Former Blue Jays reliever Duane Ward dies at 62 during World Series tribute

There is a particular poignancy when a man returns to celebrate the best chapter of his life and instead becomes part of its final page. Duane Ward, a reliever who helped carry the Toronto Blue Jays to back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993, died of natural causes at sixty-two on Sunday in Toronto, where he had gathered with teammates to witness a statue honoring those championship years. His death arrived not in obscurity but in the company of the game he served, surrounded by the city that had claimed him as its own.