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!

You've Got Mail #83: A Cracked Bat

A while back on Twitter (a month nearly by the time this posts), I mentioned that everything that could possibly go wrong in one day did. My five year old had a 102 degree fever and couldn't keep any food down, I had a $1200 car repair bill in my future, and a host of other minor issues. Not long after that, a padded mailer arrived from Julie at A Cracked Bat with a nice little note of encouragement. It had been a while since I received anything from Julie so this was a nice, welcome surprise.

2018 Topps Heritage was the last thing I expected to see included. I'm guessing this has to be near the entire Indians team set, or darn close to it. 

My three favorite Indians cards of the batch, Encarnacion, Lindor, and would you look at that ... another Jay Bruce Indians card! I think I like that one more that the Series 1 card. Yes, I know I showed the Encarnacion card in my Heritage post.

Some Reds Heritage cards were thrown in too. Too bad star pitching prospect Tyler Mahle has to share a rookie card with middle reliever Jackson Stephens, who didn't exactly set the world on fire last year with a 4.68 ERA in 7 whole games last season. Again, I know some of these cards were previously featured in my Heritage post, the pictures were already in the can and the cards have already been filed.

Heritage wasn't the only thing that was included. These green crystal 2013 Panini Cooperstown parallels are pretty sweet. I'm pretty sure I've got the base cards of each so the parallels will go perfect with them. Also, when was the last time you saw Edd Roush on modern cards?

Some miscellaneous Indians cards, including a framed Earl Averill parallel from last years Diamond Kings set. The most curious thing there is the card of Ron Wollenhaupt, the trainer of the Waterloo Indians. I had no idea TCMA was making cards of single-A Midwest League teams in 1982, let alone for a team in the middle of Iowa. If your curious, the 1982 Waterloo Indians, finished second in the south division in 1982, 4 games behind the Quad Cities Cubs.

Here's some of last year's Topps Chrome set which I can proudly say I didn't buy a single pack of. It was nice to see the Reds lock up Eugenio Suarez with a nice long contract, I wish they'd do the same for Adam Duvall. 

Much like this envelope was a surprise from Julie, getting an autograph card included was another surprise. I don't have too much in the way of auto's and relics from the Indians. Also, it's a 1987 style card, I can't really complain too much.

Thanks for the cards Julie! These definitely made a pair of bad situations much better. As for the problems I mentioned earlier, it turns out that my five year old had an adverse reaction to his booster shots but he slept it off and was better the next day. My car finally got fixed too and now I have AC in it again for the first time in two years! It's the little things.

Gypsy Queen and Heritage

As mentioned a few posts ago, I was out with the family on the day before Easter and we wound up the neighborhood of Maverick's Cards and Comics. I was a bit rushed for time as we were trying to get back to the house for lunch and wasn't able to rummage through some of their bargain boxes as I would have liked. Instead, I took a gander and what packs they had available and lo and behold they had Heritage and Gypsy Queen! Score! I grabbed three packs of GQ and two packs of Heritage. First, the Gypsy Queen ...

My initial thoughts on the design is that it's really cool. I like it a lot better than last year which seemed sort of bland. I also like the fact that it's been streamlined and overhauled somewhat. Gone are the minis in every pack and the relic cards (for the most part). Now it's two autographs per box and the price tag is much less. Last year, I remember the card shops had packs for around $6-$6.50 each, now packs are about $5 each. I can stomach that.

I didn't get any short prints in the packs nor did I get any Reds. I did wind up with these two Indians cards though. I won't complain too much about that.

As for the variations and what have you, I didn't get any of the capless variations, nor did I get the "gum back" variations. I did get this ... whatever "this" is. It's some sort of faded, washed out deal but I couldn't find much info on it. As a matter of fact, Edwin Encarnacion isn't listed anywhere on the list of variations on both Beckett and Cardboard Connection. Both articles mentioned there were "unannounced variations" floating about so perhaps this is one of those.

Remember how I said the relic card were pretty much stripped from the product and autographs were the only hit now? Well this came right out of the first pack I opened. I really like the design and layout on this. Eovaldi has been a pretty decent pitcher the last few years so I'm OK with this hit.

As I mentioned, I also nabbed two packs of Heritage. Showing off the fronts of the Heritage base cards at this point pretty much amounts to beating a dead horse. So I'll spare you that and show you some of the other highlights.

The back of this J.J. Hardy card is notable for two things. The first being that I had forgotten that J.J. Hardy had been around since 2005. The second is the cartoon. One of the best things about Heritage is that it brings back the cartoons on the back and this is the best one of the cards in the packs I opened.

I got an insert in each Heritage pack, at least I consider the All-Star cards an insert. They may as well be with the puzzle on the back. I've always liked the Then and Now inserts.

I'm digging the use of buybacks in different products this year. This is the first one I have from 1985, or the 80s in general, and it's a pretty notable player so it's a welcome addition to the collection.

Speaking of notable players, this Heritage Chrome Clayton Kershaw is pretty nifty. I don't think it's a refractor of any sort, just a standard card and it's going to be set aside to be put in the shiny card collection when I eventually start that up.

I'm pretty happy with these, especially the Gypsy Queen. I'm definitely going to pick some more of that up, be it at the card shop or at one of the big box stores.

