Monday Morning Autograph - Jose Cruz Jr.

If you collected baseball cards in the late 1990s, Jose Cruz Jr. was a name you knew. He was one of those "Can't Miss" prospects who was going to be the next great player behind Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez on the Mariners. He hit 12 home runs in roughly 50 games for Mariners before they traded him to the Blue Jays where he continued to hit home runs. Jose Cruz Jr. played right around 100 games his first year and ended the season with 26 dingers.  

The future was bright.  

Unfortunately, the next two seasons were down years. When Jose finally got healthy in 2000, he did manage to hit more than 30 home runs, but also only hit .242. Jose Cruz Jr. actually had a pretty solid career.  He played for 12 seasons, hit 200 home runs and 250 doubles, and collected more than 1,000 hits. Those numbers are not very flashy, so his baseball cards are currently not worth much money, which is fine.  

I still liked Jose Cruz Jr. and have a few of his cards hanging around the collection

Today: 2000 Fleer Showcase FreshINK Jose Cruz Jr. Autograph 

Why Do I Own This Card? 

I pulled it out of a pack of cards in 2000.  

Jose Cruz Jr.'s Team In a Haiku 

Mariners, Blue Jays 

Giants, Rays, D'acks. Bo Sox

Dodgers, Pads, and "Stros 

Back of the Card 

I love the "Authentic Autograph" ribbons on the backs of these old Fleer cards. They remind me of clip art that would be used in a lower elementary school classroom on an award. Thanks for coming to class everyday last quarter, you win first prize........

or an autographed baseball card from Fleer.

Set Appreciation Post #21 - 2000 Pacific Aurora

Pacific Aurora has a mundane base set with a few incredible inserts, which makes it a pretty awesome product. You've got to take the boring with the exciting with this product.  

2000 Pacific Aurora was also the first card to feature a Hall of Famer in his new uniform and they did it in a creative way. Overall, this is one of the worst products that Pacific Trading cards made in the late 1990s and early 2000s and it is still probably middle of the pack in terms of overall quality. They were a high floor, high ceiling type of card company that is sadly lacking in the current baseball card market. 

I miss Pacific. 

Shall we look at the 2000 Autora set?  

Here is the base design......

Pacific started the Aurora product in 1998 and it basically had the same design concept all three years it was produced. Two photos on the front, one action and one posed, along with a solid colored background. The design in decent. I know the teal colored background is a little weird on this Darin Erstad card, but this is one of the few teams where that statement is true.

Pacific was consistent with their brands and the products tended to run true to that branding from year to year. While this is not the most exciting design concept, you knew exactly what you were getting when you bought these cards. The original Aurora was also a per-pack-insert product released in 1998 that was sold at retail stores. The 2000 set was a Hobby issued product with no per-pack insert guarantee.     

Back of the card. 

I like the sepia photo with the gold and maroon colored writing and trim. Really good look. The stats are basic, but the large photo and readable card numbers in the bottom right-hand corner more than make-up for anything left off the card by Pacific. Solid effort here. 

Let's get one highlight out of the way.  

Best Base Card 

The off-season proceeding the 2000 baseball season featured the high drama of Ken Griffey Jr. demanding a trade off the Mariners. He had a no-trade clause and was essentially only willing to accept a trade that put him on his hometown Cincinnati Reds. The trade ended up happening in early February after teams had made their way to Spring Training and the early 2000 baseball card products had already hit the shelves. 

Griffey getting traded to the Reds was huge news. The trade put the three best home runs hitters of the day, Griffey, McGwire, and Sosa, all in the same division for the foreseeable future, or Mark McGwire got gimpy knees in the middle of the 2000 season. Pacific capitalized on the excitement by producing the first Ken Griffey Jr. card with him in a Cincinnati uniform, making half his cards Mariners and the other half Reds. 

Great card, one of my favorite Griffey cards. 

On to the other things I cover in my set posts........

Favorite Cardinals Card 

It's really hard to pick out the "best" cards from this set. They are slightly devoid of personality, but I decided to go with Fernando Tatis. He had a short window of success with the Cardinals and 1999 was his best season. Fernando Sr. went 30 plus home runs, 30 plus doubles, 20 stolen bases, and nearly hit .300 come in with a .298 average. He also walked more than 80 times. It was a really unique stat line, especially for a third baseman and I love seeing those numbers on the back of the card.  

