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!

2018 Topps Big League Box Break - Part 2

So about a week or so ago, my five year old and I sat down and ripped open the rest of the box, here are some highlights. I figured now it a good as time as any to show this off with Archives coming out next Wednesday.

Here are some legends base cards to start things off with. I'll be honest, Roger Clemens was the last person I expected to see come out of a pack. Whitey Ford was a really neat card to find though.

Two Reds cards here. Adam Duvall was shipped to the Braves just before the trade deadline for a handful of prospects that may or may not turn out. Castillo has kind of struggled this year but I think he's still got a decent upside.

Some really cool horizontal cards. That Ketel Marte card of his hanging out with Orbit, the Astros mascot, is a super fun card. Also, I got another card for my growing Francisco Lindor collection.

Some more of the Players Weekend nickname cards.

I loved the ballpark landmarks cards and I might try to chase the whole batch of them. That card of the Green Monster is super, super cool.

And finally some of the gold parallel cards to close this out. I still maintain that the gold cards would've been better at one every other pack or so instead of every pack.

So that's a box of Topps Big League. Was it fun? Yes. Would I get another box of it next year? Depending on the price, maybe. For a first effort, I'd say it was pretty solid as the photography is good and it's a nice mix of Opening Day and the ill-fated Topps Bunt. 

A few things I'd like to see in the sophomore release is a standard base set (like flagship and Heritage) and cards like the Ballpark Landmarks and the Players Weekend being insert sets instead of part of the main set. I like the simple design too so I'd keep that in place. Also, I like the low price point of about $45-$50 a box which allows budget collectors like myself to afford the thrill of breaking a box every now and then.

Mystery Boxes From a Mystery Yard Sale

A few weeks ago, my step-mom dropped by for a few minutes on her way to some sort of wine tasting deal and dropped off the mountain of card boxes seen above. She said she was at a yard sale a while back and purchased these from some withered old man for the paltry sum of three dollars. After about a half hour or so, she headed off to her event and I did a quick peek through the boxes. It was too late at night to pull everything out and go through them so I left them on the kitchen table for the next day. The next afternoon, I started digging through the boxes. Yes, there was junk wax but not as much as I thought. Then, I did what any rational human being would do when presented with three well worn boxes of cards ... I sorted them!

As you can clearly see, there were cards from all different years and sets included. There was a lot more variety than I though there would be as I was expecting boxes filled with 1990 Donruss and 1989 Topps. Yeah, there was a lot of 1989 Topps, but it didn't phase me at all. After I sorted, I pulled the dupes and loaded some into the trade box and the rest went into the donation bag for Goodwill. After that, I went back through, pulled out the highlights and put the rest into my sorting box to await their turn to be put into pages and loaded into a binder (that reminds me, I need more binders).

Despite the influx of Donruss and Fleer in 1981, I still dig cards from the early 80s. There was a good amount of 1981 Fleer in the boxes so I scanned in some of the highlights. I about flipped when I saw the Jerry Koosman and Ron Cey cards, although I think the Cey might be a duplicate. There's just something about the Koosman card though, mainly because I'd forgotten he was still kicking around in the early 80s and there's also that awesome power blue Twins roadie.

1981 Topps is one of those sets where if you were to ask me what it looked like, it'd take me a while to try to remember it and at that point, I'd have to Google it. I feel it's often a forgotten set, overshadowed by the shiny new Fleer and Donruss sets (well, maybe not shiny on Donruss' part but definitely new). There were mostly commons from the set I found but a few minor stars from the time such as Randy Jones, Dave Cash, and Rick Sutcliffe.

A batch of cards from both 1982 Fleer and 1982 Topps. There weren't a lot of major "star" cards in these early 80s batches but still, there were minor stars, fan favorites, and some really fun photography.

Base set cards weren't the only thing in the boxes, there were some curiosities and randomness as well. Take these two 1984 O-Pee-Chee cards for example. Of all the O-Pee-Chee cards, somehow someway these wound up in a box in a dirty garage in southwest Ohio. As I was sorting through the cards initially, I hit a stack of 1984 Topps. I thought to myself "wouldn't it be something if there were some OPC cards in here?" Lo and behold the next cards were O-Pee-Chee. It's as if the cardboard gods were listening. (PS: Never mind the funky lines, my scanner decided it wanted to mess with me).

My curiosity was peaked with these cards as well. I've never seen cards from the 87 and 88 Topps sets that had the "now with ..." printing on them. I've only ever seen that with O-Pee-Chee cards. After doing a quick search on the Trading Card DB, it turns out that these are just standard old base cards, nothing special. However, to me they're pretty unique.

