Antique Mall Mystery Pack: Astros

Despite having Dallas Keuchel and his angular beard, the Houston Astros were no match for the Kansas City Royals and their pennant-winning late-inning magic.

Serves them right for moving to the American league. Although they wouldn't have had a chance this year if they stayed in the NL Central, what with the Cardinals, Pirates, and Cubs going 1-2-3 in that division. The AL West has three teams that have never won a World Series, and their most recent was the Angels squeaking by the Giants in 2002.

It's taken years, but I'm finally starting to get used to Houston playing in the American League. This year's All-Star Game and Postseason did a lot to cement that. But all these cards are from the Astros NL days, some even before there was such a thing as a Central division.

1994 Triple Play #29 Darryl Kile

This 1994 card is caught in the middle between the Astros' Shell Oil-colored uniforms and a major logo change. The late Darryl Kile, who threw a no-hitter toward the end of the 1993 season, is seen here on the value-priced Donruss Triple Play brand.

Especially as a kid, I always thought the transparent block letters at the bottom made for an innovative touch.

1994 Triple Play #22 Craig Biggio

Call me crazy, but I think that design starts to break down the more letters there are in the player's last name. Tall letters getting squished just looks a little strange. But this was probably my first-ever look at the new Astros logo in 1994.

1993 Donruss #504 Joe Boever

These Mystery Packs seem to be getting less and less interesting as I work my way through the pile. There's nothing that special in 1993 Donruss by itself, other than it marks the year that they finally made significant changes to the card backs after over a decade in business.

Also, I can't recall seeing a 1993 Donruss card in better condition. The gloss and color reproduction are almost perfect. I'd even consider getting it graded if I knew who the heck Joe Boever was. His stats say he had a 4-11 record in 1989 for the Braves without ever starting a game. You have to blow an awful lot of saves to earn a record like that.

1993 Pinnacle #423 Doug Drabek

Doug Drabek was much more reliable, although he didn't have a great 1993. Still, he was only a couple years removed from winning the Cy Young award as a Pirate. His son, Kyle, made the majors too, although he's only appeared in a handful of games in recent years. Griffeys, Alous, and Boones are hard to come by.

1991 Bowman #563 Andujar Cedeno

Early Bowman sets had more than a few pictures like this. It could have been taken outside any high school gym anywhere in North America. Unlike many Bowman card subjects, Cedeno did have a Major League career, but everyone has to start somewhere. Maybe if modern Bowman sets had cards featuring Colin Powell or Bobby Thomson, I'd be more interested in the brand.

1992 Topps #12 Luis Gonzalez

This may look like your run-of-the-mill Topps base set, but 1992 represents a major turning point. While the photography doesn't stack up to 1991, this marks the first flagship set that Topps printed on all-white paper stock. They also took advantage of the card back's landscape orientation and included a wide-angle image of the player's home stadium.

1992 bridged the old and the new, but also included longtime trademarks like the Topps Rookie Cup. Gonzalez proved worthy of the award, driving in the winning run in the 2001 World Series.

Not sure that one will ever stop hurting. After 9/11 and the heroics of countless New Yorkers, the Yankees should have won that year, and came oh-so-close. Yankees fans can still know heartbreak, despite 27 World Series titles.

There, I said it.

1993 Upper Deck #294 Casey Candaele

Of course, the Yankees have nothing on the Cubs, and Casey Candaele has pretty much nothing to do with the Cubs, other than having a baseball card who shows him at Wrigley Field, with the Steve Bartman section visible in the background. Leave it to the greatness of 1993 Upper Deck to show us that section a decade in advance.

1992 Donruss Coke Ryan #14 Nolan Ryan/1980 HA

Lots of players go their whole career without ever winning a World Series, let alone playing in one. Nolan Ryan took care of that very early in his career with the 1969 "Miracle Mets", but never appeared in one after that, despite all those wins, all those strikeouts, all those no hitters, and all those oddball baseball cards.

One thing is sure, though it won't be the Cubs, one of the teams that made it to the Fall Classic will win their first World Series in many years. I was hoping to see a Cubs/Blue Jays World Series, but it turns out we got the opposite. A team that won because of the infamous Bill Buckner error versus a team that probably wouldn't have won if there were replay review in 1985.

Time will tell.

There is one fun fact, though. This World Series between the Mets and Royals marks the first-ever between two expansion teams.

Up next: The San Francisco Giants.

The Trading Post #43: My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones

It's been a while since I started a new trading relationship, but I'm always reminded how fun it is to swap cards with other collectors. Mark from My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones commented on a recent post offering a couple needs from my Eight Men Out want list. Just a few days after a PWE from 2x3 Heroes was delivered, another envelope showed up this weekend, and it had some beauties.

