At some point I ended up with a big chunk of the Carolina League 50th Anniversary set which was put out in 1994. There are a lot of great names in the set. Being a few cards away from completion I am giving serious thought to making this a project for later in the summer. Here is a look at the checklist. I am missing seven of the cards and the guy who gave me this set was not really into giving me the name players from the set...
I think we can pull this one off. Last week I was missing eight of the cards, but picked up a card of the best Raleigh Capitals player in the set. The Caps are long since defunct and their stadium has been torn and replaced by a parking lot for service vehicles for the City of Raleigh. I hopped a fence or two, and ventured down an alley last year to check out the teams former stadium Devereux Meadows. There is still a wall there with some plumbing and electrical fixtures sticking out of the concrete.....
and the team's most famous player? None other than Carl Yastrzemski. This is his card in the Carolina League's 50th Anniversary set....
The back of the card has his statistics with the Red Sox and also with the Caps during his time in the Carolina League. Looks like Yaz had a pretty good year playing in Raleigh.
This was actually his first season playing in the minors and was promoted all the way to Triple A in 1960 before joining the Red Sox in 1961. The minor league systems were roughly the same size that they are today by the time Yastrzemski rolled through the minors, so jumping to the Majors after two years of play was just as big of accomplishment then as it is today. More on the Raleigh Capitals on Friday....
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