Out of Place – Juan Guzman

2001 Topps – Juan Guzman

Juan Guzman was one of the Blue Jays’ best pitchers in the early 1990’s.  From 1991 to 1993, he compiled a record of 40-11 with a 3.28 ERA and 482 strikeouts in 540.1 innings pitched (8.0 K/9).  Not a bad few years.  He’s definitely remembered as one of the keys to Toronto’s success throughout that time, including some great postseason performances in the ALCS and World Series.  His success in a Blue Jays uniform makes this card of him with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays fairly disturbing – for more reasons than just the fact that he was lacking his classic Guzman flow.

Here are a few interesting facts (to me anyway – this is about me, not you) about the last few years of Guzman’s career, after he was traded from the Blue Jays in 1998:

-He pitched 32 games in Baltimore, 12 in Cincinnati and just one in Tampa Bay
-In his one and only game in Tampa, he allowed 8 earned runs in 1.2 innings for an ERA of 43.20.
-He was traded in 1999 by Baltimore to Cincinnati for Jacobo Sequea and some guy named BJ Ryan, who would eventually end up in Guzman’s original MLB home in Toronto.  Ah, the circle of life.
-He was paid $6 million by Tampa Bay in 2001 to play 2 games with their AA affiliate in Orlando and 10 with their AAA affiliate in Durham.

So there, now you know a bunch of new stuff.

High Tech – 1990 Upper Deck, Wade Boggs

 

1990 Upper Deck – Wade Boggs

So, Wade Boggs was a pretty decent hitter.  Even though he sold his soul to the Yankees in December 1992, and ended his career with Tampa Bay about a decade before they were good, he still had 3010 hits and a career batting average of .328.  I guess you could say it made sense that Upper Deck wanted to use some fancy technology to show us his swing (turn your head sideways, it kind of makes sense).

However, Wade Boggs might be more famous because of the legend that claims he once drank 64 beers on a cross-country flight from Boston to Los Angeles.  Regardless of what the actual number was, I think it’s pretty clear that Boggs liked a little drinky drinky in his day, and we should help keep the legend alive for future generations of high-functioning alcoholics.