Favorite Former Durham Bulls Player 

McGriff played on the Durham Bulls at the end of his career in 2004. He's one of the few players who is smiling on his posed photograph for this set. I like the happy vibe on this card. I also like that you get McGriff's batting stance in the top right corner. He's got one of the more unique and identifiable stances from the 1990s.  

One more card and we will talk about inserts......

While the 2000 Pacific Aurora set did not have inserts in every pack, they did offer a parallel card per pack. The majority of parallel cards were pinstriped. I know there are people who enjoy these parallel cards, but I am not a huge fan. 

Perhaps if my favorite team wore pinstripes, I would feel differently. Looks kind of weird on a Cardinals card, but it makes sense and looks good on a Yankees card.......

Inserts 

Now we get to the good stuff with Pacific Aurora. The inserts.  

The most basic insert was the "Pennant Fever". When the Aurora product first started in 1998, these were the inserts that generally came as the per-pack. Pacific continued this insert again in 1999 and 2000. Based on the number in my collection, I would guess that a box typically came with 3 or 4 of these cards. The foil along the bottom of the card is nice, but this isn't even the close to the best thing in this set.  

Let's get serious.  

Pacific made some great cards involving nets in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Yes, nets. You'd think that might not work for baseball, but sounds like a great concept for a basketball insert. What has nets on a baseball diamond? Dugouts and foul poles. The good people at Pacific employed some creative people who made great cards like this Shawn Green, which is a Dugout Net card.....

It's not a game-used card or anything, just a die-cut card with the cut-out section being filled in with netting. I am not sure the scan does the card justice, but these are some of the best inserts from this era. The one draw back for these cards is that they were thicker and would chip along the bottom. Check out the white around the bottom of the net.  

Most of the cards in this insert set are available online for less than $5, which reminds me that I have not done a set project in a long time. More of these might be making an appearance in this space in the near future.  

Last one for this set.  

I love that Dugout set with the die-cut space for the netting, but the Styroteach insert with these batting helmets might be even better. These remind me of the Donruss Hard Hats inserts that came out in the mid 1990s. Just a really nice insert card, again I am not sure the scan does this justice. 

Unlike the Dugout set though, these are really pricy on Ebay and COMC. The cheapest cards are around $10 with many being closer to $30 or $40. Not sure I can put together this complete set those prices given the quantity of cards. For now, I am happy with this Barry Bonds card.  

So, how does the 2000 Pacific Aurora set rate?  

I think it's biggest positives are that it has great insert cards and a solid base set. Having the first Reds Griffey cards pumps up the nostalgia factor for me and I am sure others who collected during this time.  When you add in the fact that these were $60 a box for 24 packs, there is a lot of upside here. Obviously, the base card design could be much better, but it's also not horrible. Aurora also has a small checklist with only 150 cards. That means you're only getting 4 to 5 cards of your favorite team.  

I ended up giving the set three Wool E. Bulls for the checklist and set design, everything else was above average with the final rating coming in at 3 1/2 Wool E Bulls.  

You can still find boxes of these cards for less than $100 on Ebay, if you're interested. Given the recent interest in opening old packs of cards and boxes, that's not much of a mark up from the original price. 

The Softest Tosser

There are some really good baseball channels with short videos on YouTube that occasionally provide me with good background while I am doing my school work at night. I ran across one a few week's ago about former Blue Jays and Angels relief pitcher Mark Eichhorn. You can find the video here.  

Interesting career.  

In summation, Eichhorn came up with the Blue Jays in 1982 and failed miserably. He went back to the Minors and started throwing sidearm. Eichhorn also dialed back the velocity on all his pitches and became noted as the softest tossing pitcher in modern baseball. He came back up in 1986 as was the setup man for Tom Henke. Eichhorn had one of the best seasons by a modern relief pitcher with a sub 2 ERA, 14 wins, 10 saves, and more than a strikeout per inning.   

Without going year-by-year through his career, Eichhorn ended up playing 11 years, mostly with the Blue Jays and Angels. If you're into sabermetrics, his WAR7 (WAR in his best 7 seasons) is equal to Billy Wagner and Lee Smith, just without the saves.   

