Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Trey Yesavage celebrates the end of the seventh inning in Game 5 of the World Series on Oct. 29, in Los Angeles.Brynn Anderson/The Associated Press
“His story was one the writer of those supersport Frank Merriwell tales – in which the hero is always doing the last-ditch and/or snatching victory with only a second to go would have rejected offhand, so compounded was it of probabilities. He clearly was a civitan Clark Kent who, once in uniform, turned out somehow to save the day…”
Winnipeg author Jack Ludwig was writing in the February, 1973 issue of Maclean’s magazine on Ken Dryden, the Montreal Canadiens’ sensational young hockey goaltender.
Ludwig, the fiction writer who held a deep love of all sport, died at age 95 in 2018. He never had a chance to see Trey Yesavage pitch for the Toronto Blue Jays. He might well have used similar words to capture the essence of this young, and very different, baseball player.
The comparisons between Yesavage and Dryden are not perfect, but they are intriguing.
Dryden, who died in September at age 78, was Canadian; Yesavage is American. There will be no victory parade for the American as there was for the Canadian star when he, like Yesavage, burst on the North American sporting scene like an undetected comet from … somewhere.
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Yet both were in their early 20s – Yesavage 22, Dryden 23 – when they became instant superstars in their chosen sport.
Both came up through college sport – Dryden from Cornell University and Canadian law school, Yesavage from the East Carolina Pirates. Both played in the minor leagues – Dryden with the American-league Montreal Voyageurs and a stint with Team Canada, Yesavage with an astonishing string that included multiple-but-short minor league stints before reaching the big leagues.
It is simply stunning to know that the young pitcher began his year with the Jays’ single-A minor-league team in Dunedin, Fla., playing before 327 fans, then started his final game of the year in Toronto with 52,175 cheering from the seats and many millions cheering from living rooms and bars from coast-to-coast-to-coast across North America.
Pressure? That Wednesday night, in Game 5 of the World Series, he pitched seven innings against the Los Angeles Dodgers, walked no batters and set a rookie World Series record of 12 strikeouts, including a handful of future hall-of-famers.
Yesavage celebrates a diving catch for an out by right fielder Addison Barger (not shown) during the sixth inning of Game 5.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Warming up in front of screaming and insulting Dodgers’ fans, Yesavage calmly turned to one of his coaches and said, “This is fun – I love this.”
His breathtaking performance in Game 5 gave Toronto a 6-1 victory and sent them on to Game 6 and Game 7 in Toronto, where they unfortunately lost the championship to the powerful Dodgers.
Dryden and Yesavage are also the same height, 6 foot 4, and their towering stature has made them unique in their positions.
When Dryden arrived to put the much-favoured Boston Bruins of Bobby Orr fame out of the playoffs, NHL goaltenders were usually small – the result, some believe, from forcing little brothers and smaller players to tend goal in the endless road hockey matches that got young Canadians through winter. (Dryden was the younger brother of Dave Dryden, who would also become an NHL goaltender.)
Ken Dryden’s remarkable size and maturity changed the way the position is played. Coaches went from telling skaters to “let the goalie see the puck” to “block every shot possible.”
“When he stands up we have to crane around him,” an NHL scout told Ludwig. “Every shot’s a screen shot.”
A 23-year-old Dryden playing today would raise not a single eyebrow in a game where goaltenders are sometimes the biggest players on the team.
As for Yesavage, he is hardly the tallest player in the game, yet has both height and reach and something mysterious that makes him “different.”
When he was a teenager growing up in Pennsylvania, his team called him “The Cheat Code,” the suggestion was that if he was on the pitcher’s mound, the game was already won.
At age 15, young Trey was already throwing 90-mph fastballs, remarkable for someone so young. As well, his arm angle at peak and his unique release point made his pitches – especially the “splitter” – hard to hit.
The image of Yesavage coolly striking out Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani in the third inning of Game 5 of the World Series will stand as a key moment in the dramatic championship series and a reminder of the young pitcher's impressive play despite his inexperience.David J. Phillip/The Associated Press
Yesavage’s slider and splitter were “electric,” says Jays’ manager John Schneider. “…we were willing to throw him right in the fire because we felt confident in the work he had done.”
Dryden was also noticed young. “At seven,” his Humber Valley coach Ray Picard told Ludwig, “Kenny looked like an NHL goalie – all the moves and the poise of a pro.”
In the hyper-analyzed world of baseball, the splitter, a suddenly sinking two-finger fastball created decades ago, has returned to huge popularity. Yesavage turns to it often, as does Jays’ ace Kevin Gausman and the Dodgers’ Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani.
Like Dryden, Yesavage is soft-spoken and polite, always calm under intense pressure. “He’s the real deal,” says Toronto veteran pitcher Max Scherzer, the epitome of fire and intensity. “He can face anyone right now. You can see it.”
Yesavage may also one day share with Dryden an iconic image. Dryden is forever remembered for his signature pose during stoppages in play, blocker and catching glove resting on top of goal stick. Yesavage’s equivalent might well be the greatest player in the modern game, Ohtani, losing his helmet in a wild strikeout at the plate, the young Jays’ pitcher walking nonchalantly off the mound without so much as a glance back.
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Dryden made hockey history by winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the Stanley Cup playoffs a year before he would win the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie.
For his Smythe win, he was awarded the remarkable sum of $1,500.
For his history-making year in baseball, Yesavage was paid US$57,204 for his three major league starts – less than pennies compared to the 10-year, US$700-million the Dodgers signed Ohtani to in 2023.
Dryden would go on to win five more Stanley Cups before retiring early in 1979 to take up law and, eventually, politics and writing.
Yesavage will certainly make his fortune, but his future is as unknown as he himself was when the 2025 World Series began.