‘I bet my money on them’: Why Joe Carter thinks the Blue Jays could win it all

Nearly 32 years after Joe Carter hit his historic home run to win the 1993 World Series for the Toronto Blue Jays, the baseball legend believes the current team has what it takes to win it all.

“They have the guys that can do it. And I’m betting my money on them right now,” Carter explained The Sunday magazine Host Piya Chattopadhyay.

The Blue Jays lead the two-game New York Yankees to none in the Best of Five American League Division Series (ALDS), with both victories coming in convincing fashion to Toronto. The Jays have a chance to advance to the American League Championship Series (ALCS) with a victory in Game 3 in New York on Tuesday.

But before the season started, few – if any – had the Jays for a run at the World Series. The team had a disappointing 2024, finishing with the worst record in the division, missing the playoffs.

Carter played for the Blue Jays from 1991 to 1997. He helped the team win back-to-back World Series championship titles, which included an iconic home run in 1993 to seal the deal.

Although he currently lives in the United States, Carter is rooting for Toronto as the playoffs unfold. But if the Jays are going to conquer the baseball playoffs this season, he has a little stipulation for how he wants them to win.

Here is part of his conversation with Chattopadhyay.

What explains how well the Jays played this year, despite all the predictions?

What made the team tick is that they have cohesion and camaraderie. What I saw last year, a lot of people…didn’t get the pitching, they weren’t getting the strike in a timely manner, they weren’t doing anything. And they finished last. And so it just snowballed.

But now this year, (I was) talking about talking to guys like George Springer, and he says, you know what, it’s fun to come to the stadium. They can’t wait to go to the stadium.

And it’s not just one guy carrying this team. It’s not (just Vladimir Guerrero Jr.), you know, Bo Bichette gets hurt, and so the other guys step up. You have Ernie Clement stepping up. I mean, you just go on and on.

Everybody takes everybody and that’s what you have to do. One or two guys can’t carry a ball club. You have to get everyone cheering for each other, pulling for each other and believing in each other.

And that’s what they do. They have a lot of fun coming to the stadium, and he’s a different guy every game.

No matter how far the Jays go in the playoffs, they will face an American team. This is a battle of Canada versus the United States

You know that there are currently political tensions between our two countries. How do you think about this part of the dynamic?

That’s another story. Our politics here in the United States, for many of us, it’s really inconvenient. But I can go to the Canadian side and have a lot of fun. And that’s what I’m going to do and do it faithfully: pull for the Blue Jays, because I think it’s their time.

I gave them one criteria for them to win the World Series. They can win the World Series, they just can’t hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth to win the whole thing. That was it.

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I don’t know if you call that selfish, but I’ve had it for 32 years. I’d like to keep this thing because, it’s like you’re saying, you hit a home run like that – and not just in Toronto, but across Canada, from the east coast to the west coast, it was for our whole country.

And man, it’s so exciting. And I’m very proud that it happened. And I’m very proud to be one of Canada’s ambassadors, just because I hit a little ball out of the ball park in a big moment.

Did you understand at that moment what this moment meant, not just to Blue Jays fans here in Toronto, but across Canada and beyond?

In the moment I knew it was big, but 32 years later I didn’t know it was that big at that time.

Playing in the World Series and the entire season, it’s a long year. And so if you go from ’91 when we got to the ALCS and then 1992, winning the World Series and then ’93, we had played a lot of games and we were exhausted.

And so hitting that home run, it was like, OK, now I can go home and relax and take some time off and give your body a chance to heal.

But I didn’t know at the time how big it was. But like I say now, when I come back for my golf tournament, if I go to a Raptors game and they introduce me, it’s like a standing ovation. The fans are going wild.

So, you know, I see its significance. And you know those are the things you live for in baseball. Because when you’re retired, most people have a moment. And my one moment was a very big moment. And so I think Canadians will love me for the rest of my life.