Just Imagine A Carlos Delgado Return to Toronto

Carlos Delgado has won Roberto Clemente awards. Delgado has earned Silver Slugger awards. Delgado has nearly won a Most Valuable Player Award.

Throughout Delgado's eleven seasons as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays from 1993-2004 he became the cornerstone of the franchise. Fans came to see Carlos Delgado hit another homerun. Like Roy Halladay after him, Delgado was a humanitarian off the field. A return to Toronto has to be in the cards. Delgado sits at 473 lifetime homeruns. If he could hit 27 as a Blue Jay, Delgado could have NUMBER 500 with the team it all began with. Delgado, alongside Jim Thome might be the only players in the steroid era that put up legitimate homerun totals and should have been somewhat lone superstars. That's not how it turned out though...

It was: HOMERUN SAMMY SOSA! HOMERUN MARK MCGWIRE! HOMERUN BARRY BONDS! HOMERUN MANNY RAMIREZ! HOMERUN RAFAEL PALMERIO!

And somewhere along the line, arguably one of the best clean players of his era for his greatness at the plate got overlooked and overshadowed.

Delgado could help bring a playoff berth to Toronto- something Delgado was never able to offer to Toronto fans in his storied eleven year tenure that saw the old greats like Roberto Alomar, Paul Molitor, John Olerud, Joe Carter, Tony Fernandez, Roger Clemens, David Wells, and Pat Hengten be replaced by new greats like Roy Halladay, Shawn Green, Chris Carpenter, and Vernon Wells.

There just weren't as many new greats as old greats, and that's probably a good measure of the ticker tape when it comes to the difference between Toronto's old teams and Toronto's new teams. But Delgado's been offered a unique opportunity here- a chance to play for a team under a new vision, a new direction with tremendous upside. The old greats Cito Gaston and Paul Beeston are still around alongside energetic new general manager Alex Anthopolous are rebuilding a team to compete for years to come. If Delgado could be the Dave Winfield of 2010, that's all Toronto could ask for. The aging slugger that comes ready to play, ready to give a clutch performance and protect a slugger that desperately needs protecting in the lineup to succeed much like Roger Maris did, Vernon Wells. We saw a long line of players benefit from batting in front or behind of Carlos Delgado like Brad Fullmer, Shawn Green, Vernon Wells and even Jose Canseco to name a few.

Toronto does have a solid team for 2010- bashers Adam Lind, Aaron Hill, Travis Snider, Vernon Wells, Bautista, Overbay, and Buck could all put up 20 homeruns or more. Delgado could bring 30 homeruns to the table.  Once Delgado and his agents realize the potential of power this Blue Jays squad has for hitting bombs all the time, he might as well take another shot on a town that fell in love with Delgado years ago and now yearns for him. It's one of those rare occurances where a comeback to an old team might just be the best thing for both parties. He would join the short list of Tony Fernandez and David Wells as the only Blue Jays to have come back to Toronto for all the right reasons.

And most of all: it's to fill the rows and rows of empty blue seats.

I can only imagine the standing ovation Delgado would recieve Opening Day.