2014 Durham Bulls Team Set

I have done this a few times with some other posts, but in order to get the right vibe to look at the cards, you need to watch the video below as you are reading the post, in order to create the proper atmosphere for look at pictures of Bulls baseball cards.  The Bulls always have some pretty good choices for pre-game music and I always walk away with a few new things for my IPod, particularly things I can listen to in the morning to get myself pepped up for school (work-same difference).

Is the video playing?  Good, the Durham Bulls card set is a standard 30 card Minor League issue.  I was a little worried about buying this set after seeing the quality of some of the All-Star cards for the International League.  These cards are excellent, however, and were produced by Choice baseball cards with photography by Brian Fleming.  He has some cool Durham Bulls related photos on his Twitter page.  I should follow him.  Here are the cards....

First off, I will say that I love the design.  Has there ever been a bad baseball card design which used a wood frame?  I cannot think of a single instance.  I like the placement of the team logo in the top corner and the simple white and black nameplate on the bottom slightly off center.  The card is dominated by the photography which is a nice mixture of live game shots and a few standing/still shots.  

The player selection is also excellent.  Take out the three coach cards and the mascot and the remaining 26 players were all good selections.  It's hard to account for movement on Minor League teams, but you figure most of the key contributors for the first half of a minor leagues team should be in the card set.  

I love that players like Jerry Sands and Brad Boxberger, who spent a lot of time up in Tampa, made the set.  I love that Robby Price made the set despite not appearing for the last month of the season.  The guy played everywhere and did anything he could for the team.  If I could add one player to the card set I would put in Jeremy Moore, who joined the team mid-season, and made some good contributions to the team.  If I could take away one card I would remove Braulio Lara who only appeared in nine games for the Bulls before spending most of the year in Double A Montgomery.  

Overall an excellent effort and great team set to add to my collection.  I have not put any off these up here before, but might have to add that to my offseason list of things to do.