1990 Durham Bulls Team Set - Part 1

I have been trying to circle back and do some posts on some of the older Durham Bulls team sets that I have been able to find over the years. They have had pretty good success with the level of talent that has passed through town, so almost every Bulls team set that I have in my collection has some recognizable names in there. 

Players who are just strictly Minor Leaguers can be fun too.  Some have good stories, or in the case of this set, stories to follow up on.

For the 1990 set, I am going to split it up into three different posts.  It's a thirty card set, same size as some of the others, but it's a little busy at the moment and blogging is my chill time at night.  I cannot spend my entire day writing.

Let's go.

The first card in the set is the team picture.  I like this look a lot better than just some filler front cards with a checklist.  That happens frequently with Minor League sets, especially with some of the older sets from the 1980s and 1990s.  The Bulls were still playing at the Durham Athletic Park at this point, same stadium as Bull Durham.  The park is now used for a variety of different events, including the home field for the North Carolina Central Eagles.  Not a high level of college baseball, still always good to get to a game there at least once a year.  

Rather than a checklist, the back of the card simply has the players identified from the team picture on the front of the card.  

There are a few players in the team picture who do not appear in the team set, so I guess this is a nice way to squeeze a few more team members onto a card.  Like many of the 1980s and 1990s Bulls team sets, this is sponsored by the Herald-Sun.  There are a few years where there are two different Bulls sets, the Herald-Sun always marked the line between official and cheap mass produced Minor League set from some company like STAR. 

Let's look at some players.

First player card in the set is a former Major Leaguer, also Kevin Mitchell's cousin.  Keith Mitchell appeared in the Majors for four different teams: Braves, Mariners, Reds, and Red Sox, all though he only appeared in 128 games and had slightly less than 300 plate appearances.  His last appearance in the Majors was with the Red Sox in 1998.  Mitchell left the U.S. for awhile and played in both Korea and Mexico.  Eventually he returned to the states and made a comeback attempt with the Reds in 2003.  A .192 batting average in Triple A, along with 16 strikeouts in just 52 at bats probably do a lot to explain why it was a short lived experiment.

Not great numbers in the years before he got to Durham, but he did really well with the Bulls in 1990.  He hit .294/.411/.388 with 18 stolen bases.  Good enough that he was in Triple A the next season and got 48 games in with the Braves by the end of the summer.    

Champion was picked by the Braves in the 2nd Round of the 1986 MLB Draft.  In 1990, he was playing with the Bulls in A Ball.  Not a really fast climber.  Still, he had a decent year with the Bulls and got promoted to Double Greenville later in the season.  

He played the following season in Double A and then left professional baseball.  His 1991 was not the best, still a little surprised that it ended his career.  Champion was still just 23.  Perhaps an injury, or maybe he really did just walk away.  Hard to tell.

Deak was drafted with the Braves third round pick in 1986, their next selection after they picked Brian Champion.  This was the catcher's second season with the Bulls.  He did not hit very much, but he still got promoted to Double A.  Deak did walk a lot.  His career Minor League on-base percentage was .386, there were several years where he was over .400.  

Deak played in the Minors for awhile.  He made it to Triple A in 1992 and got chances at that level with the Braves, Mariners, Padres, and Cardinals.  Always room for a good catcher.  Deak never made it to the Majors though,  

The Braves signed Ken Harring as an amateur free agent out of LeMoyne College.  It's a small Jesuit school in Syracuse, New York.  He had a great first summer in the Braves organization at Idaho Falls in the Pioneer League.  His summer with the Bulls was not so great.  It was his last in professional baseball.  

Although it did not work out in professional baseball, Harring has done very well for himself in coaching at the college level.  He has had a few different stops along the way, but has had a long and successful stay at UMass-Lowell where he has coached baseball since 2005.  Seems like a nice program, they share a stadium with the Lowell Spinners, a Red Sox Minor League team.  Harring should pass the 400 win mark at some point next season.  

Castleberry was apart of some good teams during his college career at Oklahoma.  During his senior year at OU, he hit over .300, lead the team to an impressive 18-6 record in the Big 8, and helped get the Sooners into the college baseball tournament.  Braves used their third round pick in 1989 to draft the infielder.  His summer in Durham was not his best, but the Braves ended up using him in a trade the following summer to land Danny Heep for their bench from the White Sox.  

Castleberry had a long career in the Minors.  10 years in all, he spent time with the Braves, White Sox, Brewers, Expos, Rangers, and Cubs.  While Castleberry never reached the Majors, he played several of his later season in Triple A and probably played well enough to deserve a chance at a Major League roster.  For example, in 1995 he had a .294/.368/.404 slash line with the Expos Triple A team, but never received a promotion.  

Another former Major League player.  Mordecai had a long Major League career with the Braves, Expos, and Marlins as an infielder.  He mainly used as a utility player for those teams.  Mordecai won the World Series twice as a Major Leaguer.  He was on the 1995 Braves and the 2003 Marlins.  Mordecai also appeared in the 1996 World Series as a Brave, but the Yankees won that year.  As for his time with the Bulls, this was the first of two years that Mordecai played in Durham.  

Mordecai his .280/.379/.406 for the 1990 Braves and spent the first half of 1991 with the Bulls before he was promoted to Double A.  He reached the Majors during the 1994 season appearing in just 4 games, but played in Atlanta full time in 1995.  

According to Baseball-Reference this is Don Campbell. He was a Braves draft pick out of Texas Southern in 1988.  Campbell had a great first summer with the Braves Rookie League team in Idaho Falls.  He had a rough year with the Bulls in 1990.  For whatever reason, he did not play professional baseball in 1991.  

During the 1992 season, he briefly appeared in the Minors for the Cardinals A Ball team in St. Petersburg.  Campbell only played in 22 games and was back out of professional baseball.  

Czarnik had a short Minor League career, but he still made it all the way up to the Richmond Braves in Triple A.  He spent the 1988 and 1989 seasons in the Pioneer League and Midwest Leagues, and earned a promotion to the Bulls to start out 1990.  Czarnik's time with the Bulls was the high point of his professional baseball career.  In 17 games for the Bulls he posted a 5-1 record with a 1.15 ERA.  In 17 games, Czarnik only allowed two home runs and had a WHIP of 0.91.  Pretty impressive.  

He went on to pitch some games in Double A with the Greenville Braves before closing out the season with the Richmond Braves.  For whatever reason, the 1990 season was his final one in professional baseball.

A side note about Czarnik.  Apparently he threw a no-hitter for the Bulls during the summer of 1990.  There are several places that make reference to the game, it is included as part of his baseball bio a few different places, yet the game appears to have gone 14 innings and shows the Bulls losing 3-2.  If I ever find out more about the no-hitter, I will run a follow up post.

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Marcos Vazquez appeared for the Bulls during three different season.  Overall, he went 12-2 pitching for Durham.  Vazquez never reached the Majors, but did pitch 9 seasons in the Minors ranging from Rookie Ball all the way up to Triple A.  Amazingly, for a guy who played in the Minors for a long time, he only pitched in the Braves and the Reds Minor League systems.  

His overall record in the Minors was 70-58 with an ERA of 3.72.  Vazquez had four different seasons where he reached double digit wins, which can be a tough thing to do in the Minors.

More 1990s Bulls cards later in the week.