The Toronto Blue Jays mementos fan-favorite Lloyd Moseby saved from his playing career

It was powder blue versus royal blue.

The Toronto Blue Jays, founded in 1977 and thus a franchise still in its childhood, held a commanding 2-0 lead in the 1985 ALCS over the perennially powerful Kansas City Royals. Jays starter Doyle Alexander, who commentator Tony Kubek described as a “wily old curmudgeon” (he was 34), leaned in to look for catcher Ernie Whitt’s sign.

George Brett, one of the best baseball players in the world, bent over at almost a 45-degree angle, weight back, his bare hands cocking his bat.

It was just Game 3, only the first inning, but 40 years later, Blue Jays third baseman Rance Mulliniks says this is the moment the series was lost.

“We had made the decision we were not going to pitch to Brett unless we absolutely had to,” Mulliniks told me recently from his home in Visalia, Calif.

With two out and nobody on, Alexander absolutely did not have to. He rocked on the mound, jerking his head as his arm sprang forward, uncorking a changeup on the inner half of the plate. Brett dumped it into the right-field stands. The Royals went on to win 6-5, with Brett going four-for-four and hitting another home run and double off Alexander.

While the Blue Jays would win Game 4, putting them one victory away from the World Series, the matchup extended to a Game 7. In that contest, Jim Sundberg’s windblown, bases-loaded triple in the sixth inning off Jays ace Dave Stieb sank their season. In the bottom of the ninth, the Blue Jays’ last hope, center fielder Lloyd Moseby, bounced weakly to second off worm-burning closer Dan Quisenberry.

Royal blue prevailed.

“We were up three-one, dude. I mean, they can’t beat us for real. It’s just a joke,” Moseby tells me from inches away on the brown leather sofa of his cavernous living room.

He’s 65 but still wiry, a snug synthetic blue T-shirt hugging the muscles in his arms, its lower margin just overlapping the top of a pair of light blue jeans. The Jheri curl is long gone, leaving behind a shiny dome, and the ’80s mustache has been usurped by a trim goatee.

“Without a doubt we missed it. I think Jesse (Barfield) would tell you that we’re still having therapy,” he says with that same incandescent smile and bursts of speech that delighted the Toronto press corps throughout the 1980s.

I’m in El Dorado Hills, Calif., a town of about 50,000, nestled northeast of Sacramento. I’m here to find out what Moseby, a leader of that 1985 Blue Jays team, still carries 40 years later. We’re watching clips of the ALCS side-by-side on my laptop (“It’s been a long, long time” he says when I ask if he’s watched it back), and he’s reacting like it all happened last week, not my lifetime ago.

“No one was better than us in ’85. Listen man, we beat people up. We’d go in people’s gym (their home field) and just beat the crap out of them and then leave. We were that good a team,” he says.

Quick fact-check: Mostly true. The Blue Jays won more games, 99, than any other team in the American League and were 45-36 on the road.

Position-by-position, most would agree the Blue Jays were better than the Royals squad that beat them. The team featured a core of players who had grown up together: Willie Upshaw, Whitt, Damaso Garcia and the world-beating outfield of Moseby, George Bell and Barfield.

Under the canny eye of de facto GM Pat Gillick and the emotional intelligence of executive vice president Paul Beeston, the team went from 78 wins in 1982 to 89 in both 1983 and 1984 to 99 in ’85. That was the year the Jays were supposed to get it done.

From left to right: George Bell, Lloyd Moseby and Jesse Barfield circa 1985. (Focus on Sport / Getty Images)

Despite playing in a football stadium worthy of the scientific classification “tundra,” the city of Toronto fell hard for the 1985 Blue Jays.

“It wasn’t like they were a bunch of free agents slapped together. People had grown up with these guys as baseball players. I think it was more of, almost like a national thing. There was so much enthusiasm,” former Globe and Mail beat writer Larry Millson recalls.

“Canada is a totally different country,” Moseby says. “Man, when they love you, they love you for real. They don’t forget you.”

Moseby’s allegiance to the maple leaf remains strong.

“I’m a Canadian now. My girl is from Canada,” he says, referring to his girlfriend, Julie.

Moseby may be an adopted Canadian, but his roots are in the American South. Until 10, he lived in the tiny town of Portland, Ark., a half hour down the road from where Scottie Pippen grew up. Childhood was rough — the youngest of eight (“I was a mistake!” he says, almost enthusiastically), he was the only one born in a hospital; the rest of his siblings were born with midwives.

“It was just a bad place to live. My sister left because she was no longer going to say ‘yes ma’am,’ and ‘yes sir.’ I mean, they call you all these names. It was just a crazy time,” Moseby says.

When his mom fell during her pregnancy with him, she thought she had miscarried. “But I lived. And so I was the ‘chosen one.’ She always said ‘something good is gonna happen to you.’”

That omen led to sports. Unwilling to tolerate the evils of segregated society any longer, Moseby’s parents moved the family to Oakland in 1969, where he thrived as a basketball player.

“I told her (his mom), one day I’m going to make it big, to the big leagues, the NBA,” he says.

Basketball, not baseball, was his forte. His lifelong nickname “Shaker” comes from the court, where he shook defenders left and right.

“I just played baseball for the hell of it, because Oakland was a baseball town.” The rec center around Bushrod Park hummed with activity, the sports hub where he met Rickey Henderson by playing ping pong and pickup basketball.  He befriended Henderson and Gary Pettis. Dave Stewart gave him his first pair of cleats.

