#50 - Dave Smith

There's not much visually separating Dave Smith from a BP pitcher chosen to throw in the Home Run Derby here. Grey hair, protruding gut, toneless arms...

However, Dave Smith was actually a damn fine reliever. He started out is career with a bang, coming out of the pen to throw 102 innings and finish with an ERA of 1.93. Somehow that earned him only a 5th place finish in the NL ROY voting, losing out to Steve Howe (druggie), Bill Gullickson (so-so career), Lonnie Smith (druggie) and Ron Oester (I have nothing to say about Ron Oester). Smith averaged around 60-75 innings per year and finished his career with a 2.67 ERA (129 ERA+). All in all, he was a very valuable reliever for some competitive Astros teams.

#24 - Tony Walker

OK, let's start with the good: It's our first rookie card! And now the bad: It's Tony Walker.

Visually, the card is pretty decent. It's a nice look at the 'Stros uniforms of the 80s, marking the transitional period between the horrific 70s ones (see, it still has those stripes on the sleeves) and the modern day ones (note the predominantly blue and white design). There's not much to say about the photo, it's a pretty standard batter shot.

Now, about the player himself. Um, I got nuthin. Walker had a cup of coffee in '86 after spending 5 years in the minors. He had three minor league seasons with 40+ stolen bases, so the Houston brass must have thought they could make the kid into a leadoff hitter. Unfortunately, he hit .222 in 84 games in '86 an was summarily sent down to Tucson, never to return.

On an unrelated note, I played Babe Ruth League baseball (age 13-15) for the Astros and our manager was a crusty old Asian guy who owned a lamp store. He wasn't a very good manager, and it didn't help that he spit when he talked and had a thick accent that resulted in a lot of embarassing calls to the team, "Assholes, ova hee-uh!" It really sounded like that.

#4 - Dave Lopes Record Breakers

Brace yourself for a tangent here.

OK, first Dave Lopes? Not Davey? OK, Topps. But overall this is a great shot of Lopes...on the bench. Which actually makes sense considering he only had 255 ABs in the year he stole 25 bases. Now, that doesn't seem like a lot of ABs for a guy with that many swipes, but then I found the '70s As. I'm too young to have watched these teams, so someone will have to fill me in if they have any firsthand knowledge of how this team played, but WOW. In 1974, Herb Washington stole 29 bases and had ZERO ABs. Zero! The guy played in 92 games...and he never played the field!!! So he pinch ran in all those 92 games. And what's worse, he was caught stealing 16 times! That's a terrible %.

What's more, this was not an isolated year. Check out the 1975 team, 1976, etc. And it wasn't just one wacky manager's philosophy; they did this year after year. Am I the only one who finds this interesting?

#2 - Jim Deshaies Record Breaker

As you've probably picked up on, the set starts with all record breakers. Good, let's get these things out of the way and get to the real meat of the set.

Here we have the immortal, uh, I mean, forgettable Jim Deshaies. On Sept. 23, 1986, he struck out the first 8 hitters of the game. Of course the card doesn't say what team the Astros were playing, but checking B-R, I can see that it was LA. I was really hoping he pitched a lousy game after striking out all those guys, but I was wrong. He threw a 2-hit shutout and ended up with 10 Ks. Pretty damn good.