Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com.
Ahhh… to dip my toes in the pool of my own mediocrity…could anything be sweeter???
And I come back just in time to hear all you freaks and nut-jobs whining and gripping about getting Ken Griffey, Jr. in the railroad stripes for the upcoming year.
News-flash and a half…it’s not going to happen. Griffey will be accommodated and he will be traded and likely to an National League team… most likely one with tomahawks across their bellies. At this point all we can really hope for is Seattle demanding Andruw Jones, Smoltz and Milwood as a starting point for negotiations…and please get Brian Jordan the hell out of the National League… I’m tired of this guy making the Astros pitching staff his own personal pinball machine…
I almost hope that Cincinnati does go after Junior. Not that it would be all that great to see him our division but a) the Reds are going to suck next year no matter what happens and b) if they landed Junior, the only people left in Cincinnati that will have ever picked up a baseball will be Griffey and the kid who played Tanner in the Bad News Bears…
Bottom line is the cost is going to be great… too rich for the Astros blood, increased revenue streams be damned… from Seattle’s point of view, Houston would have to be willing to give up Billy Wagner, Mike Hampton, Jeff Bagwell, Carl Everett or Richard Hidalgo and probably Scott Elarton. You’d have to guess that those guys would be among the reasons for Junior to put Houston on his list. Without them, Griffey would have very little reason to want to play for what would easily turn into Seattle, South.
If the Astros are serious about Griffey, the better course of action in the Flap’s opinion would be to wait until he’s a free agent after the 2000 season. This would put a couple of things into play… the extra revenues from the Gashouse will start making The Wallet a bit looser, and it won’t cost us half the team to acquire him… just a Klesko-sized assload of money.
In Regards To The New Togs …
Sand, Brick, Clay, Alabaster, Mushroom, Primer, Bondo, Terd and whatever other colors have now been included in the marketing scheme, I like the new uniforms.
I know some of the remarkably “traditionalist” posters on the TalkZone (most of whom still wax poetically about how they could buy a hot-dog, Coca-Cola, Hershey’s Bar, matinee ticket and still have enough to put a down payment on a Model A) are bitching mightily about the Astros forsaking their traditions and abandoning their roots and whatever other Maalox-inspired conspiracies that they can come up with. They’re moving out of an antiquated stadium, they’re changing colors, they’ve gone and got new players… News flash… Loell Passe is teets up and they aren’t even going to sell Hot Smokeys next year.
My favorite thing so far is the comparison to the Braves, Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox, and Dodgers and any other team they consider “traditional”… Frankly this is ab-so-freakin-lutely hilarious… The Astros are a 38 year-old Major League Baseball franchise. In 38 years, they have changed uniforms 5 times and heck, they’ve even changed their name once… The Dodgers in their first 38 years of existence wore (at different times, thank the deity) lavender, green, yellow, blue and red uniforms. While they’ve never worn pinstripes, they did have lavender stripes running both vertically and HORIZONTALLY. The franchise also has changed names 7 times… The Braves have changed cities 3 times…and it wasn’t too long ago that they had some ridiculous opium-inspired feather running up the sleeves of their polyester pullovers. The Cubs, 10 different uniforms in their first 38 years. The Red Sox actually changed names 5 times and uniforms 12 times…at one point with a Red Sox pinned to the front of their jerseys… The Highlanders… I mean Yankees are the only team in baseball who could conceivably be used in this argument… and guess what, they changed their unis at least 10 times in their first 38 years.
Even when merchandising wasn’t the point of professional sports, teams were changing colors, uniforms, mascots, organists, names, concessions, cities, owners, players and stadiums. If you don’t like it, don’t buy any of the new merchandise and hope that no one else does either… but whining about losing the team you grew up with is ridiculous and tiresome…the team you grew up with hasn’t been around for a long, long time. You just forgot to take your Alzheimers medication long enough to realize it…
Like everything else that the traditionalists vomit about the death of the game they love, they fail to see that the only real tradition that baseball has is change. And like the Willard Scott time-fillers most of them act like, because the change is inconvenient for them, and because the Onions tied to their pants are giving off some noxious fumes, they are far too grumpy about it to be allowed to live…
Astro Of The Year
Yes, by every conceivable measure, Bagwell was the team MVP again. And I guess it’s still possible that he’ll win MVP. But the staff here at the Flap (me) likes players with an edge and players who get big hits in the second half of the year. We (me) also like players who talk smack, kill with glares, and want to blow up stadiums… that’s why the first ever Astro of the Year award has to go to Carl Everett. Fulfilling my prediction that the fade in 98 was due to fatigue more than anything else, C4 was a monster both times he came off the DL, and carried the team for large parts of the second half. And plus, dude is a scary Mo-Fo and you gotta respect that. New York’s loss is Houston’s gain. For those about to blow up Wrigley Field, we salute you.
DisAstro Of The Year
I hate to pick this award, because, as a life long Astros fan, I’m thrilled any year that they make it to the playoffs…and while I’d love for them to one day get off the that big ought in the World Series appearances column, I remember way too many years when .500 was an accomplishment.
Having said that, because I am a life long Astros fan, I’m used to players having horrible, horrible seasons in a Houston uniform. Therefore, Sean Bergman wins the award for DisAstro of the year. Dude sucked pretty much the second after he hit that second homer in the second start, combining total ineffectiveness with a lack of heart, effort or balls. In other words he was the pitcher that the Padres thought they gave us for James Mouton. On top of all that, he went to the Braves after the Astros released him, which condemns him to total and eternal hatred…
Astro Playoff MVP
Lost in the bases loaded, no body out 10th inning of the 3rd game against Atlanta, which pretty much summed up the season, was that no matter what he did or didn’t do in the regular season, Ken Caminiti is still like a crack addict looking or a pipe and some fire…dangerous and scary.
One wonders what his numbers would have looked like had he been healthy, or if the Astros’ crack medical staff hadn’t been treating a pull instead of a torn muscle. But the reality is he hit well in the playoffs primarily because he was out for so long. And frankly that’s fine with me….
If they want to play Billy Spiers and Russ Johnson at third up until August 30th next year and then thaw out Cammy for the rest of the year, great. At least then I won’t have to wonder what he’s going to fall off of next…