All night long, the jam-packed crowd of Blue Jays fans rode hard waves of emotion, soaring with early home runs, slumping in their seats in the middle innings when Aaron Sanchez's command betrayed him, and turning twitchy in the late going as they waited for the inevitable mistake that would sink one team or the other.

And when it came—when Josh Donaldson ended it with a daring, all-or-nothing dash that left the crowd tingling in hope and desperation for a tense nine seconds—the fans did not want to leave.

They stayed as the Blue Jays' celebration flowed from the clubhouse back onto the field, and they erupted every time one of the players appeared, and when Edwin Encarnacion stood in front of the dugout like a conductor and led their cheers, and when Dioner Navarro lit his trademark playoff cigar and threw back his head and blew smoke into the air.

The Jays had just swept the Rangers out of the playoffs with a dramatic climax that some will consider sweet, poetic justice after that nasty business in Texas last May. Matt Bush and Rougned Odor, the villains of that piece in the eyes of Toronto fans, figured flagrantly in the Jays' 7-6, 10-inning victory before 49,555 fans.

It looked for a moment like it would go to the 11th inning. The 10th had started auspiciously for Toronto, with a Donaldson double and a walk to Encarnacion.

"When we got first and second and nobody out, the feeling in the dugout was that this thing was over," said Devon Travis as champagne corks popped in the clubhouse. "And it was over."

But no one could have predicted the way it would end. After Bush struck out Jose Bautista, Russell Martin ground his way through an eight-pitch at-bat.

Then came the madcap finish that punched the Jays' ticket to the American League Championship Series for the second straight year.

On a 3-2 count, Martin hit a ground ball to shortstop Elvis Andrus, whose errors helped sink the Rangers in last year's famous Game 5. This time Andrus' throw to second was a tad low, but certainly manageable for Odor. But as Odor pivoted, Encarnacion slid in, hard and clean. Odor's relay to first was in the dirt, knocked down almost miraculously by Mitch Moreland, who figured he'd stopped Donaldson at third.

But Donaldson abandoned caution and kept running. Startled, Moreland threw to the plate, but Donaldson slid headfirst and scored as catcher Jonathan Lucroy waved at him with an empty mitt.

As the ball bounced into foul ground, Donaldson leaped up and let out a howl of triumph. And the girders in the Rogers Centre roof began to shimmy to the bedlam below.

"For me the deciding factor was once I saw the ball get away from (Moreland), I felt like I had to take a chance," Donaldson said. "And that situation in the game, if he ends up throwing me out, making a great play, you kind of have to tip your cap to him. But I'm banking on the fact that I'm going to make it more times than not, and it ended up working out for us."

In the next moment, his teammates started chasing and mobbing Martin, suddenly a hero after hitting a double-play grounder.

"We saw Moreland over there kind of bobbled it so we knew that we had a chance to score," said Marco Estrada, who watched the play unfold from the bench. "I think the entire team was outside (the dugout) before he was halfway to home."

Troy Tulowitzki was on deck. He called it the best seat in the house. And he figured Donaldson was going to make it.

"I did. I could see the play the whole time where (the Rangers) just panicked," Tulowitzki said. "Obviously, that crowd comes into effect."

And on a play like that, he said, "usually they mess it up."

A marginally low throw to second. An aggressive slide by Encarnacion. Odor's one-hop throw to first. Moreland leaving the ball swirling in the dirt.

In quick little steps, the Rangers messed it up, and Donaldson messed them up, and now the Jays wait to play either Cleveland or Boston on Friday in Game 1 of the ALCS.

The revenge plot was the media's favourite in this series, and of course, the end played neatly into that narrative. Bush had drilled Bautista in Texas in retaliation for last fall's bat flip, and Odor had punched out Bautista after a hard slide into second base. Five months later, at 11 PM on Sunday, Bush and Odor stood slumped and stunned, beaten down on enemy ground.

