Opening Day Through the Years

Monday, March 31 2008 @ 12:59 AM EDT

Thanks to the stupefying greatness of Sean Forman's BaseballReference.com. we can now view the Opening Day starting lineup for every team, every season, ever. Here are Blue Jay Opening Day lineups dating back to that Opening Opening Day back in '77. Go take a look, revel in a trip down memory lane, then come back here and answer these questions ...

• What was Toronto's best Opening Day lineup?
• What was the most disappointing? (That is, the lineup that psyched you up so much you can't believe they didn't go 144-18 or something.)
• Do any one-time-only Opening Day starters really strike you as surprising? (Either that they didn't start more than once or that they started even once at all?) Think Lance Parrish, Danny Ainge, Garth Iorg, Sil Campusano -- and of course, Mark Bomback.
• Has any team had a run of solid consistency in CF over the past three decades to match Toronto's Moseby-White-Cruz-Wells streak?
• No player has ever (yet) started 10 Opening Day games as a Jay -- Ernie Whitt leads the way with nine starts, while Lloyd Moseby, Jesse Barfield and, of all people, Alex Gonzalez each had eight. Roy Halladay is scheduled to make his sixth Opening Day start today -- already the most by a Jay hurler -- and Vernon Wells his seventh. What current Blue Jay (if any) will be the first to get to 10?
• After winning their inaugural Opening Day game, the Jays dropped eight of their next nine -- but since then, they have won 14 of 21, so are 16-15 overall to start the season. Does this matter, do you care, so what?
• What are your most indelible Opening Day memories?
  
• Anything else jump out at you?

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