Project Durham Bulls #34 - Andruw Jones

1996 Durham Bulls 

Background- 

Andruw Jones started out the 1996 season with the Durham Bulls.  At the time the Bulls were the Braves High A Ball affiliate in the Carolina League.  By the time the season was over, Jones was starring in the 1996 World Series for the Braves against the Yankees.  He hit two home runs in Game 1 becoming the youngest player to hit multiple home runs in a World Series game.  

Jones played in the Majors for a total of 17 years.  I like to view his career in two halves:  The Braves half, which was good, and the years after the Braves, which were not so good.  I have seen arguments for and against Jones being in the Hall of Fame.  It seems like people's view point depends on how good you think the Atlanta years were versus how much his time with the Dodgers, Rangers, White Sox, and Yankees hurt his chances.  

I am going to stay neutral in this fight and stick to the numbers that Andruw Jones had at the end of his career.  He ended up hitting 434 home runs, 383 doubles, drove in almost 1,300 runs, and had a WAR of 62.8.  Jay Jaffe's JAWS ranking system has Andruw Jones as the 11th best center fielder of all-time behind Hall of Famers like Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey, Joe DiMaggio, and others.  In terms of his peers, who played during the same era, his numbers are in the same neighborhood as Jim Edmonds, Kenny Lofton, Carlos Beltran.  Plus or minus, here and there.  

Jones also had a good repuatation as a defensive center fielder....

taking home 10 Gold Gloves during his twelve year career as a member of the Braves.  

Card- 

Andruw Jones has a ton of certified autographs that have been put out throughout his career.  He has also been a generous signer for different card companies in the years since he retired from the sport.  I decided that I was going to try to track down a copy of Jones as a Minor Leaguer.  He has several autographs from different Best products.  Not the nicest, nor the most expensive, but I liked the idea of seeing Jones in a Minor League uniform.  

I actually already have a really nice autograph of Jones in a Durham Bulls uniform.....

This was in Heritage Minors a few years ago.  I figured it would be tough to track another copy of this card, and if I did I figured it would probably be pretty pricy.  The Best autograph I found of Jones cost me little, but my goal was met, and I found a card where Jones is pictured as a Bull.  There is a Best card with Jones pictured solely as a member of the Bulls, but the card at the top of the post celebrates him winning the Minor League Player of the Year.  

I know it does not say that anywhere on the front of the card.....

it is on the back.  It's got a few design flaws, but I am still happy.  Not sure about that Player Of The Year logo in the middle of the card.  Seems a little suspect.  

Project Durham Bulls #17: Wes Helms

1996 Durham Bulls 

Background- 

Wes Helms is a North Carolina native, from Gastonia which is near Charlotte, and ended up on the Durham Bulls two years after being drafted out of high school by the Atlanta Braves.  Helms had a pretty good year in 1995 while playing for the Macon Braves in the South Atlantic League, but his real breakout year in the Minors took place in Durham during 1996.  He started the year with the Bulls in the Carolina League and only stayed for a total of 67 games.  He posted a .322/.367/.562 slash line with 13 home runs, 19 doubles, and 54 RBIs.  Pretty impressive line over basically half of a season.  Helms reached the Majors for the first time in 1998, but only stayed for 7 games.  He returned again for 6 games in 2000 before he stuck with Atlanta for good in 2001.  Helms ended up playing a total of 13 seasons in the Majors with most of his time coming with the Braves and Marlins.    He also had stops with the Brewers and Phillies.  

Card-

This is the second Best autograph that I have posted in my Project Durham Bulls posts.  The first being a Randall Simon autograph a few weeks ago.  While there are a bunch of these 1990s Minor League sets with a lot of no frills autographs, that are kind of dumpster dives at this point, they are great if you are trying to find cards of a particular team.  I am spreading out my Durham Bulls posts a bit, I am not going to do one everyday and miss out on talking about other cards, but in trying to assemble cards for my collection, these have been really helpful sets.  While you can find these cards in the fifty-cent bin at card shows, there are actually a surprising number of players who are in these sets who actually made it the Majors and were there for awhile.  Wes Helms was never an All-Star or anything, but he stuck around for 13 years and played in more than 1200 games.  

Project Durham Bulls #15: Randall Simon

1995 Durham Bulls 

Background-

Randall Simon is sort of an infamous baseball character who is better known for smacking one of the sausage racers in Milwaukee with a bat rather than much of anything that he did while he was actually playing in a game.  There is a video of it on YouTube, but the embed feature has been disabled, so you can watch it here, or check out the picture below....

Simon is a native of Curacao and appeared with the Carolina League version of the Bulls (Braves affiliate) in the summer of 1995 during his third year in professional baseball.  He had a decent summer with a .264/.326/.440 slash line with 18 home runs, 18 doubles, and 77 RBIs.  It was good enough to get him promoted to Double A.  Randall Simon made his Major League debut with the 1997 Braves, but did not really stick in the Majors until 1999.  That Braves team ended up in the World Series against Yankees, while Simon did not appear in the Postseason with that team, he hit .317/.367/.459 in 90 games with 5 home runs and 16 doubles.  Simon ended up back in the Minors for a few seasons before reappearing with the Tigers in 2001 and 2002.  While any Tigers fan might tell you that these were probably the two worst teams in the history of the franchise, Simon's two years in Detroit were the best two years of his career.  The Tigers traded Simon to the Pirates, who traded him to the Cubs where he appeared in the NLDS and NLCS with the baby bears in 2003.  The Cubs played Simon in all 10 playoff games that fall and he responded by hitting .333 with a home run, 3 doubles, and 6 RBIs.  Randall Simon's career ended with a return to Pittsburgh and the Devil Rays for a few games in 2004, then to the Phillies for a few more in 2006.  

Card- 

Simon was a pretty well regarded prospect, his rise through the Minors took place at the time when Topps was adding autographs to Bowman, and other companies were making some of the great mega-autograph sets of the late 1990s.  Randall Simon has autographs in all of these sorts of card products, however I chose to go with a little bit of a cheaper card just for the fact that Simon has a certified autograph in a Bulls uniform.  The Best brand had some decent autographed products over the years, this is a really simple one, still cool to see players in their Minor League uniforms.  Given the volumes of cards that Simon signed for products like Donruss Signature Series, those cards are not really that much more expensive than this Bulls card.  Further, I really like the mid 1990s Bulls uniforms which featured a little bit more of the Texas tan color than the more modern editions.  Pretty sure that these unis were gone by the time the team's affiliation switched over to the Rays.