Eichhorn's career was derailed by injuries in 1995, which is where my baseball cards come in. As a middle reliever, Eichhorn has very few cards and not many with much flash or pizzaz, but after watching the video I felt like trying to find one. 

Eichhorn attempted to come back with the Angels in 1996. He missed huge chunks of the season and was not very effective, ending the year with an ERA north of 5. However, he did end up signing cards for the per-pack-autograph Leaf Signature Series.  

Here is the flashiest Mark Eichhorn card out there:  

This was less than $2, a small price to pay for an intriguing player with a good story.  

In the process of finding this card, I discovered that Mark Eichhorn actually fit into my collection quite well and I already owned a card of him outside of common cards from the 1980s and 1990s products. It turns out Mark Eichhorn was on the Durham Bulls for a season.  

Deep dig into the Durham Bulls team set box: 

This is Mark Eichhorn from the 1998 Durham Herald Sun Durham Bulls team set. It was a giveaway from the local newspaper. This was the Bulls first season as a Triple A team, also the first season for the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays. As a new franchise, the Devil Rays did not have many prospects ready for Triple A, so they signed a bunch of 30-somethings to fill out their top Minor League team.  

I enjoy a good 4A player as much as the next person, but the 1998 Durham Bulls set is all 4A players, which has long made it one of my least favorites. Russ Mormon, Dennis Springer, Dave Eiland, Bob Natal, and Dave Silvestri all make appearances. 

The picture on the card actually looks like it is from the exhibition the Bulls played against the Devil Rays in Durham before the start of the 1998 season. There are some grainy photographs of the game floating around on the internet.  

Anyway, the presence of Mark Eichhorn and the knowledge of his career has moved the 1998 Durham Bulls set ahead other of their team sets with Aubrey Huff or Josh Lueke.  

Set Appreciation Post #19- 1995 Select Certified

 This week's Set Appreciation Post has a special guest, my six year-old daughter.  

She is a kindergartener who has some strong opinions on life and a love of art work.  Parts of our house are frequently converted into art galleries for whatever art she is working on at the moment. Her art does not always stay on paper though. Sometimes, it appears in other forms.  

For example, after returning home from a trip to Washington, D.C. this spring my computer was covered in sticky notes. Each sticky note was its own piece of art work, but it also somehow formed a larger work.  

The explanation would take several minutes and there would be no baseball cards in this post if I wrote everything she said about the sticky note art work.

She already has some opinions about my baseball cards.  

For example, according to her, my baseball card boxes are all pretty boring because they are plain white. She thinks that I should have the outside of the boxes match the baseball cards that are on the inside. At some point last year, she attempted to decorate the boxes for my autographed cards, which all have the letter "N" scribbled on the outside of them. She had bigger plans that her stopped. According to her, someone wrote on the cards inside the box, so she wrote the first letter of her name on the outside of the box.  

They match and she is willing to add more art to the outside of the boxes.  

I have not allowed her to continue to do her art work on my baseball card boxes, but that did not stop her from doing one final piece of art work on my box holding my copy of the 1995 Select Certified set. The cards are bright and shiny, so the box should match, right?  

Here is the top.  

Here is the front.  

Her median was 1990 Upper Deck team logo stickers.  

Let's talk about the cards. 

Each of us will provide a take on the 1995 Select Certified set.

Here is the basic design of the 1995 Select Certified cards.  

I really like the dark greyscale background behind the color photos, which is something different. I also like the card stock and texture. It's not exactly a thick paper stock, but definitely has a sturdy feel to the card. There is a glossy finish, which I think is interesting on a card that uses a greyscale background. 

My daughter does not like this design and wants to know why a brighter color like purple was not used in the background. She suggests a pattern that you could color in like a coloring book.  

That's actually not a bad idea.  

I love the breakdown of the stats by team on the back of the card. It's like the Bowman cards, but with more color and better graphics. Sure, you get less numbers, but you still get a good sense of how the player faired against each team. Bonds torched the Expos in 1994, which is saying something because they were easily the best team in the National League.  

My daughter likes that Barry Bonds is willing to wear earrings on his baseball card, but thinks at least one team should use a pony or hearts as their logo.  

