Joe Carter to Be Honored with Statue at Rogers Centre as Blue Jays Celebrate 50th Season
The Toronto Blue Jays are set to give fans a long-awaited tribute to one of the most iconic moments in franchise-and Canadian-sports history. As part of their 50th season celebrations, the team announced that a statue of Joe Carter will be unveiled outside Rogers Centre on July 18, commemorating the back-to-back World Series titles of 1992 and 1993.
The reveal came via a video shared on the team’s social media channels, where Carter is seen walking through the Blue Jays’ offices before being surprised in a boardroom by team president Mark Shapiro and president emeritus Paul Beeston. The news? Carter’s legacy will soon be cast in bronze.
“My teammates from ’92 and ’93 are a special group, and we all understood what it meant to play for an entire country,” Carter said in a statement. “We felt such pride wearing the maple leaf on our uniforms.
Fans embraced us, and we loved them right back. This statue is for the fans.”
And really, it is. Because for Blue Jays fans-especially those old enough to remember where they were on October 23, 1993-Carter’s walk-off home run in Game 6 of the World Series isn’t just a highlight.
It’s a frozen-in-time, heart-pounding, voice-losing, history-making moment. When Carter took Phillies closer Mitch Williams deep to left field, he didn’t just win the game.
He sealed a championship and etched himself into Canadian sports lore forever.
The statue will be placed outside the Rogers Centre between Gates 5 and 6. That area currently features a statue of the late Ted Rogers, which will be relocated to Rogers Communications’ corporate offices to make way for the new tribute.
It’s a move that’s been years in the making. Fans have long called for a permanent tribute to Carter, whose home run remains one of the most dramatic endings in World Series history. It’s also fitting that this will be the first statue of a Blue Jays player outside the stadium-a milestone for a franchise that’s been around since 1977 and is now entering its golden anniversary season.
Across Major League Baseball, most teams have honored their legends with statues. Only a handful-namely the Blue Jays, A’s, Angels, Marlins, and Rockies-have yet to do so.
But that’s beginning to change. The Rockies, for instance, are set to unveil statues of Hall of Famers Larry Walker and Todd Helton this summer.
Carter’s statue won’t be the first of a baseball player outside a major league stadium in Canada. That distinction belongs to Jackie Robinson, whose statue stands outside Montreal’s Olympic Stadium in honor of his groundbreaking 1946 season with the Montreal Royals.
Still, this moment is uniquely Toronto. Just a couple kilometers east of Rogers Centre, the Maple Leafs have built out Legends Row with 14 statues of franchise greats. Now, the Blue Jays are finally joining the conversation-and they’re doing it by honoring the man who gave Canada one of its most unforgettable sports memories.
Come July 18, fans will have a new spot to gather, reflect, and relive the moment when Joe Carter touched them all.