SPORTS
Monday, February 2, 2014 9
The glory past of the Toronto Blue Jays
A look into the team’s ascension to greatness and its heydays
pa r t one: e s ta blishing a n iden t i t y a nd a winning cult ure
kenneth cheak kwan lam › staff writer
A
s a di e-h a r d supporter of the Toronto
Blue Jays who has followed the baseball
club for nearly three decades, I believe
they have come a long way since playing their first ever regular season game at Exhibition
Stadium on April 7, 1977 when the field was covered with snow. While the franchise is still a long
way from matching the New York Yankees’ twentyseven World Championships, Toronto achieved
some impressive feats in its thirty-seven years
of existence: five American League East division
titles (1985, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993); two American
League Pennants (1992 and 1993); as well as two
World Series Titles (1992 and 1993). By comparison,
our expansion cousin, the Seattle Mariners, only
won one Wild Card Berth (2000) as well as three
American League West division titles (1995, 1997,
and 2001).
S u c c e s s
eluded the Blue
Jays initially as
the team came
out of the gate
with a string of
losing seasons from 1977 to 1982. However, the six
consecutive sub .500 seasons (including the first
three seasons in which the club lost over a hundred
games) did not dampen the fans’ faith in the team
since Torontonians understood that then-GM Pat
Gillick was building an expansion franchise from
the ground up and that we needed to be patient as
the twenty-five-men rosters were comprised of draft
picks and superfluous players whom other clubs had
cut loose. By all accounts, Gillick worked with what
he had and the Toronto Blue Jays in the late-1970s
to early 1980s were AAA teams from a