My favorite card of a former Durham Bulls player in this set is Chipper Jones. His early cards are always fun, looks a little silly here with the huge swing. I will add that the number of former Bulls players in this set is fairly small and the other choices had rather blah looking pictures.

The card did not scan well, but Chipper is actually apart of the Rookie subset in Select Certified and the background of the card is half grey and half gold. That stamp does not exactly show a ton of creativity.  

My daughter also picked out this card for her favorite Durham Bulls player in the set, although her explanation started out with, "Have you ever ate lunch with boys at school?" and ended with "making farting noises".  It took her about two minutes to explain the whole thing, I will let your imagination fill in the middle of the conversation.  

My favorite Cardinals card in the set......

is Bernard Gilkey.  

Several of the Cardinals players are pictured in road uniforms, which are nice, but are also a gray uniform on a dark gray background. I do like the action shot on the front of this card, but also really like the way that the white home uniform with the red helmet and uniform accessories pop on the dark background.

My daughter did not pick a favorite Cardinals card, because "none of them are very nice looking" and added a "No, thank you" when I told her that she needed to pick a Cardinals card. Later in the post she does pick a former Cardinals player card for her favorite overall card from the set.  

Let me off-road a few other things I like about this set, but the little one rejoins the conversation.  

One of the best parts of Select Certified is the Gold Mirror parallels.  

I am generally not a parallel person, but this one is well done. There were a few Gold cards in every box, no serial numbers, and it's the only parallel that came in the product.  Over the years, I have put together the complete set of Cardinals and I am close to having all the former Durham Bulls players. Good looking set of cards.  

If you don't dig the dark background of the base cards, these are a really nice option and they are generally not that expensive compared to the price of other popular 1990s parallels at the moment.  

Moving on.  

Select Certified is a small set with only 135 cards in the set. There were 28 Major League teams in 1995, so there are roughly 4 to 5 cards for each team. Small sets generally tend to stick to the big names on rosters and not stray into many subsets or special cards. Select Certified has a bit of both.  

The Dodgers got a special card for having three players win the Rookie of the Year in a row.  

Eddie Murray also got a special card for collecting his 3,000 hit in 1994.  

Always cool to see these kinds of cards to mark special accomplishments, especially on a small checklist like Select Certified. There are also Rookie Subset cards. I posted one at the top of the post with the Chipper Jones card, but the scan did not do a good job of showing the card.  

Here is another Rookie subset with a picture taken using my phone's camera.  

There are actually some pretty big names in the Rookie subset with Jeter and ARod. A few others including one later in the post.  The Jeter and ARod are not actually rookie cards, but still early cards that are fun to own. You can see the two-toned background a little better on photograph. 

Let's bring the little one back in to finish up the post and talk about our favorite cards.  

My daughter is up first with Mark McGwire.  

She picked this card, because Mark McGwire is the only player in the set with long hair.  

That's it, her whole reason for picking the card. I will add for context that her favorite Disney Princess is Rapunzel, and that she keeps her hair long and it must be styled everyday before she goes to school. I would like to see Mark McGwire rock some bubble braids.  

I went a little different direction for my favorite non-Cardinal, non-Durham Bulls card from this set.  I decided to pick the Hideo Nomo rookie card.  

  

Every year the baseball card world goes crazy of a certain player or two. In 1995, there was Nonomania. Everyone wanted a Hideo Nomo card and this was one of my favorites. A great card from the mid 1990s, I think if I made a list of the best cards from my time in high school, this card would be on the list.  

How does it rank on my list?  

It has been a hot minute since I have done a set appreciation post. The last set I added to my list was the 2001 Donruss set last November. The set was terrible. The 1995 Select Certified set is definitely not terrible. In fact, it's a pretty good set of baseball cards. 

Narrow it down.  Looking at the top half of the sets I have posted, I think it's better than Emotion XL (they are kind of similar though) and the 2017 Heritage Minor League set. Topps TEK feels like the right neighborhood.  I am actually going to give Select Certified the slight nod given its a set that you can actually complete, unlike Topps Tek's 8,100 card craziness.  

19. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

18. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

17. 2001 Donruss 

16. 2000 Topps 

15. 2012 Bowman Platinum 

14. 2000 UD Ionix

13. Topps Lineage   

12. 2002 Bowman 

11. 1988 Donruss 

10. 1995 Emotion XL 

9. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

8. 1998 Topps TEK 

7. 1995 Select Certified 

6. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

5. 2001 Fleer EX 

4. 1979 Kellogg's 

3. 1998 Metal Universe 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

Dysfunctional and Talented

I spent a little bit of time last month working on my collection of 2006 Durham Bulls baseball cards.  That was the first full year that I lived in North Carolina.  It was easily one of the most talented Bulls team that I have seen.  High draft picks, Top 100 prospects, future Major League All-Stars, a World Series MVP, and plenty of other solid Major League players. 

The team was also easily one of the worst Bulls teams that I watched in terms of on-field play and their finish in the standings.  In the 15 years, I have been watching the Durham Bulls, it's the only one to finish in the bottom 5 teams in the International League.  

In spite of their lack of wins, the 2006 Durham Bulls is still a fun group of players to collect.  

You've probably seen a few of these guys.  

First up is a pair of B.J. Upton autographs.  Nothing too hard to find, not sure why I am only getting around to these two at this point.  

Above is a 2003 Topps autograph out of the base set.  The card below is from the 2005 Upper Deck Origins set.  Both on-card signatures.  These would have been pretty pricy back in the day.  Both cost me less than $5 combined.  

Next up is long-time Major League pitcher Jason Hammel.  He was a member of the 2016 World Series Championship team for the Cubs.  Hammel never appeared in a playoff game that season, but did win 15 during the regular season.  The 2016 Cubs actually had 3 former Durham Bulls players; Hammel, Mike Montgomery, and Ben Zobrist.  

Love this autograph.  

Next up is a pair of autographs from James Shields.  

Never a huge fan of Shields during his playing career, but I have grown to appreciate his time in Durham a little more since he retired.  He was a good player in Durham, just never understood the hype around him in the Majors.  Shields has a career Postseason ERA of almost 5.50.  Why is he nicknamed "Big Game"? 

 

Back to his time in Durham. Shields pitched the first home opener I ever attended for the Bulls in 2006.  He pitched 6 innings and did not give up an earned run.  The Rochester Red Wings did manage to score 3 unearned runs against Shields.  Upton hit a walk-off grand slam to win the game in the bottom of the 9th.  

I did not have a single Shields autograph in the collection.  At some point I owned one, but it appears I traded/gave it away at some point.  

Next up, Delmon Young.  

Only non-autograph in the post.  I don't really dig relic cards, but I liked the picture on this Bowman with Delmon standing in Comerica Park.  He never turned into the franchise player many thought he would be, but he had some great moments in his career, especially the Postseason, with the Tigers.  

Those green Devil Rays hats were terrible.    

Last Delmon autograph is a Topps Finest card.  I think I avoided all of the silver sticker autographs that I could back in the day.  Delmon has a ton of sticker autographs, so I usually stuck with the Upper Deck cards since the stickers were clear.  These are dirt cheap now.  

Last card.  

The 2006 International League MVP.  

Kevin Witt was a good prospect for the Blue Jays in the late 1990s.  They released him at some point and he bounced around between several teams before making his way to the Bulls in 2006.  He ended up hitting 36 home runs and driving in 99 runs in just 128 games.  Pretty good player, even if did not even amount to much in the Majors.  

I have several Witt autographs, but I never got around to adding this card.  He's not someone with a great signature, but this one is really weak.  The card only cost me $2 after shipping.  Not sure I can really complain at that price. 

Topps Salutes Mediocrity

The Topps Archives set came out awhile ago. It has always been one of my favorite places to find autographs every year.  It's nice to see some older players sign a few cards, and there are usually a fair amount of Cardinals included.  This year it seemed that they all came from the early 1990s Cardinals.  

The early 1990s Cardinals were young, many of the players never lived up to the hype, and they were a lock to finish in the middle of the division.  Never good enough to catch the Pirates or Phillies, never bad enough to hang out in last place.  

Really mediocre teams.  

I didn't think I would see the day when Topps would include a bunch of 1990s Cardinals on a modern set, outside of Mark McGwire.  I am posting the Cardinals in order from most surprising to least surprising in terms of appearance in a modern baseball card set.  

My jaw dropped when I saw this first name on the checklist.

