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.

Relaxing With Some Cards

This week has kicked off my summer vacation.  I teach, but I have a little bit of a different schedule.  I work for roughly nine weeks at a time, rarely less, sometimes more, before I get three to four weeks off.  Again, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less on the breaks.  I often travel with my wife and kids, but I also spend time attending baseball games.....

and working on my baseball cards.

I need to post an updated picture of my card room, but I have come a long way since last summer.  This popped up on my Facebook memories feed today.....

My closet team boxes have been switched out for set boxes, which has been a slow process over the last few years.  I also had a doubles table, which was just a large wood desk covered in extra cards that I pulled out as I was assembling sets.  Some of those cards have been traded, some have been given away, some have been boxed up, and others have gone to other odd places.

Beyond sets, I am also working on some of my Cardinals cards today.  I picked out a few of my favorites to share on this post.  I am going to go with two new autographs and two new cards of one of my favorite current Cardinals prospects.

Autographs first, prospect cards second.

First up is a Tommy Pham from this year's Tier One set.  Before last year there were not that many Tommy Pham autographs floating around out there.  I was actually lucky enough to pull one out of a Topps box a few years back.  Pham seems to be in almost everything nowadays.  He's got a nice autograph, and while he is not having his best year, I still enjoy watching him play.

I like the looks of this card too.  The diamond pattern, the hues of gray in the background, and best of all, the on-card autograph is very nice.

Next.

I like Jack Flaherty.  I am not sure how good of a pitcher he will be in the long run, but I am hopeful that he will continue to pitch well.  More than a strikeout per inning, an ERA under 3.00, and a WHIP right around 1.  Seems like he might be a nice one-two punch with Carlos Martinez the next few years.  I like the the horizontal layout of the Pham more than the Flaherty, but all of the Flaherty autographs from this product are all vertical cards.

Prospect cards.

Tyler O'Neill is probably my favorite Cardinals prospect at the moment.  The guy hits home runs, offers something that the Cardinals really do not have at the moment.  When the Cardinals traded for him last summer his cards were fairly inexpensive.  He's hit really well this year between a brief stint with the Cardinals and Triple A.  The prices on his cards have been creeping up this year, but I am still trying to slowly add some of his cards.

This is from last year's Bowman set.  I know there are a lot of different refractors, colored parallels, etc in Bowman.  This card is a mega box refractor.  I am not sure why Topps/Bowman has gone to all the different types of cards with different patterns in the background.  Who knows.

Last card for this post, another Bowman.  This is from the 2016 Bowman Chrome set.  The Top 100 Prospects inserts have been a long running item in these sets for the last eight or nine years.  Not sure what the point of the Top 100 Updates set is exactly.  The back of the card has a little blurb about him, but nothing insightful or having to deal with his status as a good prospect.

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 38 - Ozzie Canseco

The player born on July 2nd with the most home runs?  Most RBIs?  Most WAR?  Most hits?  All of the answers to this question are the same.  They are all former Oakland A's outfielder Jose Canseco.   Obviously not a Cardinal.....

at any point during his career, but the Cardinals did sign Jose's less successful, less expensive twin brother.  It was a true 1990s Cardinals move.  Jose Canseco would have cost a lot of money.  He was brash and over the top.  So, enter Ozzie Canseco.  What was Ozzie Canseco like?  I honestly have no idea, outside of the fact that he was on the Cardinals.  He also had baseball cards.

The whole Ozzie and Jose situation reminds me a lot of The Simpsons episode where Springfield hosts a film festival, Mr. Burns decides to enter a film to spruce moose up his image, but goes cheap and hires Senor Spielbergo instead of Steven Spielberg.

Jose was known for his combination of power and speed.  He hit long, loud home runs.  The one I best remember was his home run against the Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series against the Blue Jays.  

That highlight clip of Jose's features one more home run than Ozzie hit during his entire Major League career.  That's right, Ozzie had zero Major League home runs.  He also only had 65 at bats in the Majors over three season.  

If you collect baseball cards, you probably better remember Ozzie Canseco cards with the A's in the early 1990s.  They were pretty popular, pretty much just based on the fact that he was Jose's brother.  I am pretty sure that there were some pretty horrific trades back in the early 1990s based on collectors getting their hands on Ozzie Canseco cards.  

Maybe not that popular, but yes.....

