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Blue Jays Best Moments of the Quarter Century: Part I

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The Blue Jays have come a long way since 2000, and now that almost 25 years have passed since then, let’s take a look back at some of the franchise’s most memorable moments over that time period.

Part I of this series highlights a few special performances specifically from the 2003 team, a squad that featured three All-Stars, two Silver Slugger award winners, and a Cy Young winner.

Reed Johnson leads it off and walks it off with a homer

In just his 28th major league game, Blue Jays outfielder Reed Johnson joined extremely rare company by hitting a lead-off home run and a walk-off home run in the same game on June 15, 2003. He homered off of Cubs starter Shawn Estes in the first inning and reliever Mark Guthrie in the 10th inning.

At the time, Johnson became the fourth player in major league history to achieve such a feat, joining Billy Hamilton (1893), Vic Power (1957), and Darin Erstad (2000). Since then, Ian Kinsler (2009) and Chris Young (2010) have also made their own “home run sandwich” in a game.

Estes and Guthrie were both lefties, and they both fell victim to Johnson’s success against southpaws that season. Johnson posted a .328 batting average and an .898 OPS against left-handed pitchers that season with fifteen extra-base hits.

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Johnson had a solid rookie season for the Toronto Blue Jays in 2003. He slashed .294/.353/.427 with 10 home runs, 52 RBIs, and 21 doubles while leading off in 73 games. He is also only the second Blue Jay to hit a grand slam on Canada Day (vs. Boston, 2005), a club most recently joined by George Springer last season.

Carlos Delgado’s 4-homer game

Although not as rare as Johnson’s feat, Carlos Delgado still achieved something that only 20 other players have done in league history: hit four home runs in a single game.

Facing the Tampa Bay Devil Rays on September 25th, 2003, Delgado hit four home runs between three different pitchers en route to a 10-8 Blue Jays win. Delgado was slumping by his own standards for the three weeks before his outstanding night. He held an OPS over 1.000 between early April and the middle of September, but his OPS dipped below that number for a couple of weeks. Safe to say four homers put him back over 1.000.

Those four home runs put Delgado over the 40-home run mark for the third and final time of his career, and his six RBIs helped him finish atop the MLB leaderboard with 145. Deservedly so, Delgado finished second in American League MVP voting, and he also won his third Silver Slugger award that season.

Delgado remains the only Blue Jay to hit four home runs in one game. Before 2025, it hadn’t been done since 2017 league-wide, but three players had four-homer games last season. The Jays slugger was on the recent Eras ballot for the Hall of Fame but fell a few votes short of entering Cooperstown.

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Roy Halladay’s Cy Young campaign

Roy Halladay had several great seasons throughout his 16-year career, but arguably his best was his 2003 campaign when he won his first of two Cy Young awards.

Halladay led the league in several statistical categories, including wins (22), starts (36), complete games (9), innings (266), and K:BB ratio (6.38). He also owned a 3.25 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, and 204 strikeouts, making him one of seven pitchers to have over 200 K’s that year.

Five of his complete games were during the final month of the season, including a 10-inning shutout of the Detroit Tigers in a 1-0 win on September 6th. Also during that final month of the season, Halladay posted a 41-inning stretch without allowing an earned run.

After posting a 0-2 record through his first six starts, Halladay went on to be the winning pitcher of record over his next 11 starts, and would not garner another loss until August 1st. Regardless of your opinion on pitchers’ win-loss totals as a legitimate stat, that is impressive.

Frank Thomas hits his 500th career home run

Thomas only spent just over one full season with the Blue Jays, but one of the biggest home runs of his career came while wearing a Blue Jays uniform.

On June 28th, 2007, Thomas hit his 500th career home run against Twins starter Carlos Silva, then becoming the 21st player all-time to accomplish the feat. Thomas would actually be ejected in the 9th inning of that game after being called out on strikes.  He would go on to hit four home runs that season against the Twins, tied for the second-most he would hit against one opponent that year.

Thomas finished his career with 521 home runs, which is tied for 20th all-time with Willie McCovey and Ted Williams. He hit 29 of those home runs as a member of the Blue Jays during the 2007 and part of the 2008 season before he was released by the club. Over 171 games with the Blue Jays, Thomas slashed .266/.369/.465 with 106 RBIs, 31 doubles, and 92 walks.

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Brandon Morrow’s near-no-hitter

To this day, Dave Stieb’s no-hitter on September 2nd, 1990, against the then-Cleveland Indians has been the only no-hitter that a Blue Jays pitcher has thrown. There have been several close calls, including Bowden Francis losing two of them in the 9th inning during the 2024 season, but no Blue Jay has made a near-no-hitter look as good as Brandon Morrow did on August 8th, 2010.

Facing the Tampa Bay Rays that day, who were near the top of the AL East standings, Morrow took a no-hitter into the 9th inning, but ultimately allowed a base hit to Evan Longoria with two outs on the board. Longoria poked the ball in between first and second base, but with Aaron Hill playing closer to the second base bag, he had a long way to go to field the ground ball. It caromed off of Hill’s glove and bounced into right field for a base hit.

With the score at just 1-0 in favour of the Jays, Morrow had to quickly put the disappointment of losing the no-hitter behind him. He had walked Ben Zobrist earlier in the inning, who advanced to third base on Longoria’s base hit. Cito Gaston opted to leave Morrow on the mound, and he would strike out Dan Johnson to complete the game.

All told, Morrow finished the complete-game shutout with 17 strikeouts, two walks, and one hit over 137 pitches. He retired 17 batters in a row between the 2nd and 7th innings, and he also struck out the side twice. Morrow’s strikeout total fell just one shy of the franchise single-game record held by Roger Clemens in 1998.

José Bautista hits his 50th home run of the 2010 season

Trust me, this won’t be the only time that Joey Bats makes an appearance in this series.

Bautista’s career revival – if that word does it enough justice – started with a 54-home run season in 2010, marking the first time in franchise history that a Blue Jay would hit 50 home runs in a season. He appeared in all but one game that season, slashing .260/.378/.617 with the aforementioned 54 homers (1st in MLB), 124 RBIs (3rd), 100 walks (4th), and 35 doubles.

Bautista’s 50th home run of the season came on September 23rd, 2010, against Seattle’s Félix Hernández during his first at-bat of the game. It turned out to be the only run of the game between the two teams, and one of only two hits for the Blue Jays. That home run was Bautista’s first career hit against Hernández, as ecstatically stated by Buck Martinez in his home run call.

No Blue Jay has eclipsed Bautista’s franchise-leading mark just yet, although Vladimir Guerrero Jr. came close in 2021 when he hit 48.

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