Remember the 1991 Astros players such as Darryl Kile, Kurt Schilling, Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Ken Caminiti, Steve Finley, Luis Gonzalez, and Kenny Lofton were some key members on that young team. There is still hope for the 2012 Astros to play well as everyone starts at 0 wins 0 losses!
Mike Scott's last season. Only played in 2 games then got injured and that was the end of his career. Sad, he was one of my favorite players growing up.
What sucks is, Kile really only had one great year in Houston, Schilling, Caminiti, Finley, Gonzalez, and Lofton all became multiple time all-stars wearing different unis. Sigh...
The 90s Killer Bees.....Biggio,Bagwell, 1996's Sean Berry Astros best year .281 17HR 95RBIs, 1998's Derek Bell Astros best year .314BA 22HRs 108RBIs and the era ends with Lance Berkman. Good times!!
We did have some studs back then. The one thing I hated was when Tal Smith came back on board and orcheastrated the deal with SD, where he basically gifted his son (then SD general manager) with the far better side of the deal. I HATED seeing Caminiti have the best years of his career with another team. We ended up getting very little of value. (The fact that "Operation Shutdown" Derek Bell was the most prominent player we received tells you something about how bad that trade was.) So, I am so glad that Crane ran Tal Smith's butt out of here.
Derek Bell was a good player in Houston (discounting 1999). The terrible part about it was trading Caminiti and Finley in that deal.
The talk about Derek Bell motivated me to go look at this Baseball Reference page. While scanning the page, I noticed that Bell finished 14th in MVP voting in 1995. In '95, Bell hit .314 with 8 homeruns and 86 RBI. I realize that it's only 14th place, but who the hell was voting for Derek Bell for MVP?
I have one memory of Derek Bell as I didn't get to go to many games as a kid and we didn't have a tv either. A ball was hit to him in right field and it rolled between his legs as everyone booed. That is my only memory of Derek Bell
My formative years as a sports fan were in the mid to late-90s, so I have plenty of Derek Bell memories. But my favorite or maybe most vivid was him having to tuck his chain in his jersey after every dive back to first base on a pickoff throw, after making any play in the outfield, after running the bases, and after swinging the bat.
lol @ the DB memories. I remember him launching one out deep center against the Mets. As soon as it left the bat, you could clearly see him say, "Oh, my GOD!!" as he watched. The Mets were livid. Later he said he wasn't trying to show them up but rather he couldn't believe he hit one like that. The whole thing made me LOL.
I'm sure if mgmt had known Cammy, Gonzo, and Finley were going to go nuts on the steroids they probably would have kept them around.
