ohio, the same hometown as Chuck Ealey. Of Toledo Rockets and CFL fame, that Chuck Ealey.

Those dots did not connect at the time. They gather intel on opponents, and relay it.

So, 370 days before Carter, there is Ed Sprague.

Home-field advantage for the World Series rotated between the leagues. Atlanta had more wins than the Blue Jays, so they deserved to host the first and last legs of the 2-3-2 format best-of-7.

With all apologies to the estate of Robbie Robertson, through the first two Series games at Atlanta, the Jays are that “Acadian Driftwood” lyric.

This ain’t my turf… this ain’t my season.

They are an Astroturf team from the American League. This is pre-interleague play. National League rules still expect pitchers to bat. In the World Series, the rules rotate based on the home team. It is unfair. The Jays have to sit an everyday player. In Toronto, Atlanta will get to remove an automatic out.

Their fans are also doing that stoopid racist chant, which adults explain is harmful and hurtful. Perhaps your ginger ass hadn’t grokked that initially, but you were taught to listen to people who supported their opinion with well-thought-out arguments and similes. When the adults around you could linked a stadium of ‘Chopping’ baseball fans in the U.S. South to the Kansetake Resistance, it all made sense.

The Jays are also getting boned by the umpires. The one-run Atlanta margin stems from a bad call. Alomar scored on a wild pitch when he was clearly safe.

Such an embarrassment must have made baseball bring in video replay as quickly as possible, eh? Ha! It took over 15 seasons.

The Jays must come to Toronto for games 3, 4, and 5 on level terms. Baseball is not meant to be a big home-field advantage sport, and they are only 3-6 in postseason games in the Dome.

Unlike Carter v. Williams and Alomar v. Eckersley, they do not have the top of the order coming to bat. It is up to the bottom of the order. Defenders and pinch-hitters.

After catcher Pat Borders hit an opposite-field lineout, the Jays are looking at less than a 1-in-12 chance of winning the game.

Gaston liked the compete that Ed Sprague evinced in pinch-hit bids against Oakland. He picks him to pinch-hit. The Captain Obvious play might have been Candy Maldonado, who has gone from left field to left out due to those archaic rules.

Rance Mulliniks, an organizational soldier, has barely played all season due to a bunged-up back, but he is around for his institutional knowledge about pitchers. Sprague went to Mullilniks for prep after being told he would pinch-hit in the 9-spot against Reardon.

Mulliniks smiled ... “If you’re going to swing at a fastball, swing at one that’s down in the strike zone.” (Baltimore Sun, Oct. 19, 1992)

Pinch-hitter Derek Bell cadged a base-on-balls, on a full count. Per an excellent on-deadline account from John Eisenberg, Reardon threw a first-pitch fastball to Borders. He threw one to Derek Bell. And, briefed by Rance Mulliniks, Sprague goes up looking for one, and gets sufficiently all of it.6

Nowadays, that would be called pattern recognition. The Jays have arrived in the World Series, better 17½ innings late than never. It is an Eff-You Blast Right Over the Head of Deion Sanders.

The other comeback does not involve a home run but a chain of base hits scooting along the Veterans Stadium turf in south Philadephia. That was the other critical-path Game 4 where the Blue Jays got out to a 3-1 series lead and wrapped the series in six games.

The 15-14 game stands out or what the Jays did not do to win. They won the highest-scoring game in World Series history, to that point, without a home run. And they were down by five runs with five outs left on the baseball ‘clock,’ and they won.

Sure, the Carter home run gets better play. It was a decisive outcome. It also happened in a home game on a Saturday night, and tens of thousands more Canadians saw it in person. It is a great memory, but it does not explain baseball or those early ’90s October Jays or three of the other Four October Comebacks.

O is for Ottawa, and One True Coach: Brian Kilrea

There is quite the hoopla about Hockey Hall of Fame coach Brian Kilrea turning 90 years old.

The Canadian Hockey League legend was a major figure for a past SportsLit guest. Justin Davis, author of Conflicted Scars, wrote poignantly about re-finding his love of the game when he played for the Kilrea-infused Ottawa 67’s in the late 1990s.

