On Tuesday night Josh Donaldson blasted a gigantic two-run shot into the fifth deck of the Rogers Centre, making him the ninth player in the history of the franchise to do so.
In all, the feat has been accomplished 11 times by Jays players, twice by Donaldson, and twice by former Jay Edwin Encarnacion.
Here’s Donaldson’s first, in 2015.
Here’s Encarnacion’s first, in 2013.
Jose, did you see it go?
But the first to do it wasn’t a Jay.
On Oct. 7, 1989, in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series between the Jays and Oakland A’s, Bash Brother Jose Canseco sent a Mike Flanagan pitch 480 into the left-field upper deck, stunning the 50,000-plus Jays fans on hand and leaving NBC’s Bob Costas nearly speechless.
No one had really contemplated a player putting a ball way up there, as the SkyDome had opened just four months earlier.
“That wasn’t just a home run. It was a home run of biblical proportion,” A’s player Billy Beane told the L.A. Times following the game.
Canseco, who would go on to hit two more fifth-deck shots over the course of his career, seemed less impressed.
“I just missed it,” Canseco told the Times. “I’ve got to get hold of one tomorrow.
“I put a good follow-through on it, but I really didn’t hit it that well. It was an inside fastball that I hit off my wrists more than the fat of the bat.”
Jays starter Flanagan probably didn’t see it that way.
In the immortal words of Crash Davis:
