George Springer's 3-run HR sends Blue Jays to World Series - ESPN

TORONTO — Nothing changed for the Toronto Blue Jays, Major League Baseball's premier comeback artists in this dream of a season, before George Springer completed the franchise's most important comeback since 1993 in their 4-3 win over the Seattle Mariners in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series on Monday.

The Blue Jays needed runs in the worst way in the eighth inning, so manager John Schneider, in keeping with a superstition he has shared with hitting coach David Popkins since Opening Day, sat down on the bench in the home dugout at Rogers Centre and watched the surreal sequence unfold. The bottom third of Toronto's order, a pesky rotation of journeymen and defensive stalwarts and overlooked players that have found a home north of the border, did not flinch with Mariners ace Bryan Woo on the mound in relief. Instead, they sparked a rally.

And Springer, the starring actor in so many October dramas on another team in a previous life, did not deviate from his preparation. He stayed out of the batting cage. He stayed off the iPad so many of his peers use to analyze themselves and their foes.

«He's very clear minded,» Popkins said. «He feels things.»

And he felt what was coming when he hobbled into the batter's box with runners on second and third, one out, the Blue Jays down two runs, and Rogers Centre on the verge of its roof busting open.

The Mariners, knowing he was hampered by a sore right knee after he took a pitch off his kneecap in Game 5, sought to establish the inner half of the plate with two-seam fastballs against Springer all night. The gameplan was obvious from the jump when he led off the top of the first inning and George Kirby brushed him off the plate with two two-seamers to begin the