Blue Jays Became Birds of a Different Feather

As the celebration finally began to wind down in the wee hours Thursday morning and gave way to some reflective moments within the home clubhouse at SkyDome, the thoughts of a few of the champagne-soaked Toronto Blue Jays turned toward George Bell.

It was Bell who, upon departing Toronto via free agency during the offseason, growled that his former club wouldn’t win 75 games this year. Now Bell’s current team, the Chicago Cubs, is buried near the bottom of the National League East and had 74 victories entering the final weekend of play. And the Blue Jays, with their 89 wins, are savoring their third American League East title in seven years and preparing to make a run at what could be the first World Series appearance in the franchise’s 15-year history.

“Well, it looks like George was wrong,” Blue Jay General Manager Pat Gillick said shortly after Toronto clinched the division with a dramatic, 6-5 triumph over the Angels Wednesday in front of the team’s 66th sellout crowd of the season. “We managed to win one without him, didn’t we?”

That, the Blue Jays insist, is more than mere coincidence. Bell was one of many links to the team’s recent past to be ushered out of town over the winter. The moody outfielder left as a free agent after the Blue Jays refused to offer him a contract. First baseman Fred McGriff and shortstop Tony Fernandez were traded to the San Diego Padres.

Only two Blue Jays regulars, third baseman Kelly Gruber and catcher Pat Borders, were retained as starters in the same position they held a year ago. Over the previous five offseasons, Toronto had made just one minor trade-for pitcher Craig McMurty.

John Olerud took over for McGriff at first base. Manuel Lee moved from second base to replace Fernandez. The newcomers from the blockbuster deal with the Padres, Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter, have manned second base and an outfield spot, respectively. Devon White came in a trade with the Angels to patrol the middle of an all-new outfield. The third outfield slot was a problem area for much of the year, but Candy Maldonado proved to be a late-season blessing after being claimed off waivers in August.

“I remember going to spring training and thinking I must have wandered into the wrong clubhouse,” Gruber said. “It was like we were starting over from scratch. We wiped the slate clean, and it worked. The new guys have been great. I have a feeling about this team that I’ve never had about any of our teams here before.”

The remaking of the Blue Jays came about more by choice than by necessity. Toronto, after all, has been a successful franchise-both on and off the field-for the past decade: This year marked their ninth consecutive season with a winning record. Yet, as Gillick said, “there was a feeling among some people that, for all the games we had won, we didn’t have much to show for it.” When asked whether he had shared that view, Gillick replied simply with a wink.

The Blue Jays’ reputation for having a fractionalized clubhouse over the past few years was well deserved, some holdover players now concede, and absence of cohesion showed in the team’s lack of a late-season finishing touch. The Blue Jays’ collapses were epic. Only six times in this century have teams lost a lead of more than one game with six or fewer games to play; of those six, the Blue Jays did it twice in four years, between 1987 and ’90. Even the locals couldn’t help but call them the “Blow Jays.”

Toronto’s players, however, say they knew early on that this year would be different. The new chemistry in the clubhouse, supplied largely by Carter and Alomar, would ensure that. The Blue Jays got all they expected-and more-from the newcomers. Carter has driven in 108 runs. Alomar has hit .294 and played a superb second base. White has gobbled up fly balls from one alley to the other and batted a surprising .282. Maldonado has seven home runs as a Blue Jay.

There was adversity to overcome. Toronto has had trouble scoring, entering Wednesday’s game ranked 10th among the AL’s 14 clubs in runs. Longtime pitching centerpiece Dave Stieb made only nine starts because of back troubles, and a similar ailment sidelined Manager Cito Gaston for over a month. Lee has played with nagging injuries for much of the season, and bullpen closer Tom Henke is battling a sore shoulder. After taking over first place in late June and surging to an eight-game in mid-July, the Blue Jays saw the Boston Red Sox storm back to within one game in late September.

But the Blue Jays persevered. Their pitching has carried them, having compiled the best team earned run average in the league. Hard-throwing rookie Juan Guzman stepped in Stieb’s spot in the rotation and has 10 consecutive wins. Tom Candiotti added to the pitching depth after coming from Cleveland in a midseason trade.

And on Wednesday-before a boisterous crowd waving the giveaway T-shirts that commemorated the Blue Jays’ becoming the first team in baseball history to surpass the 4-million mark in home attendance in a season-the new nucleus came through again. Candiotti turned a 4-3, seventh-inning lead over to the Toronto bullpen, an advantage that came courtesy of Maldonado’s two-run homer. The Blue Jays fell behind again, but White, Alomar and Carter overcame the 5-4 deficit with a two-run blitz in the bottom of the ninth off AL save leader Bryan Harvey.

Next up is the Minnesota Twins, who already have clinched the AL West to become the first team to go from last place in one year to first place in the next. The two teams are playing a relaxed series at the Metrodome this weekend -- “it might end up looking a lot like the late innings of a spring training game,” Gaston said -- then the playoffs start there Tuesday.