Retired Numbers: Toronto Blue Jays

(This is part of a series on retired numbers, with somewhat of a focus on Retired Number Bandits — players who wore a number that was later retired at any point after the person for whom it was retired first wore it. See the introduction for more information and explanation on Bandits.)

The Toronto Blue Jays have only retired one number, but not before giving it to several other players first:

Roberto Alomar, 12

The son of a former big leaguer and the younger brother of another, Alomar played for seven franchises. While he only spent five seasons with the Blue Jays — and two of those were shortened by the strike of 1994 — he still played 57 percent more games with Toronto than he did in San Diego, his second-longest stop.

Alomar was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2011 and is the only player to be inducted as a member of the Blue Jays — Rickey Henderson, Paul Molitor, Phil Niekro, Frank Thomas, and Dave Winfield all played for the Blue Jays but are wearing other hats on their plaques.

Between Alomar’s departure from Toronto in 1995 and the retiring of his number 12 in 2011, it was worn by Rich Butler, Tilson Brito, Tony Phillips, Willie Greene, Luis Lopez, and Edwin Encarnacion.

Here’s video of Alomar’s Hall of Fame acceptance speech:

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