‘Touch ’em all, Joe!’ Memories flow on 30th anniversary of Blue Jays’ World Series win
For those in the dugout like Rob Butler, in the radio booth like Jerry Howarth or watching across Canada, Game 6 stories from 1993 don’t need prompting.
The battle of a lifetime was taking place right in front of Rob Butler as he sat in the dugout.
Against the Philadelphia Phillies, the Toronto Blue Jays jumped off to a quick 5-1 lead before blowing it two innings later and falling behind 6-5. Butler watched as Mitch Williams entered the game to pitch the bottom of the ninth and walked Rickey Henderson before hitting Paul Molitor for a single.
Butler watched with anticipation as Joe Carter frantically swung on a 2-and-1 pitch down and away, setting up one of the most memorable moments in Toronto sports history.
The 1993 World Series Game 6 will be remembered on Monday for the past thirty years. That game continues to be essential to Toronto baseball fans even now, a century later.
All the Jays supporters want to discuss with Carter is his home run.
In 2013, Carter stated that when people understand where they were and what they were doing at the time, “they’ll talk about where they were and what they were doing.”
For those in the dugout like Butler, in the broadcast booth like Jerry Howarth, or watching across Canada, the stories from that night need no prompting. They’re eager to share their brush with baseball history.
Butler remembers how it all unfolded: the crack of the bat, the team’s charge to home plate, the sensation coursing through his body as Carter rounded third and headed home
“Oh my God, holy F-word. It was unbelievable,” Butler recalled thinking when Carter hit the three-run walkoff homer to win the World Series. “That instant feeling of electricity going through your body … I have goosebumps now thinking about it.”
Butler grew up at Main Street and Danforth Avenue in East York and was the only Canadian on the 1993 team. The outfielder played 17 games that year, returning from an injury for the post-season and appearing as a pinch-hitter in games 4 and 5 of the World Series.
He lived with his parents and took the subway to the SkyDome (as the Rogers Centre was then known) for Game 6. To even be on the roster was “incredible.”
In a recent interview, Butler said to the Star, “It was like winning $60 million in the (Lotto) 6/49.” “All thirty million Canadians wanted to be me during the World Series—that they could go down and sit on the bench and wear a Blue Jays uniform. I’m fairly certain that at the time, I was the luckiest man in Canada.
Butler claimed that nothing changed in the dugout despite the Jays blowing a four-run lead in the seventh inning and leaving the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth inning of Game 6. There were no reservations or concerns about attending a Game 7.
Butler said that “pressure” had never been used. Against the Blue Jays that year, “any team was always in trouble until the last out.”
Howarth, the Jays’ longtime radio announcer, was close to the dugout. He went down to the field after the eighth inning to get ready for the post-game show and stood in the third-base camera well.
Williams emerged from the Phillies bullpen’s right-field entrance as Howarth watched it open. Howarth swiveled to face the Jays’ outfield.
Rickey Henderson is leaving from the far end, as I can see. Howarth recalls, “and he’s giving everybody low high-fives all the way down to the camera bay.
In the bottom of the ninth inning, Henderson, Toronto’s leadoff batter, informed his teammates that Williams would walk him on four pitches. That actually occurred a short while later, preparing the way for Carter.
Howarth moved into the first row to catch a sight of Carter’s home run as it soared over the left-field wall. But he missed the moment when the words that have become the enduring memory of that home run were heard by millions of Canadians on their radios, on living room couches, and at dining room tables across the nation.
“Swing and a belt, way back in left field, Blue Jays win it! Tom Cheek, the broadcaster’s play-by-play voice, yelled over the radio, “The Blue Jays are World Series champions. Joe, touch them all. You never will
