Good Samaritan returns young Astros fan’s lost signed baseball card

Carson Osborne was so excited to have Framber Valdez sign his baseball card before Wednesday’s Astros game that his hands literally shook as he tried to carefully place his new favorite memorabilia into a protective sleeve.

Hours later, the 13-year-old card collector was exhausted in a different way when he returned to his father’s car outside Minute Maid Park to find the card had slipped out somewhere along the way. After Carson and his father, Chris, retraced the same route and visited the stadium’s Lost and Found office to no avail, all hope – and the card – seemed lost. But Christina Osborne wasn’t ready to give up the search.

“I thought no one knows where they lost it. Maybe it was thrown away, maybe another child found it and now becomes a collector like my son. But as a mother, I had to try everything I could,” Christina said.

In a desperate attempt, Carson’s mother took to social media and posted a photo of the wide grin on her son’s face as he held the card shortly after signing it. Along with the heartbreaking image, she asked anyone who might have seen the card to come forward.

Friends of the Osbornes quickly shared the post and it eventually spread to major social media accounts across the city.

With the Astros having a day game, Darrell McKenzie, who has worked as an usher in the Crawford Boxes at Minute Maid Park since 2022, was enjoying a rare off night scrolling through Facebook. He immediately flinched when he saw Carson’s face and the card staring back at him.

Hours earlier, the 68-year-old had just finished work when he spotted a card and picked it up. Noticing the fresh signature, he put it in his own protective sleeve, which he uses for important stadium information, knowing the piece of cardboard could be important to someone. McKenzie planned to drop the card off at the Lost and Found after his shift, but after a long day, he simply forgot he had it as he drove home.

Then he signed up for Facebook.

“It was embarrassing that I forgot to hand it in,” McKenzie said.

McKenzie corrected his mistake by contacting the Osbornes and carefully wrapping the card, enveloping it in a surprise that Carson would discover upon delivery.

In addition to his memory loss, McKenzie says he is also embarrassed to receive any attention at all for doing his work, as he claims that any member of his “Crawford Crew,” as he calls them, would have done the same thing if they had stumbled upon the map.

“Me, Carla, Don, Bob and Michelle and we all work really well together,” McKenzie said. “When fans leave the game and thank you, that’s a huge reward. We also have a fantastic fan base because over the years fans have often brought us cell phones, credit cards and all kinds of personal items that they then give to us so we can drop them off and connect people with what they’ve forgotten.”

McKenzie makes the whole situation seem routine, but Carson wasn’t so sure when he and his father drove home to Cypress on Wednesday without that card.

“When my mom posted about it, I thought, ‘That’s unlikely,'” Carson said. “But then it kept getting shared and I thought, maybe there’s a chance after all.”

McKenzie made the effort by making sure the card was returned, but a big help goes to everyone who took the time to spread the word about the search for the baseball card.

“It was just an incredible moment for the city of Houston and says a lot about how much Astros fans care about the cause,” Christina said. “It’s a reminder that there are a lot of really caring and thoughtful people out there.”

“It shows the good in people,” Carson added.