1991 Bowman #410 Bobby Thomson / Ralph Branca / Shot Heard Round the World

Only a couple sets have been in my collection longer than 1991 Bowman, but somehow this iconic card eluded my grasp all these years. The Eight Men Out list comes through again! This was one of the first sets to experiment with gold foil, and it's present on only a few cards, including this one.

Come to think of it, the card backs on this set might be why I like green cards so much. Like the woodgrain design on 1987 Topps influencing my appreciation of 1955 Bowman and 1962 Topps (and thus 2011 Topps Heritage), perhaps green cards just look "right" to some deep-seated part of my brain.

1991 Bowman #410 Bobby Thomson / Ralph Branca / Shot Heard Round the World (Reverse)

With all the monster clutch home runs we've seen so far this postseason, like those from Kyle Schwarber and of course Jose Bautista (topped off with the best bat flip in baseball history), Bobby Thomson and his "Shot Heard 'Round The World" fits right in, despite happening over sixty years ago.

But that wasn't all.

1991 Stadium Club #493 Scott Coolbaugh

This was the last card I needed to complete Series 2 of 1991 Stadium Club! The penultimate card came via trade not long ago, but I can finally cross this one off the list. I don't really know much about Coolbaugh, but he played a few seasons in the majors, and even went over to Japan for a couple years following the 1994 strike. More on that later.

1996 Collector's Choice Silver Signature #753 Bichette / Castilla / Galarraga / Walker CL

Mark stuffed an envelope with close to two dozen cards, including lots of Rockies, like this Silver Signature checklist of the Blake Street Bombers. The Colorado Rockies' Facebook account posted a Throwback Thursday photo of these guys last week, and it is very, very 1990s.

1992 Fleer Ultra #199 Craig Biggio

He also included a small stack of Hall-of-Famers from 1992 Fleer Ultra. This Biggio card is one I could almost draw from memory, but I don't recall that little six-sided pin on top of his hat, despite having seen this card countless times. It's also a quick reminder that Biggio started out as a catcher, something that's commonly forgotten.

1996 Zenith #13 Dante Bichette

The rest of these cards were mostly shiny Rockies. I've seen Zenith before, but never from this 1996 vintage that I can recall. I don't know whether they all have eight gold bats arrayed like a Japanese folding hand fan, but I'll sure remember it now.

1995 Finest #255 Bill Swift

I also got the opportunity to liberate a few Finest cards from their protective peel-off coating, one of the most satisfying simple pleasures of 21st-century American life. Whether it's an iPhone, microwave panel, or 20-year old baseball card, it's like unwrapping a present.

Bill Swift was one of the first high-end free agent pitchers the Rockies signed, before anyone knew that free agent pitchers seem not to make it in Coors Field. Swift and Bret Saberhagen were the first to set that precedent.

1995 SP #51 Vinny Castilla

The position players on the Rockies have almost always been the highlights, going all the way back to an inaugural Rockie, Vinny Castilla. He was a third baseman, but he's clearly covering second base to turn two, and doing a good job of it, despite Bip Roberts' non-leg-breaking takeout slide.

For a "Super Premium" card, it's on the thin side, but makes great use of gold and blue foil. That blue foil features a whole lattice of SP logos when they catch the light just right, which shows up quite nicely in the scan.

1995 Topps Cyberstats #71 Walt Weiss

1993 was a tough year to be a budding baseball fan. The 1993 season was great, ending with Joe Carter's walkoff home run in the 1993 World Series, but the infamous strike of 1994 prevented me from seeing another World Series until after Coors Field had opened. It's a giant shame, especially since the Montreal Expos were having a fantastic season and were far from a long shot to win it all.

1995 Topps did what it could with that disgraceful period in baseball history, making a partial set of CyberStats parallels with a special foil on the front.

1995 Topps Cyberstats #71 Walt Weiss (Reverse)

The back of these parallels include "computer-simulated" statistics, projecting what would have happened had the final six or seven weeks of the 1994 season occurred. No one expected Weiss to improve on his single real-life home run of 1994, but Barry Bonds' card in this set suggested that he might have tied Roger Maris' 61 home runs. I find this scenario highly unlikely, given that Bonds only had 37 when play stopped. But we'll never know whether Maris' record (or even his asterisk) would have fallen, or if the Expos would have brought Canada its third World Series trophy in as many years.

Matt Williams was sitting much prettier at 43 home runs, so if the record were to fall, it probably would have been a different Giant than Topps thought. But who knows? One thing's for sure. Whether Bonds, Williams, or Maris held the single-season home run record at the end of a complete 1994 season, Topps Cyberstats never would have existed.

Cool cards, but I'd have preferred a full season.