Kilrea did that for dozens of young men. If he had arrived in 1984 rather than ’34, he might just as easily have rekindled the joy of hockey for a female team.

‘A Quiet Con’

Some friends and I talk about how Eastern Ontario is a world-beaten at a bit of found comedy called a Quiet Con. The late great Norm MacDonald was a master of it — it’s where you BS someone when you sense there is not time, or interest on their other end, to share a more complicated or darker truth.

My longest-running quiet con is in response to someone who looks up and down my middle-age-spreading husky frame and says you must have played football. I’ll nod that I played offensive line, and if they ask for a specific position I’ll say, centre and some guard.

I never played football; my high school did not field a team in the 1990s. However, I messed around with hockey, where the three forwards are an offensive line. Sometimes I played centre — a position in hockey, football, and basketball, but with wildly different functions. As a spare part in basketball, sometimes I subbed in for our centre or one of our guards.

So it is not an actual lie, but it is not true, either. Why are people from the wedge-shaped area of land between Québec, the U.S. border, and Southern Ontario’s disgusting suburban sprawl good at the Quiet Con? It might come back to the notion that time seems to move slower there, but it only seems that way since people generally take their time with new info. The person being Quiet-Conned might not.

Also, Kingston is a prison town. There are actual Cons out and about.

Brian Kilrea is a true wit. One anecdote that always gets passed around among 67’s hockey players and other on-bench personnel is the ‘3 Things You Can Do’ story. Kilrea coached before ‘zone exit’ and ‘zone entry’ were tabulable. For coaches of his vintage, it was more that if you had numbers and fresh legs leaving the D-zone, give’r; otherwise, simmer and get a line change. The same applied to crossing the offensive blueline.

Otherwise, defencemen should go up the boards with the puck and clear the zone. The ‘3 Things’ story would always involve a defenceman who had goofed by playing the puck through the middle, resulting in a giveaway and a prompt goal against. At intermission, Kilrea would say, “There are three things you can do there: you can go up the boards, you can Eff off, or you can Eff off!”

And that story was repeated so many times, that it became a print-the-legend deal. He probably did say it, but whom it was said in reference to could be any defenceman.

Good modelling, though

Kilrea, 77 at the time, had a heart attack in August 2012. Within weeks, he was getting out to 67’s games, equipped with a life lesson and a laugh line.

As he told it, as remembered, he awoke fully aware, and accepting, that he was suffering a heart attack. Perhaps he wanted to impress that a heart attack is not as scary, nor does it come on as quickly, as it might be portrayed in a TV medical drama. Or just model good bounce-back behaviors.

As he put it, going off memory, “I rousted Judy” — his wife — “and told her, ‘I’m going to need you to take me to the hospital in about 20 minutes.’ And then I went and took a shower. I figured the sound of the water would help her realize she needed to get up, and I wanted to go to the hospital feeling clean since they were going to keep me for a while.”

No panic, and a game plan. Great coaches think of everything and everyone.

Come Back Around

Hockey People love a day out at the ballpark since they need it. It is a day in the sun, the inverse of the total immersion of hockey, where players, coaches, and support staff go down in a submarine for several months. They only occasionally resurface between the start of training camp and the end of the playoffs.

Time was the NHL draft used to sync with a chance to visit an MLB park. And there was a perk for all of a team’s amateur scouts. The draft was a de facto coach’s convention, a chance to network and renew contacts, renew the sense of purpose to Do That Hockey. It had a social value. At a ball game, you can be laid-back.

Alas, since social value does not show in quarterlies, the NHL has got rid of the big draft. The 2025 proceedings, though, will be in Los Angeles at the Peacock Theater. That is fewer than 15 minutes down the 110 from Dodger Stadium, so hopefully whatever player personnel staff are at the draft get their Dodger Dog on at the draft.

There are no bad days at a ballyard. Hockey arenas are also nice to visit. That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind, especially to yourself.

Oct. 22-23, 2024
Hamilton, Ont. : upon the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas

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