So, how did Ozzie Canseco get on to the Cardinals?  Awhile ago, unfortunately I cannot find it, a fellow collector argued with me that Ozzie was a part of the Willie McGee trade in 1990.  Not really, that was Felix Jose.  Ozzie Canseco, Ozzie Smith, Jose Canseco, Felix Jose, it's all confusing.  Right time frame though.  The A's released Ozzie, not Jose, was released at the end of the 1990 season.  Ozzie Canseco, not Smith, spent 1991 in Japan, before he signed with the Cardinals in 1992.  That was a team with Ozzie Smith.  

Ozzie Canseco played a few games with the Cardinals in 1992, but spent most of the season in Triple A Louisville.  He played a total of 98 games that year in the Minors, he hit 22 home runs and drove in 57 runs.  He did not do much with the Cardinals that season.  1993 was similar for Ozzie, he spent most of his time in the Minors, did little with the Cardinals, and was traded to the Brewers at the end of the season.  

So, what 27 year old Triple A prospect gets a bunch of baseball cards?  Ozzie Canseco.  

He had a couple, I am going to look at three really quick. 

First up is his Donruss card.  What is going on with this card?  Not much, Ozzie is hitting, or maybe striking out?  You decide.  

Now, it's time for my favorite two Ozzie Canseco cards.  First, there is a 1993 Stadium Club card.  The Cardinals wore their batting practice jerseys in Spring Training games, so this is from some time during a practice game.  There is a slight resemblance to Todd Zeile in this picture.  

Todd Zeile probably played with his batting gloves while he was running the bases.  Todd Zeile was also not that buff.  Last one.  

I used to love getting the Cardinals giveaway set.  There were some really great cards in these sets.  The 1993 set, which this card comes out of, is probably my least favorite.  However, it's still a really nice looking set.  I like the view of the mullet on this card.  

You Don't Need A Quadraphonic Blaupunkt

One of the better pitching prospects I have seen come through Durham was current Rays pitcher Blake Snell.  While he was a member of the Bulls he named Baseball America's Minor League Player of the Year.  He was just simply dominate posting a 1.41 ERA and almost 11 strikeouts per nine innings that season between three different Rays Minor League teams.

I was fortunate enough to see Snell pitch a few times for the Durham Bulls.

Even started a small collection of Blake Snell cards that I have slowly added to over the last three years.  Admittedly, Snell was pretty hit or miss in both 2016 and 2017 for the Rays.  There were some really good moments, also some rough stretches.  As a baseball fan though, I have always been really impressed by his stuff.......

That curveball.  Everyone in the show needs one, more than some fancy Porsche.

Not sure I have really done much with posting Snell cards in awhile, so I will show off my two newest additions which both come from the Tier One product.  

First up is a base autograph.  It's numbered to 275, which I know is high, but I like the looks of this card better than some of the colored parallels in this set.  I am not even sure you can really call them colored, they are just varying shades of gray and black signed in silver pen.  If I find one cheap enough I will post it, but they are not the cleanest looking design concept.  

The grayish/silver background with the blue ink is nice in my world, especially since it matches up well with the Rays color scheme.  

Last one for today.  

The card stock on this card is pretty incredible.  It's thick.  I like the general design of the card, horizontal always works for me, especially on autographed cards.  The only thing I do not dig about this card is the fact that it is a sticker autograph.  A little odd that Topps makes three different style autographs in the Tier One product, has a player hand sign two versions of their card and then places a sticker autograph on the third.  

I am sure there is some good reason for it, right?  

More Snells later.  

Local Cardinals

A quick post.  The Cardinals traded outfielder Stephen Piscotty this offseason to the A's for two prospects.  I picked up and posted a card of infielder Yairo Munoz awhile ago, but have not had the chance to sit down and do anything with the second prospect in the trade, infielder Max Schrock.

Schrock played high school baseball at a parochial school in Raleigh and collegiately at South Carolina.  Since the trade, I have run into a few people with some Max Schrock stories.  All good of course.  I was pretty patient in waiting to track down one of his cards, but I recently picked up a copy of his 2017 Bowman Chrome autograph.

Sharp looking card.

My choices on cards of Schrock came down to one of these Bowman cards, or a Panini Elite from his brief time with the Nationals organization.  The Nats actually originally drafted him out of South Carolina, but they traded him to the A's for Marc Rzepczynski.  There is a blast from the past for all of my Cardinals readers.  The Panini card has all the usually Panini problems of being unattractive because the logos are airbrushed off of the uniforms.

