Around the Horn: Toronto Blue Jays

O, Canada! My "Around the Horn" series makes the trek north of the border, to look at the only current MLB team not in the United States, the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Blue Jays were founded in 1977 along with the Seattle Mariners as part of the last round of American League expansion (that is, until 1998 when the Rays (nee Devil Rays) were added).

Photo: Wikipedia.org

From their inception until June of 1989, the Jays played at Exhibition Stadium, a strange creature of a stadium positioned on the shores of Lake Ontario. According to Wikipedia, there was a small snowstorm before the inaugural game in April of 1977 and the team had to borrow the Zamboni from the Maple Leafs to clear the field.

During the first few years of the Blue Jays existence, they were nothing to write home about. However, when Bobby Cox took over as manager in the early 1980s, things began to improve and the Blue Jays began to rise in the standings. The 1982 Topps "Future Stars" card shows a glimpse into the future. Let's see how each player on this card panned out:

Jesse Barfield - Played 12 MLB seasons total, the first nine of which were with the Jays. He finished in the top 10 of Rookie of the Year voting in 1982, twice in the top ten of MVP voting (1985, 1986), and won Gold Gloves in 1986 and 1987. His best season was 1986, the only season in which he made the All-Star team, in which he slugged 40 homers, hit .289 with a .559 slugging percentage, and drove in 108 RBIs.

Brian Milner - Only appeared in two major league games in 1978 and accumulated 9 official at bats in those two games. He tooled around the lower minors for a few years and was out of organized baseball after 1982.

Boomer Wells - Also known as Greg Wells, he lasted all of two seasons in the majors (1981 with TOR and 1982 with MIN) and only appeared in a paltry 47 games during that span. In 1983, he went over to Japan and had a very prolific career over there playing until 1992 with the Hankyu Braves, Orix Braves, and the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks.

Throughout the 1980s, the Blue Jays were perennial contenders for the AL East Division crown and actually won the Division in 1985 before being bested by Kansas City in the ALCS that year. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they had veterans like Jim Clancy along with youngsters such as Cecil Fielder and Mark Whiten who would eventually lead them to the promise land. More on that later.

I picked these cards out because I always enjoyed the pure white of the Blue Jays uniforms during this period. Also, I think Cecil Fielder's four year run with the Jays gets forgotten quite a bit as most remember him for the home run clubbing first baseman for the Tigers during the early part of the 1990s.

From the "short term stops" file, here's some 80s cards of Jeff Burroughs and Juan Berenguer. 

Burroughs only season with the Jays was his sunset year of 1985 where he only made 86 games. He's shown here in the 1986 Fleer issue. It's one of only a handful of cards I have from that particular set. Berenguer, also known as "El Gasolino" in addition to his "Señor Smoke" moniker, had a brief 12-game sojourn north of the border in 1981 as he was purchased by the Jays from the Royals just before the second half of the season started. 

Photo: wikipedia.org

In the middle of the 1989 season, the Blue Jays moved from Exhibition Stadium into the brand new Skydome (since renamed Rogers Centre), a giant multi-purpose stadium built on the former Railway Lands in downtown Toronto.

Fred McGriff and Joe Carter were part of arguably the biggest and most famous trade in Blue Jays history. In December of 1990, the Blue Jays traded McGriff and Tony Fernandez to San Diego for Joe Carter and Roberto Alomar. The rest is history. 

McGriff had a few good seasons with the Padres before being acquired by the Braves in 1993 for the stretch run to the playoffs. Fernandez spent two seasons in San Diego before being traded to the Mets in the 1992-93 offseason. He found his way back to Toronto after being acquired via trade in June of 1993. All totaled, Fernandez had four different stints with the Jays (1983-1990, 1993, 1998-99, and 2001) before retiring.

Would I call myself a Fred McGriff collector? Yes, possibly as he's a player I'm familiar with from seeing him with the Braves on TV. Seeing cards of him though in a Blue Jays uniform is just fascinating. These are my four favorites that I have.

Carter and Alomar helped the Jays win back-to-back World Series in 1992 and 1993, with Carter hitting one of the most famous home runs in World Series history in 1993 off Mitch Williams of the Phillies. Alomar anchored the defense up the middle and earned both an All-Star nod and a gold glove in every season he spent up in Toronto. We won't mention the little umpire spitting incident though.

Joe Carter is definitely someone cool I enjoy collecting, mainly because of that home run in the 1993 World 

The Jays also had some great pitching during this time from players such as Jack Morris, Dave Stewart, and Pat Hentgen. Morris joined the team in 1992 and won 21 games for the Jays after having just won the World Series with Minnesota the year prior

Some more stars from early 90s Blue Jays teams, including "Hard Hittin'" Mark Whiten, and Dave Winfield, who's one of my favorite players to collect. Looking back now on it, those 92 and 93 teams were just absolutely loaded.

I mostly remember Paul Molitor for his time with the Brewers and him signing a three-year deal with the Blue Jays after spending 15 years in Milwaukee was a bit of a shock to me as a kid as I imagined him as a Brewer for life.

The Jays sort of fell off after the 1994-95 strike but did have some younger players coming up like Carlos Delgado. They even changed their long time logo and uniforms. 

They also managed to snag Roger Clemens for two brief seasons in 1997 and 1998. I'm not sure too many people remember his time in blue up north so I guess this could be filed as a "short term stop" even though it was two seasons. It's still bizarre to me to see him in anything but a Red Sox uniform.

