1989 Durham Bulls Part 1

I am going back and sharing a few old Durham Bulls team sets from yesteryear.  I thought I would split the 1989 team in two different posts.  The last one on the 1995 Bulls teams seemed like a lot.  It was a lot to type in one sitting, and probably a long read too.

The 1989 Bulls set came out one year after Bull Durham, so of course it has a Kevin Costner card in the set.  It's actually the last card in the set, but it follows the same general design patterns.  The cards in my scans are the blue framed version of this set, but you can also find all of these cards with a orange and blue frame too.


The front of the card....

and the card back.  

The cards have a nice finish for the late 1980s.  They are not the quality of the Upper Deck cards, but they are better than the base Topps set cards.  I put them more in the league of the glossy Topps send in cards from the 1980s.  The centering is a little bit off on some of these cards, but overall they are in good condition.  

First group of cards.

Two of the better names in this set are here in the first scan.  Avery had a great 1989 with the Bulls and headed into 1990 as the top prospect in all of baseball according to Baseball America.  He finished the season in Double A with Greenville, but made the jump all the way up to the Majors after that stint.  Burlingame had two great years with the Bulls.  In 1989, he started out the year with the Bulls, went 4-0 and had a shortened perfect game.  He also pitched with the Bulls in 1991 and had good numbers.  Eventually injuries caught up with Burlingame and he never reached the Majors.  

Card backs.  

not the best scan, I caught off the tops of the cards a bit.  I like that they put the schools on the back of the cards.  Probably does not mean too much for the players coming out of high school, but pretty cool for the college players.  

Not much happening in this group of cards.  Casarotti was the only player in this group to make it past Double A, but he never managed to make it to the Majors.  

Jamie Cuesta went to Emporia State.  Did not see that one coming.  

A few interesting players in this group.  Wes Currin is from Oxford, North Carolina which is not far from Durham.  He also attended UNC-Wilmington for college.  This was his last season of professional baseball, so at least he got to play at home.  

Jim Czajkowski played a few games for the Rockies in 1994, so he is one of the players in this set who actually made it up to the Majors.  You have to remember that this is an A Ball team.  Flip through a set of the Bulls now while they are in Triple A and very few do not the Majors, opposite is true here.  He was 30 when he made it, but he got there and that's all that counts.  He actually had a dominate year playing for the Bulls in 1989, ending the season with an ERA of 0.99, and 14 saves.  

This Brian Deak card makes him look tiny.  His Baseball Reference page says that he was 6'0, confirming what the back of the card says, so it has to be the card?  He led the Bulls with 21 home runs in 1989.  Deak also struck out over 100 times that season, almost a K per game.  Clearly he played during the wrong era.  Nowadays, he could be Brian Dozier.

This entire group pretty much washed out in A Ball.  Dewey did not even make it the whole season with the Bulls, the others were done at the end of the 1989 season.  

The backs of the cards.  

Last two for this post.  

These last two cards are not extra special.  Just the way I split the set, they ended up on their own.  Similar to the last group, both of these players washed out in the Minors.

and the backs of the cards.

More 1989 Bulls later in the week.