A Venerable Old Card Part 7

There were some really cool Minor League sets that were put out during the 1990s.  There were still Bowman cards, but they were pretty much the same as today with Minor League players wearing Major League uniforms.  Still, other brands of cards actually had pictures of Minor Leaguers in Minor League uniforms.  There are a lot of minor card companies, like Classic, that put out some of these sets, but some of the best cards actually came from Upper Deck.

Just like the Pro Debut set, or Heritage Minor Leagues set does the job to day for Minor League collectors, the Upper Deck Minor League sets were there 1990s equivalent.  I'd liken the Upper Deck sets more towards the Pro Debut set just simply based on the fact that Upper Deck used the same design for their Minor League set each year as they did for their regular base set.

Like all things that are in a Minor League set, there are plenty of duds in these sets.  Guys who never made it to the Majors, but they still have a baseball card.  Still cool I imagine if you had a Minor League team to follow when these sets were put out.  I was still living in St. Louis at the time, so I was really into collecting the Cardinals and whoever appealed to me at the moment.  I did not really touch the Minor League set until I moved to North Carolina and got into watch some of the local teams.

I like flipping back through the sets to find Major Leaguers.   There are some Durham Bulls in there too, but one of my favorite players from these sets resides with the Cardinals.  The team had drafted this kid out of high school with the fourth overall selection in the 1991 draft.  He was supposed to be one of the next stars for the Cardinals.  Here's his 1994 Upper Deck Minors card.....

Dmitri never really stuck around with the Cardinals.  He had a great 1996 in the Minors, got called up at the end of the season, and had a big hit in the Postseason.  Dmitri kind of disappeared in 1997 and ended up getting traded at the end of the season when the Cardinals picked up Mark McGwire from the A's.  Da Meat Hook went on to have a solid, not spectacular, baseball career.  More importantly, Dmitri is also a pretty big baseball card collector.  Had a few nice cards back in the day before he auctioned them off.