Late on an October Monday night, George Springer smashed a three-run homer to send nearly 45,000 fans in Toronto’s Rogers Centre — and a record national television audience — into a frenzy.

Six outs later, the Blue Jays had qualified for the 2025 World Series against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers.

It had the feeling of a denouement. Yet, like other famed home runs in Blue Jays history, Springer’s blast was just one step in the long journey through baseball’s three playoff rounds.

Edwin Encarnacion’s extra-inning walk-off homer against the Baltimore Orioles in 2016 only won an elimination wildcard game.

A year earlier, Jose Bautista’s then-audacious bat flip followed a dramatic home run — also like Springer’s hit in the seventh inning — that moved the Blue Jays onto the same championship series round that they had not won since 1993. Until this year.

Invoking 1993 holds special resonance for Blue Jays fans. It’s the last time the team won, let alone reached, the World Series.

That year produced the most dramatic home run in team history. Joe Carter’s Game 6, ninth-inning, three-run blast to left field was only the second time a World Series had ended with a walk-off home run. It clinched the team’s second straight championship.

It is easy to tell the story of the Blue Jays through the lens of dramatic game-winning home runs. However, the context of the team’s championships —and near misses — offers a more nuanced tale.

Toronto, thanks to funding from Labatt Breweries, was granted an American League expansion franchise in 1977, alongside the Seattle Mariners — the team Toronto just vanquished in the championship series this year. The Mariners remain the only current franchise never to have played in a World Series.

Following a handful of........

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