You've Got Mail #25: Cards on Cards

Being involved with the #Supertraders group is a wonderful thing as random packages from people I've never traded with before just show up on my doorstep. That was the case with this package from Kerry over at Cards on Cards, he dropped a huge flat rate mailer of Reds on me that amounted to a stack of cards about 3-4 inches tall.

I'll start with these cards from 2014 ... or is it 2013? I think it's 2014 but I can never keep it straight since the 2013 and 2014 cards look nearly identical. I think I've shown the Frazier card before but I'll show it again here as it's definitely one of my favorite cards of his. I like the Cingrani "Future Stars" card and it's from the Opening Day series. My one gripe with that series is that they're the same cards as the flagship set, just with an Opening Day stamp on them.

More Arroyo cards for my growing PC of his. Pretty sure this is the 850th time (ok, I may be exaggerating there) that I've shown that 2014 Heritage card but, wow, do I really like that design!

More Heritage cards! I've been completely unimpressed by 2016 Heritage so I'll be on the lookout for older Heritage cards for now.

Something tells me that Kerry opened a lot of Heritage over the past few years. 2012 Heritage is one of the packs I bought when I first got back into collecting so I've got a soft spot for it. I enjoyed last year's version more than I thought I would.

Hey! There's some Joey Votto cards! He's gotten off to a miserable start this year (then again pretty much every hitter in the Reds line-up has) but I have faith he'll turn in around.

I'm really hoping that Mesoraco has a nice rebound year, perhaps he could be an All-Star again like he was in 2014. I'll have to admit, that All-Star card is pretty awesome.

Robert Stephenson is the top pitching prospect the Reds have and has made a few spots starts so far this year as the Reds have tried to put together a rotation consisting of duct tape and chicken wire right now. In the two starts he's had, he's won both and looked incredibly sharp just the other night against the Rockies.

As much as I love newer cards, nothing makes me happier than getting cards from the 80s and 90s in trade packages. Going backwards in chronological order we've got the mid-90s, followed by 1989/1990 and finally some 1989 Score. I saw a box of 1989 Score stuffed on a 2 for 15 junk wax shelf at the local card shop and I'm half tempted to take them up on that deal.

Here's a few random Reds. Jesse Winker is the top outfield prospect for the Reds and is currently at Triple-A Louisville honing his craft, although at the rate the Reds are hitting and pit of awfulness that has been left field the past few years, I wouldn't be surprised to see him called up sometime in the summer. Hopefully, he'll be able to provide some stability to that spot. Speaking of stability, Hal Morris held that spot down for about 8 years and provided solid hitting and good defense. After he left, then there was a gaping hole there until Joey Votto took over.

Here's a few discs and circular items that were sent over. The Buddy Bell Jiffy Pop disc suddenly makes me want some popcorn.

Finally, there are these First Home Run insert cards. I'm not sure what the white version is but I think these cards are pretty cool and commemorate a nice moment in a players career. It also reminds people of teams that players used to be with, for example, I don't think a lot of people realize that Encarnacion used to be with the Reds.

Thanks Kerry for the awesome cards! You're on my list for returns so I'll get something out to you when I get some more sorting done.

You've Got Mail #7: Baseball Card Breakdown

Gavin at Baseball Card Breakdown had offered up a really cool Edwin Encarnacion 1st home run medallion card for trade after he broke into a blaster box of Topps Update about a month ago. The week before Thanksgiving it arrived and was accompanied by a whole boatload of Reds cards on its cross-county journey in the confines of a priority mail box.

Here's the card that triggered this whole trade. It's even nicer in person and it's the first medallion card I have. I'm not going to go out chasing these but there are few other Reds ones out there (Josh Hamilton and Johnny Bench) that I would definitely like to pick up.

These are my two favorite Votto cards in my collection right now.

One of the podcast hosts I like to listen occasionally says "If you haven't see it, it's new to you!" and these are definitely new to me. I had no idea that Stadium Club chrome cards existed. Pokey Reese (left) was a good second baseman for the Reds in the late 90s and Scott Williamson was a lights out closer for the Reds in 1999 but kind of flamed out a year or so later.

A few old school style cards. Word around the campfire is that Arroyo is interested in returning to the Reds and he's just the kind of mid-level starter the Reds need to eat innings and give the young guys a rest ... of course, he has to prove he's healthy first. The Dunn is from 2002 Upper Deck Vintage, a set I actually took the time to put together when I was last collecting in the early 2000's.

Archives is one of my favorite brands and these cards from the 2015 set are great. I almost didn't catch the fact that the Jay Bruce card is one of the #1 Draft Pick inserts.

Two of my favorite Reds players right now, Tucker Barnhart and Todd Frazier. I've been on the lookout for a nice Barnhart RC and this will do just fine.

Two nice Cingrani cards. I'm guessing that the one with the Illinois flag in the background is a parallel of some sort?

Jose Rijo had a great comeback story. He was out of baseball for over 6 years with assorted arm injuries and made a surprise comeback in 2001 as a reliever and was a nice story for a Reds team that was the worst of the decade. In 2002, he made a bunch of starts and started the final game ever at Cinergy Field.

Finally, here's a nice card of Jesse Winker who is really close to being ready for the majors and will hopefully be a regular in the Reds outfield in 2017.

There were a ton of other great cards that were in the box too but these were the best ones I picked out for scanning. Thanks Gavin for the giant trade box. I'm digging through my cards and working on finding you some stuff to send in return.