Project Durahm Bulls #26- Carl Crawford

2002 Durham Bulls 

Background- 
The Durham Bulls have been successful throughout their tenure as the Triple A team for the Tampa Bay Rays/Devil Rays.  The 2002 squad was the second Bulls team to win a division championship in Triple A, but the first team to take home the league crown.  The team's star players included Crawford, Rocco Baldelli, Aubrey Huff, current manager Jared Sandberg, and Toby Hall.  Carl Crawford only appeared in 87 games that season for the Bulls before he was promoted to Tampa where he closed out the season.  He had 7 home runs, 9 triples, and 17 doubles during that half season stint with a .297/.335/.456 line.  Crawford would go on to play 15 seasons in the Majors with the Rays, Red Sox, and Dodgers.

While playing for the Rays, Crawford led the American League in triples and stolen bases four times, made the American League All-Star team four times, won the All-Star Game MVP in 2009 after making a game saving catch....

on what would have been a home run by Rockies first baseman Todd Helton.  

I always felt like Crawford took a lot of unnecessary criticism during the second half of his career.  He left the Rays for the Red Sox after the 2010 season for a 7 years and 142 million dollars.  He played what amounts to a season and a half in Boston.  One season was definitely subpar, the second was filled with injuries.  The Red Sox eventually dumped him on the Dodgers where he played a few more partial seasons before he was released.  Can't really blame Crawford for taking a large contract offer, or slowing down because of injuries.  

Card- 

The Traded/Update set disappeared for awhile in the mid to late 1990s.  Topps skipped the set in 1996, 1997, and 1998.  After a three year hiatus we got the 1999 Topps Traded set which was sold as a complete set with one autographed card per box.  There were some nice names in the product including Carl Crawford, C.C. Cabathia, Pat Burrell, Adam Dunn, and Mark Mulder.  The autographs on these cards weren't Crawford's best signature, but he was just removed from high school when he signed these cards.  He actually ended up with a pretty decent signature by the time his career wound down.  

At the time of the sets release, and throughout the early 2000s, the autographs of the successful players in this set had good value.  Most of the autographs of the players listed above, including Crawford, are very affordable at this point.  If you are not a huge autograph collector, but like these cards there was also a Chrome version of this set.  There were no autographs in that version of the 1999 Topps Traded set.