The Jays are taking fans on a head-spinning ride, and just might party like it’s 1989

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This article was published 02/10/2021 (1493 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We have forgotten what it feels like, and it’s excruciating.

The Blue Jays are taking their fans through as torturous an end-of-season run as they possibly could. Every win enormous, every loss heartbreaking, every game leaving everyone watching with their hair pulled out, their fingernails chewed to the nub and the edge of their seat worn out from hanging onto it for nine innings.

And it’s marvellous.

There hasn’t been a playoff push like this one for the Jays since maybe 1989, when they crawled back from a 12-24 start to the season, finally getting over the .500 mark to stay in mid-August. While that team moved into first place for good on Sept. 1, they had a lead of more than two games for only one day that month, and went into the final series of the season against these same Baltimore Orioles leading by just a single game — remember, there was no wild card then.

The Orioles were the team chasing at the time, and the Jays won the first two games of the series to clinch the division, rallying for three runs in the bottom of the eighth with George Bell driving in Mookie Wilson with the winning run in the deciding game. Tom Henke closed it out with a perfect ninth inning, striking out Larry Sheets to send the Jays to the ALCS for the second time in franchise history.

Since then, the final few days of the regular season haven’t really mattered that much.

They were in first place in late September in 1990, but lost six of their last eight games to fall out of it. The next three years were relatively drama-free marches to inevitable division titles, and we really don’t have to talk about the 20 years after that, do we?

There wasn’t really any drama in 2015, either. That team barely lost a game after the trade deadline, and once they swept the Yankees in early September that was pretty much that.

It was close in 2016, and the Jays had to fight to the last day to secure a playoff berth, but that season felt more like the air slowly slipping out of the balloon as they limped to the finish line. We were still riding the high of the year before anyway.

Last season, even with a six-game losing streak in late September, there was no point in time when it was realistic that the Jays might miss the expanded playoffs.

Not this time, though.

The Jays have played eight straight “must-win” games, winning four and losing four. They let a serious chance to catch the Yankees slip away by dropping two of three earlier this week and now they need help from both the Angels and the Nationals, and only one of them was able to lend a hand Friday night.

Nothing has been easy, even when it looked as though it would be. In their one win against the Yanks, the Jays let a 4-0 lead slip away, but Bo Bichette lifted them to victory with a tiebreaking home run in the bottom of the eighth.

In Friday’s opener against Baltimore, the Jays were in cruise control through seven innings, with Steven Matz looking as though he might be on the way to their first nine-inning complete game since Marcus Stroman threw two in 2017.

Instead, a six-run lead was down to three in a heartbeat, and a few minutes later closer Jordan Romano was called upon for a five-out save. Before he got it, he loaded the bases, bringing the go-ahead run to the plate.

The entire fan base held its breath for every second of that 10-batter Baltimore eighth inning.

Romano got it done, and instead of the complete game, Matz settled for becoming the Jays’ first 14-game winner since 2016, when J.A. Happ won 20 games and Aaron Sanchez won 15.

“That’s a pretty cool thing,” said Matz after the game. “Coming off such a terrible year last year, the Blue Jays giving me a chance and believing in me. I think that feels pretty good.”

It should be noted that Matz’s 14 wins this season are 14 more than he had last season with the Mets, when he posted a 9.68 ERA over nine games in the pandemic-shortened season.

As much as the fan base is feeling incredible tension these days, the players themselves seem to be feeding off the excitement of the race.

Cavan Biggio, who made his first start since Aug. 2 on Friday night, getting three hits and scoring what turned out to be a huge run on a mad dash home from second on George Springer’s infield single, had had more than enough of watching from the sidelines.

“Those two months of not being able to contribute,” said Biggio after the game, “and just being around the excitement but not being fully a part of it, it felt like a little bit of FOMO (fear of missing out).”

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Another thing that the Jays have in abundance is an appreciation for the group they’re in.

“Man, this team is so good,” said Matz, who went to the World Series with the Mets in his rookie season. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be on a team this good (again), this is a really good group.”

“We’re loaded,” said outfielder Jarrod Dyson, the 12-year veteran who has been to the post-season three times, including a World Series win with the 2015 Royals. “Loaded with talent. This is probably the most loaded team I’ve ever been a part of.”

And if the Angels continue to co-operate and the Nationals lend a hand this weekend, maybe the Jays will get to show just how good they are on baseball’s post-season stage, and we’ll get to continue to ride this amazing roller coaster a little while longer.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star and host of the baseball podcast “Deep Left Field.” Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness