Remembering Dave Winfield’s wakeup call to Jays fans, amplified by the Star

The Blue Jays celebrated the 30th anniversary of their first World Series win back in August. In this week’s Proudfoot Corner, Blue Jays columnist Mike Wilner takes us behind the scenes on that fun day, and a nostalgic connection between the World Series hero and a fateful moment in that magical 1992 season.

The Blue Jays brought back several members of their 1992 World Series team for a weekend in late August, and front and centre was a man who hasn’t been seen very often around these parts since that magical season.

One David Mark Winfield.

I started covering the Jays in 1988 for CIUT-FM, the University of Toronto radio station, and was around from then until Vince Horsman and Duane Ward poured beers on my head in the clubhouse while celebrating a division title in 1991.

That winter, the radio station dropped sports. I didn’t get a press pass back until I hooked on with 680 News in 1995, and have called the SkyDome/Rogers Centre my second home ever since. But I missed the really, really good stuff.

So when the opportunity came to sit down with Dave Winfield, I jumped at the chance. He was, after all, the Jays’ Kawhi Leonard. Brought in for one year and one year only to take the team over the top, a move that worked perfectly.

At 40 years old, Winfield led the ’92 Jays with an .867 on-base plus slugging percentage and hit .290, second on the team to Roberto Alomar. His 26 home runs and 108 runs batted in trailed only Joe Carter’s 34 and 119. He became the first quadragenarian to hit the century mark in RBIs in major-league history.

For all the good he did on the field, one thing Winfield did off the field will be forever hardwired into the memories of fans of a certain vintage.

With the Jays a perennial playoff team and the SkyDome still the “eighth wonder of the world,” the ballpark sold out every game. The Jays were the first in MLB history to draw four million fans in a single season, and they did it three years in a row from ’91 to ’93. But that made the dome more of a place to be seen than to watch a ball game, and the result was — more often than not — a pretty quiet crowd.

Winfield wanted noise.

He remembered that interview in our conversation on the Sept. 1 episode of the Star’s “Deep Left Field” podcast.

“I just said, ‘Well, let’s try to have more noise before action happens,’” Winfield recalled. “So (fans) would kind of exhort or push the team forward, instead of waiting for the action and then responding.”

The great Star columnist and former sports editor Jim Proudfoot wrote off that interview 30 years ago and it appeared above the fold on the front page — not the sports section, the coveted A1 — with the headline “Wake up and cheer us on, Winfield scolds Jay fans.”

It worked.

“People came to the ballpark with signage and they started on their own,” the now-70-year-old Winfield told me, “and it generated a lot of energy for our team. They became the combustion, the energy, the leader, and they helped us go to the heights that we had never been before.”

Indeed, the Jays had just a half-game lead on second-place Baltimore in the American League East (remember, there were no wild-card teams) when Proudfoot’s column came out, in which Winfield’s famous “symbiotic” relationship quote also appeared. That night, the Jays beat the Minnesota Twins at home, kicking off what wound up a three-game sweep, and finished the season with 20 wins in their last 28 games to take the division by four.

When Proudfoot wasn’t busy writing great Jays columns (or Leafs, or so much else) he administered the Sportsman’s Corner of the Star’s Santa Claus Fund, established in the mid-1940s. Following his death in 2001, the sports department’s contribution to the Santa Fund was renamed Proudfoot Corner in his honour, and donations continue to come through the sports section to help provide holiday packages for thousands of needy children.

On the Corner

Sarah Lockwood from Mountain View, Calif. sends $105 in honour of Helen and Pat McQuade … We also have $105 from long-time Proudfoot supporter Jim Dadson of Richmond Hill, honouring Thursday Night Write-Offs Ron Rudan and Drew Macaskill … Regulars Kathleen and Rae Strathdee of Kincardine send $350, as does Bill and Nancy Legassicke of Pickering … From Toronto: Mavis Black delivers $300, Peter Sherman (Allweather Hockey Bags) hands in $50, and long-time supporters Tom and Sandy Cloutier give $200 … Also back: Paul and Karen Greenberg, with $105 in memory of “our uncle and superb fundraiser Mort Greenberg”… A $50 donation in Greenberg’s honour comes from regulars James and Sharon Bradley of Aurora … Peninsula Lakes Golf Club in Fenwick is back with another donation in memory of Vince Catalfo. This year, they passed the hat and collected $1,015 from Bruce Lee, John Iannone, Andy Alic, Bill Rodrigues, Jerry Andrenacci, Peter Scott, Ciro Lupo, Trevor Beggs, Dario Vodopia, Lino Girardo, Nancy Falcioni, John Falcioni, Irene Petrovich and Ken Rovinelli … Returnee Sandra Howson from Stouffville gives $100 in memory of Rich Howson, who was also a Corner supporter … Robert McCann of Barrie donates $105 in memory of Jean McCann …William Smith of North York gives $50 in memory of “Jack Smith, greatly missed by family and friends”… And finally this week, returnee Craig Gibson of Thornhill donates $100 in memory of “my dear mom, Sevia”… Many thanks to all!

To donate by cheque, make payable and mail to:

Proudfoot Corner

One Yonge St.

Toronto, M5E 1E6

Online: visit: thestar.com/santaclausfund and email charityinfo@thestar.ca mentioning Proudfoot.

By phone, call 416-869-4847 and mention Proudfoot.

The Star does not authorize anyone to solicit on its behalf.

Tax receipts will be issued.

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