WORLD SERIES : TORONTO BLUE JAYS vs, ATLANTA BRAVES : It’s a New World Series Order : Game 6: Blue Jays break through for first Canadian title, 4-3, as Winfield doubles home two runs in 11th. Borders is named MVP.

ATLANTA —  When the Blue Jays drag their weary bodies past a customs officer at the Toronto airport this morning, they will get a question that is asked every minute.

They will give an answer they have been working on for 16 years.

Anything to declare?

“Yes. A World Series championship.”

After spending more than four hours battling with the Atlanta Braves, after overcoming miracles and avoiding heartbreaks, they can also declare that they deserved it.

Dave Winfield’s two-out, two-run double past third base in the 11th inning Saturday gave the Blue Jays a 4-3 victory in Game 6 and the Series championship, four games to two.

It is the first World Series title by a Canadian team since major league baseball began international play in 1969.

It is the first time this month that the Braves put together a two-out, ninth-inning comeback and lost.

“We’re just glad to escape with a win,” Winfield said. “It’s America’s game, but now it’s Canada’s for a while.”

Charlie Leibrandt, who gave up Winfield’s hit, said, “It’s going to be a tough winter ahead.”

Otis Nixon, who tied the game for the Braves with a two-out, two-strike single in the ninth inning, nearly changed everything in the 11th.

With two out, pinch-runner John Smoltz on third base and one run in on Brian Hunter’s grounder, Nixon stepped up against Mike Timlin.

Timlin had just relieved Jimmy Key and had pitched only one inning in this World Series, so Nixon had an idea. He would try a bunt.

Except Borders had already thought of it.

“We discussed it on the mound right before he came up,” Borders said. “We know he’s done it before.”

And that is how championships are won. Nixon bunted, but Timlin was ready. He jumped off the mound, grabbed the ball and threw it to first baseman Joe Carter, barely beating Nixon.

Nixon crossed first base and froze. Carter leaped madly toward the pitcher’s mound.

The 51,763 fans at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, not wishing to leave the best game many of them will ever see, began cheering.

“We kept holding them off and holding them off,” Winfield said. “We did not want a Game 7.”

Winfield made certain that would not happen when he came to bat in the 11th inning. He had been hitless in four at-bats, he was batting .190 in the Series and he had nearly been removed a couple of innings earlier for defensive purposes.

“Cito (Gaston, Blue Jay manager) asked me a few innings before, ‘How you do you feel? How’s the legs?’ ” Winfield said. “He might have put somebody else out there for defense, but that would not have been right. I wanted to stay.”

With Devon White on second base after being hit by a pitch, and Roberto Alomar on first, Winfield showed why he belonged.

He fought off a full-count pitch, bouncing it inside third base and down the line for the first extra-base hit in his World Series career. Both runners scored, and Atlanta Manager Bobby Cox was left with another winter of questions.

Such as, where was your ace reliever, Jeff Reardon?

“Reardon was going to be the next pitcher in the game,” Cox said. “I left Charlie in because Charlie gets right-handers out. He gave up a ground ball.

“You can’t--this year--fault him for it.”

Cox was referring to another fact that will haunt the Braves this winter. For a second consecutive season, Leibrandt helped cost his team the World Series championship.

Minnesota fans remember that Leibrandt gave up the game-winning home run to Kirby Puckett in Game 6 last season, forcing a Game 7 during which the Twins became champions.

“Obviously, we’re not jumping up and down,” Cox said.

The Braves become the first team to lose in consecutive World Series since the Dodgers lost to the New York Yankees in 1977 and 1978.

The Blue Jays, who began play in the American League in 1977, became the 10th franchise to win a World Series in their first attempt.

Winfield, who had never won a World Series ring in his 19-year career, became the happiest 41-year-old in the game.

“I tell you, I’m the oldest man in the room, and it took me the longest to get this championship,” Winfield said. “And I didn’t do much. But I did something at the right time.”

Borders, who batted .450 and threw out Nixon to end a potential seventh-inning rally, felt like the luckiest man.

“They battled back so many times that I really can’t believe that it’s actually over,” said catcher Pat Borders, the most valuable player of the Series. “After the last out, I stood there for a few seconds and said, ‘Did we really win?’ My feelings right now are indescribable.”

The Braves’ ninth-inning rally left Toronto just as stunned, perhaps because it was the Braves’ second ninth-inning rally in two weeks.

They won the National League championship with a three-run ninth against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Game 7, and nearly pulled off the same thing again.

“We can’t pull out miracle finishes every time,” Cox said.

The ninth inning featured two singles on 0-and-2 pitches and Damon Berryhill’s first sacrifice bunt in three years.

And the run was scored against a relief pitcher who had yet to give up a run in 6 2/3 postseason innings, pitching in a bullpen that not given up a run in 16 World Series innings.

With the Blue Jays leading, 2-1, reliever Tom Henke, who had given up only three hits in the postseason, started the ninth inning by going 0-and-2 on Jeff Blauser.

But then Blauser bounced a ball between shortstop and third base for a single to left. Up stepped Berryhill, who had killed a late rally in Game 4 because of a poor bunt.

This time, he got it right, and Blauser moved to second.

Lonnie Smith, who had drawn only 17 walks during the regular season and none during the postseason, stepped up to bat for Mark Lemke. After eight pitches and three fouls balls, he walked.

This brought up the hero of the pennant rally, Francisco Cabrera. He lined a ball to left field, that Candy Maldonado (whose homer had given the Blue Jays a 2-1 lead) misjudged, then snatched out of the air.

Then came Nixon, who singled to left on an 0-and-2 pitch to tie the game, causing the stadium to rock in deafening cheers. But Ron Gant stranded two runners with an inning-ending fly ball, and today, Toronto will be rocking.

“I just want to get home and give this to the people up there,” Winfield said. “They’ve been waiting a long time and they deserve it.”

They aren’t the only ones.

* ROSS NEWHAN: Toronto, after winning a championship 16 years in the making, faces some tough decisions. C10

* CHARLIE LEIBRANDT: The parallels are too hard and painful to ignore for the Atlanta left-hander, who gave up a home run to force a seventh game in the World Series last season. C10

* NOTEBOOK: Dave Winfield, one of 12 Blue Jays who will become free agents if he is not offered arbitration within 48 hours, might not have much time to enjoy the party in Toronto. C11