The Cardinals got Felix Jose from the A's for renting Willie McGee at the end of the 1990 season.  He made the National League All-Star Team in 1991, and ended up spending two decent years with the Cardinals before he was traded to the Royals for Gregg Jefferies.  I best remember Felix Jose for not sitting near anybody on the bench during games. 

I couldn't find a picture of him in the dugout with the Cardinals, but here is one from later in his career with the Yankees.  

Felix Jose ended up spending a lot of time playing in Mexico and Korea, and only appeared in roughly 700 Major League games.  I am really surprised that he popped up in a baseball card set in 2020.  Decent signature and I love that they put him on a 1992 Topps card.  Always a plus in the Archives set when you can match-up the players era with the card style.  

Next.  Not as surprising as Felix Jose.  

The Cardinals have quietly had a good run of really good defensive catchers over the last 30 years.  There was a short window in the late 1990s where that wasn't true, but the team has filled the majority of those years with Tony Pena, Mike Matheny, Yadier Molina, and Tom Pagnozzi.  It took him a few years to latch on as a starter, he was actually the backup to Tony Pena at the beginning of his career starting in 1987. 

Pagnozzi won three National League Gold Gloves during the first half of the 1990s.  

I am not saying he is a complete unknown, but I am sure that if you did not watch baseball in the 1990s, there is probably no chance that you'd know the no-hit Gold Glove catcher on a third place team.  

This was one of my favorite plays he made.  The stairs at Busch Stadium II made foul balls near the dugout an adventure.  The steps were steep and there was no railing in front of the dugout until the mid to late 1990s.  

Again, I love that the card design matches the era of the player.  

The last two are not as surprising.  Love the picture on this card.  

Worrell is a name player from the 1980s and 1990s.  He won the National League Rookie of the Year closing out games for the Cardinals in 1986.  Very good player, had some arm injuries in the middle of his career, but came back to be a good closer during the late 1990s with the Dodgers.  Not surprising that he would be included in a modern baseball card set, but he hasn't really done anything with baseball cards or autographs since retiring.  

He is worthy of being on baseball cards, more surprising that he suddenly appeared after 20 years of nothing.  

The picture.  

The bullpens in Busch II were on the field in the corners.  The Cardinals were on the first base side, visitors were on the third base side.  This picture was clearly taken in the Cardinals bullpen with the right field foul pole over Worrell's shoulder.  

Last card, least surprising 1990s Cardinals player in the set, but also not pictured as a member of the Cardinals.  

Henke only pitched for the Cardinals for one season, which was his last one in the Majors.  He is from a small town outside of Jefferson City, and wanted to be closer to home.  Henke has other modern cards, but it seems like he has been popping up a little more frequently.  

No matter how much I might complain about the current Cardinals, some of the early 1990s Cardinals teams were worse.  You always had to look hard for the good.  Henke was definitely one of them.    

Throw in a few World Series titles with the Blue Jays in the early 1990s, and Henke is easily the best player in this post.  

From The Company That Brought You The Oreo Cookie, Comes Canadian Baseball Cards

Nabisco makes some really good stuff.  

There is the Oreo Cookie, Ritz Crackers, Chips Ahoy!, and Fig Newtons just to name a few.  

Nabisco also made baseball cards.  I know a lot of collectors don't like the off-brand food cards from the 1990s for the same reasons that they do not like the current run of Panini cards.  The logos are airbrushed out on the players uniforms.  

I generally agree, but it's Nabisco.  I put them ahead of Panini because of their delicious snack foods, but they also they also make a much better baseball card.  Nabisco has come up with some quality cards in the past.  Logos or not, the 1993 All-Star Legends autograph set has a really strong checklist.  Honestly, I don't care that Don Drysdale doesn't have a Dodgers logo.  I don't care that they made the Dodger blue a little darker.  This is a great card.  

Well, in my quest to find some cards of former Durham Bulls players this summer, I ran across several who appeared in a Nabisco set from Canada.   The set is called Nabisco Tradition.  No word on whether Fleer ripped off the name from Nabisco later in the 1990s when they rebranded their base set.  I am a little unclear on all the details behind the product, but there are a total of 36 cards in the set that is divided evenly between Expos  and Blue Jays players.  All of the cards featured players from previous Expos and Blue Jays teams, no current members of the teams were included.  

