I wonder if it was the cold that killed his career

Sometimes you come across a card that strikes you as funny.   Then you look at the player on the card and you think to yourself "did he really play for the Jays"?  Then you look up his career stats on baseball reference and think that the cold in Toronto may have done this player in.

Reference the card from 1997 Score for Carlos Garcia.

I'm not exactly sure what that is on Carlos' head.  I do know that this picture was taken on the road somewhere during his time with the Jays, because with the dome in Toronto, he wouldn't have had to wear that whatever you might call it on his head.

What I do know is this.   The 4 years before he came to Toronto he played in Pittsburgh, and actually fared quite well.  His average ranged between .269 and .294, he stole double digits in bases 3 out of the 4 years, and had 100+ hits in each of those 4 years. 

It wasn't the same during his lone season in Toronto.  A .220 average and only 77 hits started the downward trend for the remainder of his career.  The '98 season saw him move to Anaheim and play in only 19 games, and the '99 season would be the last in the majors, just a half dozen games with the Padres.  Carlos played for a couple of seasons after that in the Yankees minor league system before calling it a career.

Carlos is actually back in the organization where he started; he is the manager for the AA Altoona Curve in the Eastern League.  I've been to Altoona, it's a nice place.  Definitely not as cold as Toronto.

thanks for reading, Robert