There were also a bunch of the glossy All-Stars and Rookie sets from the mid-80s. The Clemens All-Star card reminds me of something you might see from the early 70s with the palm trees and cars in the background.

Not to be outdone, Score joined the fun on the All-Star cards as well. The Mike Schmidt card looks like someone trimmed a side off of it with some scissors at some point.

One box was nothing but 87 and 88 Topps. I know everyone is probably sick of 87 Topps by now but these are a few of my favorites, especially the Jose Rijo A's card and the Langston M's card.

Some late 80's randomness including a Royce Clayton minor league card and a Tom Glavine RC.

Now a few of my favorites to wrap up the 80s, first this Randy Johnson 1989 Topps RC.

Some cards for the Eckersley collection.

And my favorite from the 80s cards .... Reggie as an Oriole!!!!

Ok, it's going to be hard for the 90s cards to top that. But that's to be continued on Thursday afternoon ...

You've Got Mail #71: All Trade Bait, All the Time

I always get excited when I get a USPS notification text that a package is on the way, especially when I know that cards are involved. A week or so ago, I received notification that a package was on the way from California. Judging by where it departed from, I surmised (correctly I might add) that the package was from Oscar at ATTBATT. A package from him never fails to disappoint and there were some really fun things to be had.

I'm a big fan of cards featuring players from unfamiliar teams. I guess these would fall in the "short term stops" category but Tom Seaver pitched six years for the Reds so that wouldn't really fit. However, the Valenzuela card certainly does. I had no recollection of Valenzuela as an Oriole. Apparently he bounced around a lot once he left LA. For the Orioles in 1993, he went 8-10 with a 4.94 ERA in 32 games. He would bounce around the majors for three more seasons before finally hanging up the cleats after stints with San Diego and St. Louis during the 1997 season.

The Roger Clemens card is another one that falls into that category of "short term stops". Every one remembers him as a member of the Red Sox and Yankees and some of his stint in Houston but everyone seems to forget when he played two seasons north of the border for Toronto. To say it was a shocker when he signed with Toronto was a bit of an understatement but it two seasons in the Great White North, he was an astonishing 41-13 with a 2.33 ERA. He also had his last 20-win season (1998) as a member of the Blue Jays. 

These guys definitely aren't short term stops either but they are cards from my favorite sets of 1991, Donruss and Topps. If I had to rank them (hey, there's an idea for a post!) I'd say that Donruss would be number 2 and Topps number 1. I enjoy both designs equally but Topps gets the edge just because Donruss turns to an ugly green color in series 2. But I digress. I've made the Lee Smith argument for the Hall in this space before (478 career saves, 3.03 lifetime ERA among other things) but now I think is a good time to make the argument for Fred McGriff.

During the 90s, McGriff was as good of a hitter as anyone, finishing off home runs and singles all the same with his trademark "helicopter" follow through. Over 19 seasons with Toronto, San Diego, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Chicago (NL), and Los Angeles, he amassed 493 HRs, 1,550 RBIs, 2,490 hits, with a career slash line of .284/.377/.509 in 2,460 career games. In the awards category, he was a five time All-Star, won three Silver Slugger awards, finished in the top 10 of MVP voting six times, and won a World Series with Atlanta in 1995. With those kinds of stats, I honestly don't see how he's only getting 20-25% of the vote during the Hall of Fame voting season.

More cards for the Eckersley collection. Even though I never got to see him pitch on a regular basis, there's just something about his cards that make me want to collect them. I think it's probably the fact that most every one of his cards (at least his Oakland cards) see to catch him in some sort of weird pitching position, save for the 1994 Upper Deck card pictured above. 

Player collections and team collections weren't the only thing that the envelope covered. There was a decent amount of stuff for my team collections too. First up, this smattering of Expos. I always kind of liked the 1997 Upper Deck design with the caption on the photo and the faux wood grain-ish border on the bottom. Also, how cool is Marquis Grissom in the powder blue uniform on the 91 Donruss card?

The other team well represented was the Indians, both old and new. The Winfield on the top can fall into the category of "sunset card" and it's probably the trippiest sunset card of all time. Winfield only appeared in 46 games for the Tribe in 1995 after infamously being traded for dinner. If you've never heard the story, Winfield was traded to the Indians by the Twins two weeks after the 1994 strike started for a player to be named later. Since the season got cancelled, Cleveland and Minnesota executives went to dinner with the Indians picking up the bill.

The newer cards are 2016 and 2017 releases. Seeing the 2017 Heritage and 2017 Series 1 gives me the urge to pickup more Heritage packs along with some Archives and Series 2. 

Thanks for the great cards Oscar! I'll be sure to load up a PWE for you soon.