Duane Ward, the relief pitcher who anchored the bullpen of the only team outside the United States to win the World Series, died on Sunday in Toronto of natural causes, the Blue Jays announced. He was 62.

"Duane will be deeply missed by our fans, and we extend our heartfelt condolences to his family," the club said, according to ESPN.

What he did

Relief pitching is the part of baseball least legible to people who did not grow up with it, and Ward's career is a good illustration of why it matters.

A baseball team's starting pitcher throws the early innings and leaves. What follows is a sequence of specialists. The setup man works the eighth inning, holding a narrow lead. The closer works the ninth and finishes it. These are short outings, often one inning, thrown at maximum effort, and they are almost always the innings in which a close game is decided. A team can score all afternoon and lose it in twenty minutes.

Ward did both jobs, and did the second one exceptionally.

Two championships, two roles

In 1992 he was the setup man, with an earned run average of 1.95, as Toronto won the World Series for the first time.

In 1993 he moved into the closer's role and led the American League with 45 saves, with a 2.13 ERA, and was named an All-Star. Toronto won again.

The second of those titles ended in the game most Canadians of a certain age can still describe: Game 6 of the 1993 World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies, settled by Joe Carter's home run. Ward was the winning pitcher.

He finished his career 32-37 with a 3.28 ERA across 462 games. He ranks second in Blue Jays history in both saves, with 121, and pitching appearances, with 452. In the postseason he was 3-0 with a 1.13 ERA, across 19 postseason appearances including eight in the World Series.

A career cut off at its height

Ward began 1986 with the Atlanta Braves and moved to Toronto later the same year. He stayed for the rest of his career.

An arm injury cost him the whole of the 1994 season. He returned briefly in 1995 and then retired, still in his early thirties.

That is an unusually abrupt ending for a pitcher who had just led his league in saves, and it is a common one for relievers. The role asks for maximum-effort throwing at short notice, several times a week, for years. Careers in the job tend to be intense and short, and Ward's was compressed further than most.

The wider record

The Blue Jays' back-to-back titles in 1992 and 1993 remain the only World Series won by a team based outside the United States. Baseball is often described as an American game, and structurally it is, but the two championships at the top of that decade belong to Toronto.

Ward is not the name most associated with them. Carter's home run is the image that survived. But somebody had to hold those leads to get to the moments people remember, and for two seasons that was largely his job.