#21–Toronto Blue Jays (53-109) – 7th Place AL East (26 Cards)

The Jays started out the season 4-3, then a 5 game losing streak hit and the rest is history.  When a team loses 109 games there isn't much that went right, but the Jays were only in their 3rd year of operation and they were looking to build a contender from the ground up.  Shortstop Alfredo Griffin was one of those building blocks.  Griffin played gold glove caliber shortstop and hit .287 and was awarded the AL Rookie of the Year Award.  John Mayberry, who must have thought playing in Toronto was like light years from playing in KC, hit .274 with 21 homers.  DH Rico Carty, who could come out of a coma and go 2 for 5 began to bottom out and at 39 years of age was at the end of the road.  A 20 year old skinny kid from Brigham Young University took a shot at playing second base and realized he would be a better suited as a shooting guard in Boston.  Otto Velez (.288-15-48) had one of his best statistical season in part time play.  The Jays pitching ranked last in most statistical categories, which should come as no surprise.  Rookie Dave Stieb (8-8, 4.31) showed sighs of promise and was the only starter to not sport a losing record.  Tom Underwood (9-16, 3.69) and Dave Lemanczyk (8-10, 3.71) were hard luck losers.  Tom Buskey (6-10, 3.43) had 7 saves and not much help in the pen.  Toronto's pitching staff had 19 different men make the attempt, including position player Craig Kusick, who threw 3 2/3 innings.

Editor’s Note:  It was slim pickin’s when it came to photos to use during the first go-round.  Tony and Jim R did a great job tracking things down, but the Jays employed so many obscure and part time players it was very hard to track them down in a photo featuring a Jays uni or cap.  Then Chris Markham came to the rescue and scanned a ton of photos from his Blue Jays yearbooks (circa 1979-80).  Some of the players already had cards in the 1979 set, but because of the fine quality of his scans I decided to use them and create replacement cards.  In total Chris sent me photos that wound up in use on 15 cards posted here.  To round out the Blue Jays offering I had to do a lot of airbrushing on minor league cards.  The Luebber card required a lot of cut/paste and color changing skills.  Butch Edge is clearly wearing a Braves uniform, but what the heck.