As far as the Durham Bulls cards that I picked up, there were three cards in all.  Each a name the average baseball fan from the 1970s and 1980s would recognize.  The two appeared for the Bulls in the 1960s, the other in 1970. 

Let's look at the cards.  

The lone Blue Jay in my trio will be first.  

Not always a fan of "cartoon" cards, but these are really well done.  I am impressed that the card designer was able to squeeze the notable accomplishment of Cliff Johnson onto the front of the card in both English and French.  A little busy, but not too bad.  

Back of the card, also in French and English.  

Cliff Johnson was on the Blue Jays at the end of his career, which was in the mid 1980s.  I remember getting his cards as a kid.  Always on the Blue Jays, maybe a Rangers card or two in there too.  He appeared on the Durham Bulls while the team was in their weird late 1960s/early 1970s phase.  By weird, I mean Cliff Johnson actually played for the Raleigh-Durham Triangles.  

If you are unfimiliar with this area, Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill make up the Triangle.  Raleigh-Durham is actually an airport that is halfway between Raleigh and Durham.  Renaming the Durham Bulls the Raleigh-Durham Triangles would be like renaming the Yankees the LaGuardia Big Apples.  

Dumb.  

Anyway, since moving to North Carolina, I have learned a little more about Cliff Johnson's baseball career.  I always assumed he was some bench player who occasionally hit home runs based on the baseball cards of my childhood.  It turns out Cliff Johnson was a catcher, first baseman, and DH who won two World Series with the Yankees in the late 1970s before he became a pinch hitting home run hitter.  

By the way, Matt Stairs passed Cliff Johnson as the all-time pinch-hit home run leader, but it took him almost an extra 200 plate appearances to get there.  

Next. 

Favorite thing on this card is that the artist has Rusty Staub choking up on the bat.  Small detail, but something I learned about him when he passed away a few years back.  Not really surprising that he is in this set focused on older Expos players.  He had some great seasons during the 1960s and 1970s, several in Montreal, also really popular with Expos fans.  

Back of the card.  

I like that there is an explanation of the Expos logo. 

Staub appeared for the Durham Bulls in 1962 after the Houston Astros drafted him out of high school.  He was the Carolina League MVP that season.  The Bulls had Joe Morgan pass through town the following season, and the team retired his jersey.  Wish the team would do something similar for Staub.  At least give him a bobblehead.  

Last card.  

This is the part of the post where I advertise something.  

Do you like podcasts?  

I like baseball podcasts, started listening to them about two years ago.  One of my favorites is Baseball Beyond Batting Average.  Basically, it's two knowledgable baseball fans talking about all things baseball with a heavy lean on numbers.  If you don't like statistics, you're a big fan of the game-winning RBI, it's probably not going to be your cup of tea.  

Even if you don't decide to listen to the podcast, the two guys who make the Podcast have great baseball card related accounts on Twitter.  One is Baseball Card Backs and the other is IDrawBaseballCards.  

The last episode of Baseball Beyond Batting Average was all about underrated players from the 1970s.  They did a great job of picking out two players at each position who need a little more appreciation for their career numbers.  They won me over at Gene Tenace, but Ken Singleton also came up as one of those players.  I completely agree, more people should pay attention to Ken Singleton.  Not sure you could convince me he's a Hall of Famer, but he's at worst in the Hall of Very Good Players.  Maybe if he were playing today, with the heavier slant on advanced stats, more people would appreciate him.  

Singleton briefly played for the Durham Bulls.  (Checks notes)  

Singleton briefly played for the Raleigh-Durham Mets.  

He also had three great years playing with the Expos in the early 1970s.  Singleton was originally on the Mets, but was traded to Montreal for Rusty Staub early in his career.  Apparently he set the team RBI record in 1973.  You learn something new everyday.  

The artist did a good job with the details on this card.  The old 1970s Expos uniform has a lot of good and accurate detail, along with Singleton have the giant sideburns.  

The back would be better if they had included a fact that had something to do with Ken Singleton.  He was not on the Expos in 1978, so he did not hit one of the 8 home runs against the Braves during that game.  If Nabisco can come up with a Cliff Johnson specific highlight, they can come up with something for Ken Singleton.  

More 1970s Durham Bulls next week.