SIMMONS SAYS: Don’t overlook Paul Molitor’s contributions to 1993 Blue Jays win

Veteran was hungry for first World Series win, Cito Gaston remembers

Published Jul 19, 2026  •  Last updated 22 minutes ago  •  9 minute read

Paul Molitor of the Toronto Blue Jays was named World Series MVP in 1993. Photo by Fred Thornhill /Toronto Sun

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There was no statue for Paul Molitor.

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But if you listen to Pat Gillick, now 88 years old, and Cito Gaston, 82 himself, the Blue Jays would not have won back-to-back World Series — the only championships in the 50 seasons of Blue Jays baseball — without the contribution of Molitor.

Gaston, the manager, talks about the leadership Molitor brought to the 1993 World Series-champion Jays.

Gillick, the legendary general manager, wasn’t sure the Jays could repeat after winning the 1992 World Series because of the number of players they lost after the first parade.

“I had my fingers crossed on the second team,” Gillick said on Saturday, as the Blue Jays saluted their back-to-back championship teams with a statue of Joe Carter’s legendary Series-winning home run in 1993.

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“I had my doubts we could get back. You knew Jimmy Key was gone, Tom Henke was gone, David Cone was gone, Dave Winfield was gone. We lost two-thirds of our starting rotation.”

Winfield had knocked in the winning run in the ’92 World Series at Atlanta. Money meant that Molitor would have to replace Winfield as designated hitter. And all Molitor did in the ’93 World Series was hit .447, with an OPS of 1.37, three home runs and a series-leading number of RBIs.

“Molitor had never won the World Series,” said Gaston. “But he knew what it was to lose one. He didn’t want to do that again. The guys were playing for him. I didn’t have to do much. Paul just went out and did it.”

Molitor was on first base and Rickey Henderson on second, when Carter hit the Series-winning touch-em-all-Joe home run.

The ’92 champions were pitching strong and solid offensively. The ’93 team was a hitting machine, with struggling pitching at times, enough to, in Gaston’s words, out-dirtbag the dirtbag Philadelphia Phillies after out-finessing the Braves one year earlier.

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The celebration at the Rogers Centre Saturday — formerly the place they called SkyDome, a place where Molitor had the first hit ever while playing for Milwaukee — was lively and intense.

In a season in which a return trip to the World Series feels most unlikely for the Blue Jays, a trip back through memory lane and through Molitor’s underrated and under-written contributions, was worth living through once again.

Blue Jays pitcher Dave Stieb. Photo by Ken Kerr /Toronto Sun

THIS AND THAT

Does Dave Stieb belong in the Baseball Hall of Fame? Gillick thinks so. “I’d say yes,” said the baseball savant sitting in a wheelchair. “I think he should have a shot (Era Committee) at the Hall” … And what about Gaston for the Hall of Fame? “I would say Cito’s got to be on that list, too.” There’s a touch of bitterness with Stieb and how he has been ignored by the Hall. The same bitterness doesn’t exist for Gaston, who is more upset he never won a manager-of-the-year award when he thought he should have won three different times …Among those missing on Saturday from the World Series teams are those who passed away: Henderson, Tony Fernandez and the touch-em-all broadcaster Tom Cheek. It was nice to see Fernandez’s wife Clara in attendance representing her husband, the greatest shortstop in Jays history … Also among the Blue Jays giants missing Saturday: Winfield and Key, who was an enormous factor in the ’92 win, both as a starting pitcher and out of the bullpen … With Henderson gone, I found myself thinking of one of my favourite Rickey stories. He was late in his career, sitting on a team bus, when his younger teammates began to play trivia. The question asked: Where were you when Carter hit the home run? Some said high school. Some said earlier grades. Some said the minor leagues. Said Henderson from the back of the bus: “I was on second base.” … On April 11, the Detroit Red Wings officially missed the playoffs for the seventh straight season under GM Steve Yzerman. Somehow, it took three months and four days for the same Wings to decide to essentially fire Yzerman as GM. What exactly was ownership using the time doing? In the meantime, the Leafs, Canucks, Blues, Predators, Devils and Kraken all hired new GMs. Now, looking for one, the Wings don’t exactly get the pick of the litter … It would make sense for Detroit to consider ex-Leaf and ex-Wing Brendan Shanahan as GM, except for two issues. One, he’s very close with Yzerman and it’s not certain his hiring would work with their friendship. Two, Shanahan has never really done GM work. He was team president in Toronto, a different animal than daily general manager responsibilities. Still, the Wings will have trouble finding anyone more qualified for the job than Shanahan … Two names that never get mentioned for GM jobs, but are probably deserving of consideration: Las Vegas front-office types Sean Burke and Vaughn Karpan … This is how the very rich get even richer. They get other people to pay for some of their stuff. Larry Tanenbaum had the City of Toronto basically build BMO Field, renovate it, and before that built Coca-Cola Coliseum. And now he’s getting a sweetheart $1-a-year lease for $10 million worth of city land so he can build a practice facility for his Toronto Tempo … Social media has a way of distorting what’s true and real in the world. Tempo coach Sandy Brondello, an Australian, used a perfectly acceptable Aussie term to describe a play involving the controversial WNBA star Angel Reese. Now the idiots of the world want Brondello cancelled because her words are being misinterpreted. And will any of this ever change?

