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Today I think of great Astros from the past, like Cesar Cedeno and Bob Watson. But I also think of baseball cards of Scipio Spinks and Mark Lemongello. I think of trading Pete Rose and Johnny Bench baseball cards to my best friend to get guys like Skip Jutze and Rafael Landestoy. (Even today I think I would make the same trade!)


Amen... been there, done that as well.

My story isn't much different, except I never even got to visit the city of Houston until about 3 years ago when a conference was there that I needed to attend.

I've worshipped from afar, in "Reds Country," all of my life. A periodic pilgrimage to Cincy to see an Astros game was the best I could do.

I'll never forget the first time my dad took me out of my third grade class early to make the 3-4 hour trip to Cincinnati, pre-Interstate for a father/son weekend. Don Wilson and JR Richard pitched two of the three games we saw, and my favorite player, Joe Morgan, was there in the line-up, too. My first major league baseball games... and my Astros actually swept the series. I took note of that Cesar Cedeno guy, too... thought he was worth of "second-favorite player" status, and it's a good thing I had that back-up the following off-season.

The one great break was when the Astros made the Charleston WV International League Charlies their AAA franchise for a brief time in my mid-teens. I still have the program from the Astros/Charlies game from the late 70s with autographs all over.

Indeed, this is such a monumental moment for many of us... life is good.