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 #12

For those not familiar with this series, I grab the Fairfield repacks from local retail establishments (Walgreens and Target) and bust these open and take a look at what's inside. There really is no set goal, aside from a few minutes of fun opening a mystery brick of cards. Since this is a new year and a blog "re-launch" so to speak, not only do I have baseball ones to break into, I've also got a few hockey ones. I figured for this go round, I should go with what I'm familiar with, that being a baseball 100-card brick, before diving headlong some of the other ones. This is the twelfth in a series.

Our cover boy, Joe Mauer. It's interesting to see that 2017 Heritage has already found it's way into these. When that came out last spring, it disappeared from retail shelves almost immediately as everyone and their brother wanted to get their hands on it. Even when the high number set came out last fall, the same thing happened. All this means that I didn't get in on the action as much as I would've liked. 

As usual, there was a load of Topps base cards, mainly from 2013 this time around. I didn't feel like scanning all of them but these were my favorites. 

I love it when old school Upper Deck makes it's way into these boxes. I really don't have a whole lot of 1990 Upper Deck in my collection so that's a nice addition. Did you happen to notice how empty the stands are behind Dennis Rasmussen? I think my favorite card of the 1991 batch has to be the Tom Foley card, simply because of the Expos powder blue road uniforms.

I've got a factory set of 1992 Topps sitting in my garage I need to sort at some point but this is always a set I've enjoyed, mainly as it's the first Topps set I remember from childhood.

The other thing I always found fascinating with 1992 Topps is the fact they put a picture of the team's home stadium on the back (space permitting). While it never was a great picture, I personally always found it pretty cool to see a picture of a team's stadium on the back of the card, especially when it was a stadium, like the Kingdome for example, that I never saw on TV back then.

One thing that keeps drawing me back to these repacks is the variety contained within. Sure, there's a bunch of cards from the present day but always buried in the middle are cards from the mid 80s, such as the case with these 1985 Topps cards. I've always liked 85 Topps, dating back to the days as a kid where I bought a lot of them from an antique shop and maybe, one day, I might actually put the set together. Of course, I have to finish 1984 Topps first.

Speaking of 80s cards, here's some from 1987 Donruss. While I really enjoy Donruss sets from the early to mid 80s, after this set things kind of nose dive for a few years. Mike Moore was a pretty decent pitcher for the Mariners in the 80s, his best season coming in 1985 where he finished 10th in Cy Young voting and had a 17-10 record with a 3.46 ERA. Two years later in 1987 though? Not good. He led all of baseball in losses with 19.

Bedrosian was one of the better NL pitchers of the 80s, turning primarily into a reliever when he joined the Phillies. 1987 was an All-Star season for him with 40 saves and winner of the NL Cy Young Award. In four seasons with the Phillies, he posted 103 saves over 287.1 innings and a 3.29 ERA.

Some cards from a few of my favorite sets of the 80s. I think 1981 Donruss gets a bad rap, sure it was hastily produced but it still has a few redeeming qualities such as the general design. If I ever finish off 1984 Topps, my next project might be 1984 Donruss, not sure though but I really do like the design. Also, Mike Smithson may not be the most notable pitcher ever but I really dig the Twins home uniform he's sporting!

Standard operating procedure with these is that I have to show off any Reds cards included. A bunch of cards here I've seen a million times before and one dude I've never heard of.

Here's a curiosity, I wasn't expecting a Bowman Chrome refractor to come out of this. It took me a moment as I was thrown off by the facsimile signature but I realized this wasn't the 1-in-4 "hit" that the box proclaimed. Instead, it was a 2011 Bowman Chrome of Cory Riordan, a pitcher who has washed out of the minors with two different organizations and played the 2017 season for the Bridgeport Bluefish of the independent Atlantic League.

As with any repack, there's bound to be tons of junk wax. Here's the best of what was included. Nice to get a card of "Hard Hittin'"Mark Whiten, who famously slugged four homers in a game against the a Reds team in 1993 that, strangely enough, Ray Knight was a coach for.

Some cards from the mid-90s, including a 1995 Fleer card of Tony Gwynn, as if you couldn't tell what it was by the crazy design. One day, I'm planning on reviewing a card of each design from 1995 Fleer baseball (and maybe even football but I'll have to see what I have stashed away).

Some late 90s and early 00s miscellany. I always tend to forget what 2001 Topps looks like until I pull an actual card from somewhere. 

These are not your average 2016 Topps cards. They are, in fact, cards from the team issue sets. I always seem to come across a lot of team issue cards in these which makes me wonder if perhaps those sets get bought from the manufacturer come season's end at overstock prices? Or do they go buy up team sets from closeout places like Ollie's? It's one of those mysteries of life I suppose.

Speaking of closeouts, that about closes out this repack. I guess I should mention as well that the sealed pack contained within was a pack of 1988 Donruss, something I am less than thrilled to open up. Oh well, I suppose I'll just save that for a rainy day post.