Pat Borders' non-Bulldog mentality
The 1992 World Series MVP and 2000 Olympic gold medalist could've been a Mississippi State defensive back
Pat Borders had a pretty nice baseball card in the 1989 Upper Deck set, but it’s not good enough to be a source for Wikipedia. Good for Wikipedia, because Borders was born on May 14, 1963 not in Lake Wales, Florida, but Columbus, Ohio. His family moved to Florida when he was a kid, and he went to high school there… and it seems likely that the front photo was taken about an hour’s drive from where he grew up, at spring training in Dunedin.
The card is correct, though, that Borders was offered a football scholarship at Mississippi State.
From Borders’ Wikipedia page:
Although he was offered a football/baseball scholarship to Mississippi State University, he turned it down to sign with the Blue Jays, who had drafted him in the sixth round of the 1982 Major League Baseball Draft.[citation needed]
Borders is best known as the World Series MVP in 1992, when he went 9-for-20 with four extra-base hits in six games, including the homer that opened the scoring in Game 4 as the Blue Jays put a stranglehold on the series, going up three games to one.
That was certainly the peak of Borders’ career, which lasted longer than you might remember. Borders stayed with Toronto through 1994, then was a backup catcher all over the place for more than a decade. From 1995-2005, Borders played for the Royals, Astros, Cardinals, Angels, White Sox, Cleveland, Blue Jays again, Mariners, Twins, and Mariners again — as well as a gold medalist with Team USA in 2000 in the middle of all that.
Borders’ career ended with Seattle about a week before Felix Hernandez’s began, so instead of a young phenom, Borders’ last game was catching fellow 42-year-old Jamie Moyer… who then went on to pitch another seven years.
Borders was a high school quarterback, running the option at Lake Wales, outside of Tampa in Polk County. The expectation for him at Mississippi State was not to be the successor to John Bond, who himself could turn the corner pretty well…
Rather, Borders’ college gridiron future was likely at defensive back, according to the February 10, 1982 Tampa Tribune story about him and teammate Charlie Norwood committing to the Bulldogs. Norwood, a running back, also wound up elsewhere — specifically, Chattanooga, where he had nine carries for 29 yards in 1983. Mississippi State football did not exactly thrive, either, going 17-27 over the next four years, which would be the last four in Starkville for coach Emory Bellard, who definitely had his moments at State, including beating top-ranked Alabama in 1980. He was also a proper sayer of the word “progrum.”
Had Borders gone to MSU, he would have shared a defensive backfield with Kirby Jackson, who had three interceptions for the Bills in the 1991 playoffs. Instead, Borders and Jackson only really crossed paths as professionals on NBC’s October 1989 airwaves, when Borders made his postseason debut with an RBI single on the first pitch he saw in Game 4 of the ALCS…
…and a couple of weeks later, Jackson had what turned out to be the only pick-six of his NFL career, hauling in a Dan Marino pass and making a really nice return for the score.
It’s safe to say that Borders made the right choice with baseball over football. Going pro instead of the college route also worked out, especially because it was in the Blue Jays farm system that he converted from third base to catcher. Still, imagine for a second adding another major league bat to the Rafael Palmeiro-Will Clark-Bobby Thigpen era… maybe the Bulldogs don’t have to wait until 2021 to win their first national title.
Either way, the 1985 Mississippi State baseball video opens with “I’m So Excited” by The Pointer Sisters, and that’s fun.
Borders wound up in the full-on World Series instead of the College World Series, and his career highlights also included catching the only no-hitter in Blue Jays history, Dave Stieb’s 1990 gem.
Stieb did go to college, and was drafted by the Blue Jays out of Southern Illinois in 1978. The back of Stieb’s 1985 Topps card notes that he was college teammates with Dave Righetti… but Righetti, himself the author of a no-hitter in 1983, did not attend Southern Illinois. Rather, they were teammates at San Jose City College, which must have been a nightmare for that league.
Righetti wasn’t teammates again with Stieb in the pros, but he was battery mates with Borders on the 1994 Blue Jays. It did not go well, as Righetti issued 10 walks and gave up 10 hits in 10.1 innings over 10 appearances, for an 8.71 ERA.
Maybe Borders was too used to seeing good pitches to hit from Righetti, because from 1988-90, when Righetti was on the Yankees, Borders was 3-for-7 with two walks against him. They faced each other once after being teammates, with Borders striking out in his first two trips to the plate for the Royals before getting to Righetti, then with the White Sox, the third time around for a single.
Righetti went seven innings that day in Chicago for the penultimate win of his career, a 4-3 verdict — Borders was pinch-hit for by Edgar Cáceres against Roberto Hernández in the ninth inning, a move that did not pan out for Kansas City as Cáceres grounded out. Borders was 0-for-5 in his career against Hernández to that point, and only got one more try against him. In 1998, Borders made good on that chance, singling and coming around to score on a David Justice single before Sandy Alomar Jr.’s walkoff grand slam.