[Merkle923]

In belated honor of the Astros' World Championship, here's a run of tremendous photos taken for the '62 and '63 Colt 45s by the peripatetic Dallas-based photographer Jim Laughead, which we'll 'release into the wild' here. Laughead did much of Topps' spring training work in Florida and nearly all of it in Arizona into the early '70s (in addition to eleventy billion college football photos).

Not all of these guys technically belong here as most never actually played in the majors but the collection is just too good to be split up. And no, none of them actually played in Houston.

Grob was a '56 Senator depicted in camp with Houston in '63.