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LeBron James speaks onstage during The Shop Live panel at Fanatics Fest NYC 2026 at Jacob Javits Center on July 17, 2026 in New York City. Photo by Roy Rochlin /Getty Images

HEAR AND THERE

Where would Jim Corrigall rank on the all-time list of Canadians who have played for the Argos? You can make a case for him being at the top, ahead of Mike O’Shea, Chris Schultz, Dan Ferrone, Danny Nykoluk, Hank Ilesic and Paul Masotti. Corrigall passed away at the age of 80 earlier this week. He was a fabulous defensive football player … I can’t list Joe Krol on my Argos all-time list because I never saw him play. He retired two years before I was born … When baseball determined that the 1919 World Series had been fixed, the investigation took less time than the Kawhi Leonard salary-cap investigation is taking in the NBA. This matter should have been settled six months ago. The NBA took the ostrich approach to Leonard, hoping this would go away and now it’s paying for it … Also embarrassing for the NBA: They’re not releasing their schedule for next season until LeBron James has signed somewhere, so they know who to put on television on Christmas Day. Do the Raptors become a Christmas Day team with Kawhi in the lineup? … How does someone as smart as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar say something as dumb as what he said recently about Caitlin Clark? He insisted that calling Clark the face of the WNBA is an insult to the other all-time great players in the league. A simple fact: The Indiana Fever was worth $90 million US before it drafted Clark. The franchise is now worth $560 million … The most expensive tickets ever: The World Cup final on Sunday afternoon in the Meadowlands. The average resale price for the Spain-Argentina final is $12,751… While it’s exciting for Canadian and American soccer fans to think they’re this close to being World Cup contenders, the truth is they are not. The World Cup is a lot like the NBA: You need a genuine A-star scorer to compete at the highest level. Canada and the U.S. have terrific athletes playing soccer. Their programs have grown substantially. But they don’t have terrific strikers and can’t be big-time without them … It has been 27 years since the amazing Jim Abbott pitched in the major leagues. But his speech at the ESPY Awards brought down the house the other night in New York, and his remains a story we should just keep telling each other over and over again.

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CEO, owner and governor Tom Dundon of the Carolina Hurricanes hoists the Stanley Cup after the team’s 3-0 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights in Game Six of the 2026 NHL Stanley Cup Final at T-Mobile Arena on June 14, 2026 in Las Vegas. Photo by Ethan Miller /Getty Images

SCENE AND HEARD

I think it would be appropriate if Colin Campbell, or someone from his department of hockey operations for the NHL, could explain to the Carolina Hurricanes equipment manager how his name was kept from the Stanley Cup but one of the names engraved on the trophy is the kindergarten-aged son of club owner Tom Dundon. Most teams tend to highly value their equipment managers and training staff … There is a simple reason why Morgan Rielly hasn’t been traded by the Leafs. To date, nobody has wanted him. And the price is basically eating Rielly’s salary with almost nothing to pay in return … I understand why I fell in love with baseball as a kid when the first all-star game I watched had Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Willie Stargell, Willie McCovey, Roberto Clemente and Pete Rose batting for the National League while Reggie Jackson, Al Kaline, Carl Yastrzemski, Rod Carew, Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson and Harmon Killebrew were hitting for the American League. That was 1971. Stars everywhere. This year’s all-star game has Shohei Ohtani missing, Aaron Judge hurt, Vlad Guerrero Jr. resting, and almost no all-time greats not named Mike Trout … There have been better Raptors players over the years than Jonas Valanciunas, but there haven’t been better Raptors people. The rather delightful Valanciunas has left the NBA to sign at home in his native Lithuania … Why are so many people offended by a third-place game at the World Cup? They have this in every Olympics in every team sport — it’s called the bronze-medal game … Mark Shapiro has spent 35 years in baseball. His teams have been to the World Series three times, winning none of them. There was little reason for him to say much of anything at the championship celebration on Saturday. And if he was going to say something, he should have done the great wedding thing and kept it brief.

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Hayley Wickenheiser. Photo by John Lappa /Postmedia Network

AND ANOTHER THING

You want to see a team in trouble, Buck Showalter used to say, calculate the number of games relief pitchers have been used. The Jays have five of the top 10 appearance pitchers in the AL this season. Showalter’s definition of a team going nowhere … Also missing from the Jays celebration: Jerry Howarth … George Springer had an OPS of .959 last year, an outlier kind of season for the aging slugger. His OPS is .686 right now, and was .674 in 2024. Question is, if Springer can’t bring his numbers up, will the Jays have any chance to get back in the playoff race in the AL? … Weird baseball TV numbers: The Home Run Derby on Netflix had the lowest ratings in the U.S. in years. And the all-star game itself, one night later on FOX, which is basic cable, had the highest ratings in years … The dismissal of Hayley Wickenheiser by the Maple Leafs got all kinds of attention in hockey circles, but what got almost no notice was that the Leafs also dismissed Hall of Famer Danielle Goyette in the same cuts. That’s two of the greatest players in women’s hockey history cut by the Leafs on the same day … Why do so many assume that Shane Wright will still become a big-time player in the NHL? Some draft picks just wash out. He may be one of them … We all want to see more Canadian quarterbacks in the CFL — until we see more Canadian quarterbacks playing … When teams hire executives in the NHL, they are supposed to file their contracts with the league’s central registry. When the Pittsburgh Penguins hired ex-Leaf Brandon Pridham, they accidentally filed the contract to something called NHLGM, instead of NHLCR but after the mistake made by the Pens, the matter was quickly withdrawn. No harm, no foul … Also missing, of course, from the Jays celebration was Roberto Alomar, arguably the best player in franchise history. But the Jays will uphold the banning of Alomar from baseball, even though he is not banned from the Baseball Hall of Fame nor the Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame. There is no win here for the club or the player … Happy birthday to Joe Torre (86), Miro Heiskanen (27), Zach Werenski (29), Patrick Corbin (37), Vitali Klitschko (55), Torii Hunter (41), Jamie Benn (37), John Metchie III (26), Bam Adebayo (29), Noah Lyles (29), Rick Ankiel (47) and Ilie Nastase (80) … And hey, whatever became of Steve Karsay?

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