By Katharine Jose, Managing Editor, Chron.com Oct 20, 2024
A 1,600-acre ranch located an hour’s drive west of San Antonio and owned for 20 years by Houston Astros legend Craig Biggio just hit the market for just over $12 million.
The listing for the sprawling property, from Mark Matthew and Jeff Boswell of Republic Ranches, makes it clear that this is a true hunting ranch. Nearly all of the acreage is under high fence, and Biggio has apparently “intensely managed for trophy white-tailed deer since he purchased the property,” which has also attracted a number of other species of wildlife.
The natural environment of the ranch is impressive, with lots of elevation change across its mostly untouched land, and two miles of Sabinal River frontage. The built environment is a bit more basic, consisting of barns and a walk-in cooler, plus a barndominium that provides three bedrooms, three bathrooms and a bunkroom.
This is actually Biggio’s second Cambo Ranch (the name appears in a photo of the property, though in the listing it’s called the South Sabinal River Ranch). The baseball Hall-of-Famer is originally from New Jersey, but spent his entire MLB career with the Astros, playing with the team for 20 seasons between 1988 and 2007. He is the only Astros player to join the “3,000 hit club,” and—along with teammates Jeff Bagwell and Lance Berkman, who together were the “Killer B’s”—led the team to six appearances in the playoffs between 1997 and 2005, when the team made the World Series for the first time ever. (Bagwell sold his own Houston property, a mansion in Memorial, for nearly $12 million in 2015.)
“There is no other player that means more to the Houston Astros’ franchise than Craig Biggio,” Sports Illustrated wrote earlier this year.
Biggio also played with Ken Caminiti, the “hard-charging third baseman” and 1996 NL MVP who died of an overdose in 2004. Caminiti and Biggio were close, once owning a ranch together that they named Cambo as a combination of their two names. Though Biggio later sold that ranch, he kept the name on his current property, and that’s where Caminiti’s ashes were scattered.
Though Biggio retired from playing in 2007, he lives in Houston, where he raised his children and coached baseball at their high school, consulted on an eponymous Downtown restaurant, and maintains a role as the special assistant to the general manager of the Astros.
https://www.chron.com/homes/article/astros-craig-biggio-ranch-19846978.php