[Elgringo]

Featuring Houston’s Astrodome, this card is from a set of twenty-four issued by Van Den Bergh in 1965. It is somewhat the Astrodome’s rookie card, the stadium having opened the same year. This is the only baseball type in the set which otherwise features modern marvels like the Sydney Opera House and Cousteau’s underwater sea-base. The card back advertises “Milkana Mild” from Van Den Bergh's of London.

Milkana was a spreadable cheese, produced by a Bavarian company called Edelweiss, available only to the German market in the 1950s. Unilever acquired Edelweiss in 1962 and made Milkana cheese available to the British market under its Dutch subsidiary, Van Den Bergh. Today, Milkana is sold nearly everywhere except in North America.

I have had this card for a while but recently I began to wonder who the featured player might be. Assuming that the artist took inspiration from an actual image, I’ve concluded that the batter is either Jim Wynn or Roman Mejias.

My reasoning? The image depicts a right handed African American or dark skinned Latino player. From inception through 1965 (when the card was produced), there were a handful of black Colts/Astros players, but only two of them batted righty: Wynn and Mejias.

Then again, it’s possible that the artist was inspired by pictures of any number of non-Colts/Astros players.

Personally, I like to think it’s The Toy Cannon himself.