Cincinnati REDS (18-16, 2nd NL West) vs. Houston ASTROS (13-21, 6th NL West)
May 9-11, 2011
MMPUS
Game One (Mon. 5/09)
7:05 p.m. CDT
Cincinnati – Starting Pitcher: Travis Wood LHP (1-3, 6.21) Saw him last week in one of those day games in the GAB, against A. Hernandez as a matter of fact. After a nice debut half-season in 2010, Wood has struggled with inconsistency this time around.
Houston – Starting Pitcher: Aneury Rodriguez RHP (0-0, 4.15) After a dazzling performance in his first MLB start last week (5 IP, 1 H, 0 ER) in Cincinnati, Rodriguez returns to prove it wasn’t a fluke.
Game Two (Tue. 5/10)
7:05 p.m. CDT
Cincinnati – Starting Pitcher: Homer Bailey RHP (1-0, 1.50) Another déjà vu pitching matchup – hell, I should’ve just lifted this section from Ebby’s preview from last week.
Houston – Starting Pitcher: Brett Myers RHP (1-2, 4.47) The usually reliable Myers got touched up pretty good by the Dickities in the Bandbox Down by the River last week. Hopefully he will return to recent form here.
Game Three (Wed. 5/11)
1:05 p.m. CDT
Cincinnati – Starting Pitcher: Edinson Volquez RHP (3-1, 5.63) He’s been wild of late, and despite the winning record, Volquez has yet to go more than six innings in any of his starts this season.
Houston – Starting Pitcher: Wandy Rodriguez LHP (2-3, 4.00) The other Rodriguez. Wandy has been pretty erratic this season by his standards, but his last two starts have been very good, so maybe he has righted the ship.
The Dickities roll into town this week bumping along in 2nd place in the division, fresh from taking 2-of-3 from the Cubs in Wrigley. They are still the team to beat in the Central. If they get their pitching together a little bit more, and can stave off all the injuries, I think they’ll take the division again in 2011, albeit possibly with a record of 85-77, something like that.
The Astros have lost two straight, after winning three straight, and that is pretty much how it is going to be this season, it seems . . .
Injuries
Cincinnati – J. Arredondo (P), shoulder, back in June maybe; J. Burton (P), shoulder, next year; J. Francisco (prospect), calf, back in June; P. Janish (SS), ankle, day-to-day; S. Rolen (3B), continually injured for the last ten years, back in June.
Houston – A. Arias (P), sore shoulder, back in May; J. Bourgeois (UTIL), strained oblique, back end of May; J. Castro (C), torn up knee, back next season; J. Keppinger (INF), foot, back mid-May; B. Lyon (P), arm woes, back May (maybe); J. Michaels (OF), shoulder, back mid-May.
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You’ve got to be yourself
You can’t be no one else
SUPERSONIC. I have enjoyed reading lately about the exploits of erstwhile Astros hero Lance Berkman in the wilds of eastern Missouri. I’ve especially enjoyed his somewhat petulant comments to the effect he was wronged by the Astros and lied to by Ed Wade in the time around his departure from the hometown team in a trade toward the end of last season. I have also enjoyed reading some of the comments by SnSers in reaction to this.
I understand why Twinkie saying things like this pisses people off, but I am having trouble being very indignant about it, myself. Berkman is not acting any different than he ever has. It is just that now he is doing it in St. Louis, of all places. He is one of those people who never heard the bromide “some things are better left unsaid”, or didn’t understand it, if he did. He was born without a button on the side of his head that, when manually depressed, temporarily disconnects the mouth from the brain, and stops one from uttering every thought that comes into one’s head, at least for awhile.
I have one of those buttons, and I am jamming on it continually. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
I don’t think Berkman, or almost any other active player, has the perspective or sense of detachment required to not stay stupid-ass things like Lance said recently. These guys live in a world beyond most of the rest of us. They are pampered and praised continually. They are idolized and desired. Almost any ballplayer can walk into any hotel bar in any city at practically any time and quickly have himself lined up for a great blow job and/or an FFM threesome and/or more. Think about that. Anytime. Now, how is someone with that at his disposal (even if he doesn’t exercise his option to indulge in it) supposed to make level, sensible statements about himself or baseball or anything else that does not place our not-so-humble subject at the center of the fucking universe, with all the groupies and GMs and fans and all the rest of us only just barely distinguishable flotsam and jetsam, orbiting around his munificent self? Perspective will come (hopefully) later on, and maybe a retired Berkman will realize what a dick he was and do something to make up for it.
Stuff like this brings me back once again to that place where I appreciate even more (and still miss like hell) one Mr. Jeff Bagwell. Bagwell the player, I mean. He was one guy who had the rare gift of self-awareness and perspective while he was playing. Whatever he was really thinking, one rarely heard Bags utter stupid shit like Berkman does all the time. Or like Oswalt did at times. Bagwell was in control of himself, and it did not take much noticeable effort on his part. He was/is just one of those gifted people – hopefully we have all been lucky enough to run across at least a few of them in our travels – who are self-possessed, and have a natural dignity that is palpable.
Don’t get me wrong. When it comes to someone to hang out with, Bagwell is probably not exactly my kind of guy. He’s a little too man’s man, Millsey-Arnsey-Bourney, I’d-rather-hang-out-in-the-clubhouse-with-the-guys-than-go-home-to-the-wife/girlfriend for me. That is my impression, anyway. To be honest, personality-wise I am probably closer to someone like Biggio. Or Caminiti.