Post-game, a few reporters pursued another narrative. The Jays, and especially Donaldson, were physically banged up, and look at how valiant they were, overcoming the pain and turning agony to ecstasy.

Such were the questions when Donaldson and Martin faced the media in a news conference afterward.

"I want to say I'm not physically restricted," Donaldson said to one questioner who had used those very words.

"Just lie," Martin interjected.

"When you have 50,000 fans screaming, it kind of numbs the pain a little bit," Donaldson said. "It gives you that little extra jolt of adrenaline. So I'm going to leave it at that. I don't really want to be too specific about anything. But the fact of the matter is I want to be out there for my team and my teammates want me out there and I want to try to contribute in any way possible. And for the most part I've been able to do that."

The play was vintage Donaldson—equal parts artistic, cunning and brazen.

"His instincts are second to none. He's special," Tulowitzki said.

Somebody tried to tempt to Tulowitzki to comment on Donaldson's aches and pains, suggesting he was not "100 percent" when he pulled off that big play. Tulowitzki gave the reporter that stern look of his.

"He looked like 100 percent to me," he said. "I don't know where you got that from."

Francisco Liriano, dressed all in red, left the building at 3:40 PM, beset by concussion symptoms. Had he been whole—if that line drive had missed his head in Texas last Friday—the left-handed Liriano might have been the man John Gibbons wanted in the sixth inning.

But the Blue Jays manager settled on right-hander Joe Biagini to face left-handed-hitting Moreland after Sanchez left with two runners on. Against Biagini, lefty batters had an OPS 81 points higher than righties.

Toronto led 5-4. Moreland fouled off a slider, then connected on a 95-mph fastball. The ball left his bat at 100 miles an hour.

The crowd held its collective breath as Kevin Pillar took off on an angle toward the left-centre-field wall. In their split-second imaginings, Jays fans painted a familiar picture. Pillar would soar, stretch in midair and make another mind-blowing catch. The crowd would erupt. The inning would be over, the lead intact.

But even for Pillar, and even in the mind's-eye of a Blue Jays fan, that feat suddenly looked impossible, and it was. As Pillar made his desperate leap, the ball grazed the fingertips of his glove and morphed from near-miracle to two-base hit in an instant. Texas led 6-5.

Pillar said he should have caught it.

"That's a play I feel like I make 90 percent of the time," he said. "It's going to haunt me for a while. I think about how big a momentum play that would've been…

"You want to consider yourself the best in the world at that position, you've got to make plays like that."

Encarnacion and Martin hit first-inning home runs. Donaldson had three hits and scored twice. Tulowitzki singled in the sixth and later scored on a passed ball with two outs and the bases loaded that tied the score 6-6.

Sanchez allowed only four hits but his command was erratic. Two of his four walks scored.

Then, except for that Moreland double, the Jays' bullpen allowed nothing. Roberto Osuna pitched the ninth and insisted he pitch the 10th. He was perfect.

There was gallantry on the other side, too. Bush, the sixth Texas reliever, had never pitched more than two innings nor thrown more than 33 pitches before. He went 2.2 innings and threw 42 pitches. Most of them were clocked at 98 or 99. He struck out five and got a double-play ball that exploded in his face like a trick cigar because his infielders went wobbly, just as they had a year ago in Game 5.

Afterward, as Jays players and their families milled about on the field and posed for photos and saluted several thousand fans who would not go home, Bautista was asked how this series win compared to last year's, when he hit that big homer and performed that iconic bat flip that so inflamed the backsides of so many Texans.

"It's not as nerve-racking but it's equally as pleasurable, as enjoyable," Bautista said. "Everybody knows what happened last year with them and how badly we wanted to beat them, and we swept them."

As for the revenge narrative, Donaldson had the right response.

"I brushed it off and, honestly, I turned the page from it after we left there (in May)," he said. "And I just wanted to go out there and play good, clean baseball. And I felt like both teams were able to do that."

You can read all our Blue Jays postseason coverage here.