One player I didn't care much for when he was with the Reds was Edwin Encarnacion. In a rare trade where it worked well for both teams, the Reds traded him and a couple minor leaguers in exchange for Scott Rolen. Encarnacion had a heck of a run with the Blue Jays, and coupled with Jose Bautista, made for a crazy power threat in the lineup. 

So there we are, a look at some of my favorite Blue Jays cards in my collection. Hope you enjoyed this entry in the "Around the Horn" series.

Next up ... the Cleveland Indians!

Retail Repack Adventures #8

Since it's a new year, it's time to dive into some new kinds of repacks. Yes, they're made by the same people who make the Walgreens repacks I've been diving into over the past year or so but these seem like you get a bit more variety for the price. For $7.99, you get four packs, 50 cards, and a "bonus" item. Let's see what's inside ...

First up, the bonus item and I'm not sure what they are. I took to calling them "baseball buddies" since I didn't know what they were when I opened them. If I had to guess, I'd say they're from the little knock-off Lego sets that MLB puts out.

Moving on to the 50 card box that was contained within, it's about everything you would expect from a repack. It seems like its mandatory that a repack have at least four 2014 Topps cards in it. 

A few cards from the 80s. Cecil Fielder looks like he's ready to mash some long balls into the stands during BP while Tony Phillips looks less that pleased at the umpire's call.

The 90s were well represented with junk wax commons among these cards. I only scanned the John Wasdin card simply because it's a Reserve Collection parallel.

And I'll round out the mini-box with some more recent cards. The Jeter is definitely nice and I'll add it to my 2000s binder but the Votto is a duplicate and will either go in my donation bag to Goodwill or in my trade box, I haven't decided yet.

Here are the four packs that were included. Getting two packs from 2016 is nice, even though I wasn't the biggest Heritage fan this year. I was completely unexcited about the two 2015 Series 1 packs so I ripped into those first.

Here are the best nine cards I could conger up from the two Series 1 packs. Nothing spectacular aside from the Brooks Robinson insert.

Here's the pack of Heritage. I'm still not the biggest fan of this but the Sonny Gray insert card is pretty nice.

Finally, the Gypsy Queen pack. Only five cards in the pack, with one of those being a mini. I'll take a Kris Bryant card as the top card. Yes, please!

Here's the mini, Todd Duffey of the Twins. I'll add it to the bag of minis I have right now that I need to find pages for.

Oh, wait ... that was only four cards wasn't it? Well, here's the fifth ...

My crazy luck with pulling hits out of 2016 packs continues. To say this was unexpected would be an understatement, especially out of a retail pack. While I'm not the biggest Mets fan in the world, I'm still planning on holding on to this just because it's a nice looking card.

I definitely feel like I got my money's worth from this. Granted I got a lot of junk commons from the 50-card mini box but the packs were fun to rip and the bonus prize was neat. All in all, I'll definitely be getting these again and for only two more dollars than the Walgreens 100-card packs, there's some really nice variety to be had.

1987 Topps Collectors Kit

I'm continually amazed at some of the stuff you can find just by digging through junk piles at the card shop. I found this randomly one day while buying some packs and some vintage singles. With the $9.99 price tag, I knew I couldn't pass it up.

The box claims it contains the following ... a Topps 3-ring binder, 10 plastic pages for said binder, a price guide, 44 collectors series cards, 20 stickers, a guide to collecting cards, and 160 baseball cards. Hopefully, everything that is supposed to be there is there considering this thing wasn't sealed.

First up, the binder. For as old as this binder is, it's in remarkably good shape and still holds up pretty well. The thing I really like about this is the collage on the front with cards from different eras. I'm thinking this is a good binder for some of my higher end commons

Hey look! A huge pile of 1987 Topps! I'll admit I wasn't really excited to see these as I tore into a box of it just recently but still, I'll take what I can get.

There were a few winners though in the pile. A proverbial mid-to-late 80s All-Star team with Cal Ripken Jr., Reggie Jackson, Dennis Eckersley, Mike Schmidt, Cecil Fielder, Pete Rose, Ryne Sandberg, etc. The cards themselves didn't show much corner damage and were in pretty good shape considering they'd been sitting loose in this kit before being unearthed by me.

Here's the packs of stickers that were included. I wonder if the offer is still valid for me to win a trip to 1987 spring training? And yes, I know that there is a Panini sticker pack in with the Topps sticker packs.

I couldn't get a good shot of the stickers but suffice to say that it can't be all bad when you get a Rob Deer and an Expos sticker, right?

These are the so-called "collectors cards", mainly a sub-set of some sort featuring nothing but Hall of Famers. I pulled all the Reds cards out for my Reds collection, the rest, unfortunately, will live the rest of their cardboard lives in my mixed commons binder.

The price guide was pretty basic, nothing to the level of your monthly Beckett magazine, with just prices from the basic sets. The collectors guide was pretty simple as well, making note to expand your collection by attending card show, shops, and swap meets. Swap meets? I couldn't tell you the last time I heard of a swap meet.

The last thing in the box was the pages. I won't provide a picture as they were your standard, 9-pocket, side load pages. Yes, side load, not top load. 

Overall, this was a nice find for ten bucks. I was amazed to find out that the thing was pretty much intact when I opened it at home. Hopefully I can find some other interesting things on my next card shop visit.