Off-Topic Forum

Just saw that Damaso Garcia died today two months after Tony Fernadez died.  For Blue Jays fans in the early to mid 80s, teh two were part of a youthful club that saw the team rise out of the cellar to win their first Division championship in 1985. Both were a big part of that winning team along with their all-star outfield cast.  RIP

I've been seeing a lot of this in the news being from the Toronto area. Unfortunately, I never saw Garcia play since I was born in '85. Nonetheless, as a Jays fan and card collector I'm familiar with who he is. I saw one tribute list him as the greatest second baseman in Jays history. I know that Alomar would be most people's answer, but some people almost reacted with anger to such a mention in his tributes. I don't pretend to be an expert on the topic and definitely am not one of Damaso Garcia, but know he put up some pretty good numbers as a leadoff hitter for a division winner, so that's nothing to sneeze at. I just feel it slightly inappropriate to get into a big argument over that sort of thing when his death is so fresh. It's not like as if you're annointing Craig Grebeck or Kelly Johnson as one of their all-time great second baseman! Looking back, Garcia may have been one of the Jays' first true All-Star level players.

It seems like he had some health struggles pretty soon after retiring that I wasn't aware of. His Wikipedia has a brief sumary.

I saw him play and watched the development of the team that won the Division in 1985.  No, Alomar was better but Garcia definitely was very good.  His fiery attitude did draw negative criticism from management and fans but when you only hear one side of the story from the media, you can think negative.  He wanted to win and also to be personally as good as he believed he could be.  Being fiery about that is not a bad thing.

The 1985 team was full of all-stars - Garcia, Fernandez, Moseby, Barfield, Bell, Stieb, Clancy, etc.  The list could go on but it was a team that won together. It went on to win till the disaster in the last week of 1987. After that, they tore much of it down and rebuilt through trades, by far the biggest one being Fernandez / McGriff to San Diego for Carter / Alomar.