Can we just get him in a South Carolina jersey?  Please?  Panini should just make College Baseball cards.

On to the back of the card.

My executive summary of Schrock's card back goes like this:  He is good at hitting baseballs and he is a decent prospect because of his ability to hit baseballs.  Schrock can also steal bases, but chooses good spots to run.  He's also only 5'8, so I guess he's pretty short too.

That's it.  Posts like this are why I used to write one per day back in the day.

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 37 - Tom Pagnozzi

The Cardinals have had a pretty good string of defensive catchers dating all the way back to the 1980s.  Over the last 30 years, the Cardinals catchers have won 14 of the National League's Gold Glove Awards.  Many of those belong to Yadier Molina, but two of his predecessors also won a few Gold Gloves too.

Mike Matheny actually was the last starting catcher the team employed before Molina, and took home a few Gold Glove Awards with his first coming in 2000.  There were a few years in the late 1990s when the team cycled through a few different catchers, but for the majority of the decade the catching duties were handled by Tom Pagnozzi.

Pagnozzi was slow and pudgy, did not hit much some years, but he was always a very good defensive catcher.  He won a total of three Gold Gloves and has some great defensive stats to back up his awards.  Not just someone who won an award because of his reputation as a good defender.  There was a season he led the National League in defensive WAR, several where he finished near the top, several seasons with almost 50% of base runners caught, etc.

Pagnozzi also had some nice baseball cards over the years.  There is always some player on every team who always ends up with really nice cards in spite of the fact that they are not necessarily a name player.  You'd think that there were be some more time spent on Ozzie Smith or Mark McGwire, or possibly we could get good cards of the majority of players.

Maybe.

I am going to share more than the usual three cards for this post.  The good Pagnozzi cards show him playing defense, but my favorite card of the former Cardinals catcher has to be his 1995 Pinnacle card where he is arguing with an umpire......

There are not a ton of cards made with players and umpires arguing.  The card also has a really old picture on the front.  Pagnozzi is clearly wearing one of the polyster uniforms that the Cardinals wore in the 1980s and early 1990s.  The team ditched these uniforms after the 1991 season.  Mind you, Pagnozzi actually came up with the Cardinals in the late 1980s and was Tony Pena's backup for several seasons.  Even played in the 1987 World Series, so this card has a picture that is potentially seven or eight years old from the time it was printed.  If I had a cool picture of a player arguing with an umpire I would throw it on a baseball card too, even if it was older.

A few nice Stadium Clubs.

This his 1996 card from that set.  Another photo that you do not see too often on baseball cards, catchers running down foul balls around the back stop and netting.  I am pretty sure that Pagnozzi caught this ball and is turning to check on a base runner.  The fans in the stands do not seem to be moving either, which would likely happen if the ball was over the netting.  The old guy in the Rockies hat is calling the batter out.  

This is his 1995 Stadium Club.  Nice photo of him throwing, guessing a bunt or something hit in front of the plate.  Good early 1990s Busch Stadium background too with the blue wall and astroturf.

Last Stadium Club.

Always fun to see a slow catcher get on base on a ball hit on the infield.  Pretty certain that the Giants first baseman, not Will Clark, has missed the ball here.  I also like that Pagnozzi is off the ground.  Does not seem like the type of guy who would have any sort of leaping ability, but here we are.....

I had fun finding these cards of Pagnozzi, so you are getting a few more.  

Favorite Topps card.  Again, kind of a unique picture you do not see often on a baseball card.  

Last base card.  

I don't even remember this card being made, and I have a ton of these Emotion XL cards.  Gritty is such a catcher word, or maybe a backup middle infielder.  Pagnozzi is definitely "gritty".   This was only a 200 card set, a little surprised that Fleer would even include Pagnozzi.  I'd tip my cap to your set designers for adding him to the checklist, but your company went bankrupt awhile ago.  

Last card.  If you had to own one Tom Pagnozzi card it should be this one.  There are some pretty nice Cardinals cards in the 1996 Leaf Signature Series autographs, along with several players who were only around the team for a short time.  Cards of Rick Honeycutt and Mike Gallego are in a Cardinals uniform in that set, but they are not really Cardinals players.  Brian Jordan, Mabry, and Pagnozzi are much better cards if you are truly looking for a Cardinals card.  

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.