1995 Durham Bulls Team Set

I post the Durham Bulls team set every summer when it comes out.  We are getting into the middle of the season and this year's edition of the team set will likely be appearing at some point during the next month.  Thought it would be fun to go back and check out some of the older Durham Bulls team sets in my collection.  I have a box of these sets that run the gambit from the early 1980s through their most recent teams.

Thought we'd start out with the 1995 set.  It's a good mid point.

It was the first season that the Bulls played in their current stadium The Durham Bulls Athletic Park.  They were still an A Ball team in the Carolina League at this point, not in Triple A yet.  They were also still a Braves affiliate.  The Rays and Triple A are still a few more years away.  

Like many of the older 1990s Durham Bulls team sets almost all are sponsored by The Durham Herald Sun.  It's the local Durham newspaper.  This set is also sponsored by Crystal Springs Water.  I am not sure if I have ever had Crystal Springs water, not sure I really want to though.

The 1995 Bulls finished dead last in the Carolina League, but they did have a few Major Leaguers on the roster and they also made an ESPN Page 2 list for greatest brawls in the history of baseball.  The fight took place on May 22nd against Winston-Salem Warthogs.  It rates as the fifth best baseball fight of all-time.

A description from ESPN:

The occasion: "Strike Out Domestic Violence" night at Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The catalyst: Warthogs pitcher Jason Kummerfeldt, who hit three Bulls batters before the third inning ended. The charger: Bulls batter John Knott, who was sure Kummerfeldt was doing it on purpose. The end result: fisticuffs and one kick to the face of Winston-Salem pitcher Glen Cullop, who ended up hospitalized with a broken jaw and lost five teeth. A splendid show for the anti-domestic-violence fans who cheered on their Bulls when the punches started flying. Ten players were ejected, and within a few days Carolina League president John Hopkins meted out $6,000 in fines and 124 days of suspensions, penalizing every player on both clubs except the next night's starting pitchers, who were both in the stands charting pitches. 

The card design is very 1990s.  They made Saved By The Bell cards at one point, this team set reminds me of something that could be a design for that type of set.  A quick look at the back of the card.  

Anyone of note in this group of players above?  Gator McBride actually ended up in the Frontier League playing for the Chillicothe Paints where he enjoyed one of the greatest seasons in league history.  He is now in the Frontier League Hall of Fame.  Pretty impressive feat.  

Not many Major Leaguers in this set of cards, but Randall Simon is one of them.  Although, his best known moment in the Majors involved hitting one of the sausage racers in Milwaukee with a bat while he was playing for the Pirates.  Probably be cooler if I could say he had an important hit in a playoff game, but no.  

None of this group made it to the Majors, but in some ways Lou Benbow did, at least in the movies.  He was an extra for the movie Major League II prior to playing the Bulls in 1995.  That's sort of like playing in the Majors...

Micah Bowie is another of the Major Leaguers in this set.  He appeared in games over six different Major League seasons, but that only totaled 88 games.  Most of those 88 games came during a two year stint with the Washington Nationals in 2006 and 2007.  They used him as a long reliever and a spot starter, which added up to half of his career games in the Majors.  

Carey Paige was actually a high draft pick who never got out of A Ball.  He has a bunch of cards in products like Best and Front Row, many are with the Bulls, but he never got very far for whatever reason.

Matt Byrd led the team in saves, almost led the team in strikeouts too, but was bested out by one of the starting pitchers.  The 1995 Bulls were not a very good team, but Byrd was one of the few players who had a good season.

David Toth is the most successful player in this group.  He made it all the way to Triple A, but never got called up to the Majors.  Of all the cards in the set, this might be my favorite card.  The placeholder card in the front of the set celebrated the opening of the Bulls new stadium, but very few of the cards actually show much of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.  

This card shows the first base side of the stadium.  I would recognize the green beams and beige bricked press box anyway.  Nice to see a little bit of the new stadium in a set that is advertising the fact that it's new and shiny.  

It's not a new stadium anymore, but it is still fairly shiny.  

Not much going on here.  The Jaime Hicks card is another that shows off parts of the new stadium.  It looks similar to its current self with the bullpen in the same place, in play, down the first base line.  

John LeRoy is one of the more interesting cards in this set.  Yes, he is wearing a blue t-shirt that looks a little out of place in the set, but he is another player from this set who reached the Majors.  LeRoy actually only pitched in 1 Major League game against the Mets at the end of September of 1997.  He pitched two innings and picked up the win.  LeRoy returned to the Minors the next season, making an appearance with the Durham Bulls, but this time the Triple A version.  There are a few other players who played for both the A and AAA versions of the Bulls, but the list is short.  

Ryan Jacobs actually led the 1995 Durham Bulls in wins and strikeouts.  There were only three pitchers on the team with more than 20 starts, and Jacobs had the most out of that group with 25.  In all, he won 11 games in 25 starts, which is pretty good considering the team only had 61 wins and finished 17 games under .500.  

Jeff Bock was actually a local player who ended up in the Braves organization, eventually finding his way to playing at home with the Durham Bulls.  He went to Cary High School, which is about 15 to 20 minutes away from downtown Durham.  After high school he attended Barton College, which is in Wilson, North Carolina, about an hour east of Raleigh.  

Jamie Arnold is another player who made it to the Majors, appearing for the Dodgers in 1999, again in 2000, before ending his season with the Cubs after a trade in late July.  

Let's save Snitker for last, obviously the most important person in this group.  

Matt West managed the Bulls for two seasons in 1994 and 1995.  Both seasons ended with the team under .500.  West also played for the Bulls in the early 1980s, starting 12 games, and winning two of them with the 1983 team.  Interestingly enough, that 1983 team was managed by Brian Snitker.  That brings us back to the current Braves manager.  

First off, Snitker played 3 games for the Durham Bulls in 1980.  It was his final season as a player in the Minor Leagues, all of which were spent in the Braves system.  

Snitker has actually been in the Braves organization forever.  His first managing job was with the 1982 Anderson (South Carolina) Braves in the South Atlantic League.  During the 1983 and 1984 seasons he managed the Bulls, ended up elsewhere for the 1985 and 1986 seasons, before he returned to the Bulls for 1987.  In all, Snitker managed a Braves Minor League team during 20 different seasons between 1982 and 2016.  The seasons he did not manage, he worked as a coach.  

Nice that the Braves gave him a chance to manage the Major League team.  The team appears to be headed in a good direction.  

Wonderful Monds is one of the all-time great names in baseball.  He never made it to the Majors, but had some nice years during his time in the Minors.  

Bill Slack is another interesting story on this team.  He was a Minor League pitcher for the Red Sox for 14 seasons between 1952 and 1966, and for some reason a White Sox Minor League team for one game in 1959.  Slack never reached the Majors, so he went into coaching.  

He started at age 28 in 1961 with the Waterloo Hawks, a Red Sox Minor League team, and managed the team to a record that was 30 games over .500.  Slack then spent the next forty years managing, or coaching, various Minor League teams.  The first twenty five years of his coaching career were spent with the Red Sox, the second 15 were with the Braves.  

In 2002, Slack was elected to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.  Did I mention he was from Canada? 

Last card, we have got the batboys and a picture of the DBAP.  I know there are people who make fun of teams when they throw in cards of trainers, batboys, or clubhouse guys, but I always think it's nice when they get a card too.