But I don’t have any problem finding Jeff Bagwell immensely admirable, as he was as a player; and as he seems to be now, as a regular citizen. And while I enjoy his forays into the broadcast booth on the odd Saturday, I just want to say once again that I really, really miss having Jeff Bagwell out on the field, leading the charges in the fight against evil and the FTCubs, etc. Still. More than ever.
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Weather Report: I was born in a crossfire hurricane and I howled at my ma through the driving rain all these years you and I’ve spent together I guess we just couldn’t stand the weather black hole sun won’t you come and wash away the rain? don’t you want to rain dance with me? don’t you want to rain dance? don’t just take me for tryin’ to be heavy, understand it’s time to get ready for the storm it’s going to rain down tears rain down tears and you’ll need a shelter somewhere ooh, storm is threatening my very life today if I don’t get some shelter oh, yeah, I’m gonna fade away it’s a black sky forming on the ridge it’s a woman waiting, standing on the bridge why so unforgiving? and why so cold? been a long time crossing the bridge of sighs I feel sad, but I feel happy as I’m coming back to home there’s a bridge across the river that I have to cross alone like a skipping, rolling stone like an Inca . . .
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DARKNESS, DARKNESS. So I have this mouth shut-off button installed on the side of my head, and I am constantly laying on it full force to try and stop some of the really stupid-ass shit before it ejects from my mouth. No way I can stop the stupid-ass shit from running through my head, but . . . It is the end of spring, the beginning of summer. Normally one of the brightest times in my year. This year, the darkness is unrelenting . . . I need another button that shines a Q-Beam, to try and see through the blackness. I’d be laying on that one, too, if I had it; not that it would do much good now . . . I had a dream one time, back in my heavy-duty partying days. I dreamt that I got so fucked up this one night that the vicious hangover I woke up with the next day didn’t go away, I had to deal with it for weeks. For weeks, walking around with a pounding headache and the sound of shattered, broken glass rustling around inside of my head. In my dream I briefly considered a gun for relief, but ended up smoking some kick-ass cheeba with this dizzy chick I’d met, before going to bed with her for three days. That got rid of the hangover, but then I had this hippie chick hanging off of me . . . I had that dream my junior year in college, while in real life I was dealing with the girl of my dreams getting pregnant and deciding to keep the baby and abort me, instead . . . After that, in quick succession, academic probation, check (I literally partied for days on end, no time for class or books that semester); death of a sibling, check; death of a friend, check; parents divorce, check; death of a close friend, check. That was one hell of a semester, boy. The only period of time in my life I truly ran off the rails. I ended up spending a lot of the time “experimenting” with window pane LSD, with my friend Phil. Purple micro-dots. I felt like I needed to expand my mind, or something . . . Awhile after that, I had quit the psychedelics and was staying down at the beach cabin, and a couple of friends showed up one night. They were tripping, and had just come from the Eagle’s Lodge down at Crystal Beach, of all places. I tried to imagine what the normal clientlele in that place must have been thinking, looking at my friends; who told me they were so fucked up that they sat in a booth and ordered beers, but were too freaked out to drink them because the mortar between the bricks on the interior facade of the lodge was literally oozing out and running down the walls. So they came looking for me . . . Around that same time some drunk girl picked me up in the bar at Steak ‘n’ Ale one night. She planned to take me home with her, I think. But instead she ran her LeSabre off the road at about 70 mph, out in the middle of fucking nowhere, some rice fields off of IH 10 between Winnie and Anahuac. She never even hit the brakes. We skidded wildly across rice fields, taking out a couple of barbed-wire fences along the way, before going nose down into a 10 ft. deep drainage canal. I was belted in but still hit the windshield hard enough with my head to crack it, in a circular pattern roughly the size and shape of my skull. Noticing that was the last thing I remembered, that and seeing the girl try to get loose from her seat belt and climb longways up the inside of the passenger compartment, to get to a window . . . and I also had the vague sensation of really cold water creeping up the legs of my jeans, just as I slipped into shock and unconsciousness . . . Some farmer found the car, six hours later, while riding his tractor around in his fields. It was nearly half a mile off the road, semi-submerged in this fucking ditch. The car was perpindicular to the ground, and the only thing that stopped me from drowning was the seat belt, which kept my upper body out of the water. I was submerged from the waist down. I did break three of my ribs; but that seemed minor, considering. It took them three days to find the girl, who had made it out of the car, and then took off across the rice fields in the dark, in a panic. She’d looked over at me after I’d passed out, and thought I was dead . . . Anyway, point being I’ve had some eventful times along the way, but I never was fazed by any of it for too long, because I always had this inner sense that I was being looked after, and that I was doing what the person looking after me wanted me to do, more or less. Maybe not some of the specific details so much, but I was living my life, not sitting through it. And I could bounce back from anything . . . So, that’s about it. Right now, I’m in one of those dark times again, when I cannot tell down from up, and the only thing I know to do is dive off of the deep end, and see where I end up. Like an Inca, or something.
Early this morning
You knocked upon my door
Early this morning
When you knocked upon my door
I said, “Hello, Satan,
I believe it’s time to go.”
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Astros win the series, 2-1.