Joe Carter woke up on the morning of October 23, 1993, with a strange feeling. Not nervous. Not anxious. But certain.
In a few hours, the Toronto Blue Jays would face the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 6 of the World Series. Toronto needed just one more win to secure their second consecutive championship, but momentum was with the Phillies after their 2–0 victory in Game 5. Everything, on paper, was tense.
But Carter was different.
He told his wife, Diana, that he had just had a dream. In that dream, there was the number three. And from that number, Carter drew only one conclusion: “Something good is going to happen on the court today. Get ready.”
That belief followed Carter all the way to the clubhouse. In the official MLB World Series 1993 video, Carter recalls telling his teammates that he had “saddled the horse—just jump on.” It sounded reckless, especially since the team’s cleanup hitter hadn’t hit a single in their last seven innings. But in moments like these, belief spreads quickly.
The game unfolded like a movie no one dared to write. The Blue Jays led 5–1. Then the Phillies counter-attacked. By the end of the ninth inning, the score was 6–5 to Philadelphia. Once again, Toronto stood on the thin line between glory and regret.
And then, a small detail—almost insignificant at first glance—occurred.
As the Phillies closer Mitch Williams prepared to throw the first pitch of the inning, umpire Dana DeMuth, catcher Darren Daulton, and Rickey Henderson suddenly… split off in three different directions. A momentary break. A slight disarray.
For Carter, it was a sign.
“We knew something special was about to happen,” he said later.
Rickey Henderson walked. Devon White flew out. Paul Molitor hit singles. And then, Carter stepped up — in a moment every player dreams of, but very few actually achieve.
The score was 2–2. Carter had just swung his bat at what could have been a three-ball. He said that at the moment he was only thinking about getting the tiebreaker home. A gap run would have been enough.
He did get the gap run. But it was behind the left-field fence.
The home run that ended the World Series. A frantic run around the bases. A Rogers Centre erupting. A moment forever frozen in baseball history.
Joe Carter is no stranger to big moments. In the 1993 season, most of his 33 home runs were tiebreakers or overtakes. He’s also part of a strange trivia with Juan Soto: only two players in MLB history to have three consecutive seasons with 100 RBIs with three different teams.
This week, Carter returns to Toronto to witness a new chapter of that memory being erected in bronze. The Blue Jays have unveiled a monument recreating that historic home run, which will be placed between Gates 5 and 6 at Rogers Centre in July.
It’s a belated—but well-deserved—honor.
Because that hit never truly disappeared. It lives on in every round of applause Carter received in Toronto. In a pivotal scene from the movie Big Daddy. In a Phillies fan’s shirt that read: “Joe Carter ruined my childhood.”
And in the memory of a city—where sometimes, dreams not only come true, but become eternal.
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