Blue Jay Way Leads to Another Dead End

MINNEAPOLIS —  Toronto’s new Jays? That was the promise, wasn’t it--the reason The Dynasty That Didn’t was dismantled and restocked with replacement parts unfamiliar with the ghosts of ‘85, ’87 and ‘89?

Joe Carter had nothing to do with the three-games-to-one lead Toronto blew to Kansas City in the 1985 playoffs.

Roberto Alomar was nowhere to be seen when the Blue Jays gagged on the last week of their 1987 regular-season schedule, losing seven straight games and a 3 1/2-game lead over Detroit.

Tom Candiotti was living in a foreign country--Cleveland--during the Rickey Henderson Skydome siege in the 1989 playoffs.

Out with the bad air, in with the good. If the sins of Toronto Octobers past could not be purged, the sinners certainly could be. George Bell, Jesse Barfield, Tony Fernandez, Fred McGriff--all of them gone, each of them traded, released, nudged or otherwise encouraged into dragging their karma below the border, as far south as possible.

In theory, this probably made sense. But when the Blue Jays got around to actually refurnishing the house, they did their shopping in the oddest places.

Cleveland.

San Diego.

Anaheim.

Traditional October equipment for players in these towns consists of a remote control, bags of Doritos, bottles of Michelob and the three-way reclining La-Z-Boy with the simulated wood trim.

This is how the new Jays played their first game of the 1991 AL playoffs Tuesday night:

--Candiotti, ex-Indian, started for Toronto and recorded eight outs. He also allowed eight hits and five runs, leaving the Blue Jays’ bullpen with a Clevelandesque 5-0 mess to mop up.

--Alomar, ex-Padre, broke from first base on a teammate’s drive into the right-center-field gap, held up at second to watch the ball one-hop the wall, scooted to third and was waved all the way home--where he was eliminated by a good five feet by a Kirby Puckett-Greg Gagne-Brian Harper relay.

--And Carter, doubly cursed, being both ex-Indian and ex-Padre, lost a third-inning fly ball in the Metrodome lights and misplayed it into a run-scoring double--the eventual difference in a 5-4 Minnesota victory.

New names, same old Blue Jay way.

This was ice-breaking time for many Toronto players, and the ice was slippery. “It was good to get through this and put it under our belts,” Carter said. “For a lot of the players in this clubhouse, this was their first time in a playoff game.”

Candiotti, who had just about accepted the likelihood that he’d grow old and pennantless in Cleveland before his June 27 escape, admitted he was nervous on the mound. “You’re going to have butterflies in a game like this,” he said. “That’s just being human.”

Candiotti didn’t help himself by falling behind hitters early, but the fates offered no assistance, either. He was an out away from squirming out of the first inning when Chili Davis broke his bat and squibbed an opposite-field single over the head of third baseman Kelly Gruber, scoring Dan Gladden and Chuck Knoblauch. A two-run second inning began when Shane Mack struck a low liner that caromed off Candiotti’s right ankle for an infield single.

And Candiotti was out of the third inning, clean and simple, when he got Mack to loft a two-out fly ball down the right-field line.

Except Carter didn’t know what to do with it. Playing shallow to start with, Carter ran in some more, squinting into the lights, before he could track the ball. Over his head it sailed for a double, scoring Davis from second base and spelling the end for Candiotti.

Candiotti tried to give Carter the benefit of the doubt, alluding to the 54,000 shrill voices ringing in the right fielder’s ear.

“The noise,” Candiotti said. “I don’t think Joe could hear the crack of the bat. Often, an outfielder can judge where the ball’s headed just by the sound of the bat.

“But it’s so difficult to hear here. Even Dan Gladden had trouble on a couple balls and he’d played here for years.”

Carter, however, didn’t want to hear any of it.

“The noise was no factor,” he said flatly. “I was just playing too shallow. I didn’t have any problem with the sound. I was just playing shallow and normally you don’t hit Candiotti that hard there because he throws knuckleballs, nothing too fast.

“At first I couldn’t tell how hard it was hit, but when it was, I had to wait for it to get out of the lights. But the time it was out of the lights, it was past me.”

A half-inning later, Carter was denied his moment of redemption when his double into the right-center gap failed to score Alomar. Alomar hesitated long enough at second base to set Toronto third base coach Rich Hacker up for a second guess--and Alomar had to admit, “I was surprised when he sent me home. He told me to run, so I ran.”

Alomar quickly added, however, that “I don’t want to comment on an aggressive decision. That’s how we got here, playing aggressive baseball. We can’t afford to stop now.”

Still, Alomar was running with a 5-0 deficit. And then Carter scores one out later. And then Toronto adds three runs in the sixth inning.

By the ninth inning, the play at the plate loomed larger than the Metrodome itself.

Once a Blue Jay, forever a Blue Jay?

The former Indians and former Padres have at least three more chances to prove otherwise.