The Blue Jays selected him second at age 18 in the 1978 MLB Draft; he missed his senior prom because the team was hiding him in a San Francisco airport hotel before flying him to Toronto to sign, paranoid other suitors would call him.  Two years later he was a starting Major League outfielder, barely legal in the bars. While he admits he never reached his full potential (due to his own lack of discipline, he says), at his peak he was a household name in Toronto. On the road, he and best friend Willie Upshaw would watch soap operas before heading to the stadium (“All My Children” was their favorite). When playing the New York Yankees, they even got to visit the set.

Over a 12-year career (his last two were with the division-rival Tigers), Moseby hit .257/.332/.414 with 169 home runs, 737 RBI, 280 stolen bases, and 1,494 hits, amazing slash line parity with Barfield, at .256/.335/.466 over 12 seasons. He left the Blue Jays as their all-time leader in hits, doubles and triples and remains the franchise’s career leader in stolen bases. Moseby played a couple of seasons in Japan and even after that thought there was gas left in the tank. When he didn’t have the chance to use it, he felt lost.

“When you wake up one day and you’re retired, you know, you got some things you gotta do, and I would say a lot of us don’t adapt to that. It can get pretty, pretty dark, man,” he explains.

When I ask him what he did, he lights up with a surprising response.

“Bonsai,” he says. Moseby built a bonsai shed at his previous home, a refuge from his own racing thoughts, where the meticulous demands of the craft anchored him to the present moment. Julie is encouraging him to take it up again.

While his career numbers may not scream “Cooperstown,” he was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2018. At first, Moseby, who’s an endearing blend of confidence and self-awareness, demurred.

“I didn’t feel I had the stats for that,” he says. But the honor goes much deeper than numbers. Following his time as a player and later a first-base coach, he joined the Blue Jays as a goodwill ambassador working with kids, traversing vast swaths of Canada to pass it on.

“We would travel anywhere from St. John’s Newfoundland to Vancouver to Whitehorse preaching the gospel of Blue Jay baseball. I can go on and on with guys in the big leagues that we saw as 12-year-olds. To me, that’s probably the most important thing that I’ve done.”

Moseby’s legacy lives on in the next generations, but also in the handful of collectibles from his career he’s chosen to save. On the dining table he’s laid out the remaining artifacts.

There’s his 1983 Silver Slugger award, a literal silver bat mounted on a wood plaque and a frayed, facsimile-autographed wrist warmer.

Moseby’s Silver Slugger Award. (Photo: Brad Balukjian)

There’s a pair of cowboy boots from his lone All-Star appearance, at the Houston Astrodome. Every All-Star Game host city would give the players a gift commemorating the location in some way. When asked if he ever wore the boots, Lloyd says, “Hell no! When my feet see cowboy boots they run.”

Moseby’s 1986 All-Star Game cowboy boots. (Photo: Brad Balukjian)

There are three Labatt Most Valuable Player trophies. Labatt Breweries owned the Blue Jays until 1995 and gave out both monthly and annual awards. Moseby has his from August 1981, July 1983 and August 1986. One of his best years came in ’86, when he posted 6.0 WAR.

“1983 was what I should have been doing all along, I just had so many distractions in my life,” he says.

Moseby’s August 1986 Labatt’s Blue MVP award. (Photo: Brad Balukjian)

But what immediately catches my eye is the strident powder blue of the 1980s road pullover jersey, with Moseby’s No. 15.

“Was this one you actually wore?” I ask, holding it up in front of my face on a hangar.

It turns out the real jersey is in a glass case somewhere, and this is a replica the Blue Jays asked him and John Mayberry to model when the team partnered with New Era to go retro. But right next to the jersey, in a darker shade of blue with the expected yellowing and creases and “15” written in blue marker under the brim, is the real deal.

“That’s the original hat there,” he says.

Moseby’s original Blue Jays cap and a remake of his jersey. (Photo: Brad Balukjian)

He then points to a flapless, sloppily painted, chipped batting helmet.

“We were the last people that was grandfathered to wear no flaps. Yeah, the last of the Mohicans,” he says proudly. Somewhere John Olerud is cringing.

Moseby’s flapless batting helmet. (Photo: Brad Balukjian)

The helmet is only eclipsed for coolness by his original, deep blue Starter zip-up jacket, the progenitor to the now-ubiquitous hoodie, in all its clingy, elastic-waist glory.

“Do you wish the players still wore stirrups?” I ask, probing.

“Oh hell no. Stirrups are for nerds, man. Listen, (Carlos) Delgado used to wear black, literally black church socks.”

Moseby with his Blue Jays warm-up jacket. (Photo: Brad Balukjian)

Moseby has more stuff locked up in a storage unit somewhere, and whatever he comes across he gives to his grandson Layton. If he were playing today, with his attention-seeking fashion style and gift of the gab, Moseby would likely be a social media darling and megabrand. The Rogers Center would be a sea of No. 15s.

But Moseby has no regrets. He played the game when it still could claim some resemblance to its quaint origins as a pastime, not a corporate conglomerate.

“We had the greatest time. We did stuff, man, in the secrecy of life,” he says, with a mischievous smile.

The things he carries are clearly not the things laid out on his dining room table. Even now, he still refers to the front office leadership with honorifics: “Mr. Widdrington, he was the owner of Labatt’s, he demanded that our families have dinner with them. We were a family.”

A family where no one ever really grows up; when I mention his old teammate Mulliniks, he says “I just love that kid.” Likewise when Moseby moved on to Detroit, he switched numbers to 17 to honor Kelly Gruber, who had been a little brother of sorts on the road in Toronto. He, too, is still a “kid.”

“I didn’t work a day in my life. I’ve been really blessed.”

The Athletic maintains full editorial independence in all our coverage. When you click or make purchases through our links, we may earn a commission.

(Top image: eBay)