NEW YORK — Wanting to cap Toronto’s season with a title, Jeff Hoffman suggested changing hats.
Six losses in seven games had dropped the Blue Jays into a tie with the New York Yankees for the AL East lead. That prompted the 32-year-old reliever to send Scott Blinn, Toronto’s director of major league clubhouse operations, scrambling to find those retro caps with white panels in the style the Blue Jays wore when they won the 1992 World Series.
Toronto is 5-0 in the historical headgear over the past two weeks as it takes a 2-0 lead into Game 3 of the best-of-five AL Division Series against the Yankees.
“I didn’t pack another hat,” manager John Schneider said with a smile.
Following a 7-1 loss to the Red Sox at Rogers Centre on Sept. 24, Hoffman suggested to Binn a switch to the 1992 headgear, which was used during Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame weekend promotion from July 25-27 — not because he’s superstitious, but because he liked the look. Wearing the white panels, the Blue Jays had taken two of three at Detroit to finish a four-game series.
“`We need a new combo. What should we wear?’” Hoffman said, recounting the player discussion. “And I said, `I know what we should wear. We should wear the blues, the blue jerseys with the white-panel hat.’ And they all kind of like perked up because they didn’t know I knew about them.”
Blinn found the caps in a Rogers Centre storage room. Toronto beat Boston 6-1 on Sept. 25, wearing blue alternate jerseys and the white-panel chapeaus. The next night, a Friday, the Blue Jays were required to wear Nike Connect uniforms topped by pitch-blue caps, suggested by Lake Ontario at night. They beat Tampa Bay 4-2 to remain tied with the Yankees.
On most days, players get to decide which uniforms to wear. Given that option for the final weekend of the regular season, the Jays stuck with the blue jerseys and white-panel hats. They closed with 5-1 and 13-4 wins over the Rays to win the division on a tiebreaker over New York.
Toronto finished the season 58-45 in blue caps, 20-17 in the two-tone hats with powder blue visors and navy crowns that were launched with the return of powder blue alternate jerseys in 2020, 8-3 in Nike Connect games and 5-1 in the white-panel throwbacks. They were also 1-2 in Armed Forces caps with beige camouflage crowns and olive visors from May 16-18, 1-0 in red for Canada Day on July 1 and 1-0 in light blue crowns and red visors for July 4.
The Blue Jays stayed with the white-panel caps and blue jerseys in the first two games of the Division Series, romping over the Yankees 10-1 and 13-7.
“I just wear what’s in my locker. I just will wear what we’re told to wear,” four-time All-Star outfielder George Springer said, spurning superstitions.
Toronto wore caps with white panels for all games from its inception in 1977 through 1990 — with white jerseys at home — then switched to all blue caps for road games in 1991. The Blue Jays dropped the white panel at home on July 6, 1991, in the midst of a five-game losing streak, going with all blue, and beat the visiting Chicago White Sox 5-1 behind six shutout innings from Dave Stewart.
“I’m not sure what the blue caps were all about,” Stewart said after the game, his 150th career victory. “But we won, so maybe we’ll wear them again.”
Blue Jays equipment manager Jeff Ross thought of the change “just to see how it looks with the white uniform.”
“It had nothing to do with the losing streak,” Ross said at the time. “We’d been doing so well at home so I didn’t want to do it while we were going well. This was the time to do it. It looks great after a win.”
Toronto went on to win its second straight World Series title in 1993, and the all-blue caps remained for most games. The Blue Jays brought back the white panels on Aug. 16, 2015, for a “Turn Back the Dial” promotion honoring the 30th anniversary of the team’s first AL East title, and beat the Yankees 3-1. Toronto then used the white panels at least once per season and as many as 27 times in 2018 and 24 the following year, according to uniformlineup.com, but then decreased its frequency.
The team hadn’t worn them since Aug. 27, 2022, before they returned this year for MLB’s Hall of Fame weekend promotion.
“We’ve been playing well since we’ve been wearing them, which is hard for my argument of, hey, it doesn’t matter what hat we’re wearing guys, like, we just need to play good,” Hoffman said.
And even Springer’s disdain for superstition only goes so far. For instance, he won’t think of stepping on a foul line.
“That,” he said, “would be crazy.”
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