Canadians in the MLB

I saw this tweet, and it occurred to me how rare it was to see Canadians in the MLB in the 1980s

#OTD 47 years ago, the Houston Astros sign Canadian RHP Gordie Pladson (New Westminster, B.C.) as an amateur free agent.

He pitched 20 games in parts of four seasons with the Astros from 1979 to 1982. pic.twitter.com/nqzeIuf4CF

— Kevin Glew (@coopincanada) June 30, 2020

So, I decided to take a look.  I started in 1979, and these were the Canadian born players who were in the MLB:

Fergie Jenkins - Hall of famer who retired in 1983, after a long career mainly with the Cubs and Rangers (and a pit stop in Boston)
Reggie Cleveland - retired in 1981 - also one of the best Canadians to ever play for the Red Sox
Bill Atkinson - pitched his last 10 games for the Expos in 1979
Dave McKay - was with the Blue Jays, and played until retiting in Oakland in1982
Terry Puhl - 1978 all star, who played with the Astros until 1990, before retiring in KC in 1991
John Hiller - two time all star who played in Detroit his whole career, before retiring in 1980

Along with the aforementioned Gordie Pladson, that's a total of seven.  That's the most there would be until the 1990s.

In 1980, Paul Hodgson had a handful of at-bats for the Blue Jays, and with Atkinson having retired, that kept the total at seven.

Playing Pepper 2020

Since I stole this logo, check out
 https://www.chilipeppersbaseball.com/

Just realized that I didn't post this year's Playing Pepper Red Sox preview.  For those of you who don't regularly follow me, this is an annual series hosted by Cardinals blogger C70 at the bat  where he asks bloggers of all MLB teams to answer a few questions about the team they write about.  You can see all the previews here.  I wrote this back in Feburary, and, well, a few things have changed since, so he will be doing a version 2.

These are the questions I will be answering:

1) Does the shortened season work for or against your team?
2) What are you most looking forward to seeing?
3) Do you believe the season will be fully completed?  How about the playoffs?

I have some thoughts on these, but welcome any input from my readers. Comment here, or tweet at me here https://twitter.com/BaseballRuben with your thoughts.

For reference, these were the first set of questions and my answers: