It was 21 years ago today that Stand Pat Gillick made the biggest trade in Blue Jay history. Tony Fernandez and Fred McGriff went to the Padres for Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter.
I'll admit, at the time, I wasn't a big fan of the trade. We had a team that was in the race for the playoffs each season for the past few. In 1985 and 1989 we made it to the playoffs. Then, suddenly, we trade the best shortstop the team ever had and a first baseman that, I thought, had a shot to be in the Hall of Fame one day for a young second baseman, who hadn't slugged over .400 yet in his first 3 major league seasons and an overrated (in my opinion) outfielder, who had hit .232/..290/.391 the season before.
The trade worked out, though I wonder if, in the alternate universe where the Jays didn't make the trade, we would have won a couple of World Series anyway. But then, there is no way we could have had a better finish than we had in the 1993 game with Joe Carter hitting that home run.
We held on to Joe for too long, his last few years with the team weren't very good and Alomar left the team as a free agent, but for a couple of years, they helped make the Jay the best team in baseball and gave us a lot of great memories.
Maybe, at this week's winter meetings, Alex will make a trade that we look back on the same way, in 21 years time.