Astros (25-45) vs. Dodgers (31-39)
June 17-19, 2011
Chavez Ravine
LOS ANGELES (SnS) – The hapless, staggering Houston Astros, choking on the dust of a three-game sweep at home at the hands of the once (and future) lowly Pittsburgh Pirates and nursing (by far) the worst W-L record in MLB, visit the Don Mattingly-helmed Los Angeles Dodgers this weekend, a team who appears to everyone else in the NL to be a kind of running joke – a mediocre collection of players commanded by an iffy first-year manager, whose daily adventures in divorce court are far more gripping and relevant than the games they play on the field – yet who to the Astros look as scary and dangerous as one of those mighty Brooklyn Dodger teams of the mid-1950s, who battled it out with the Yankees every fall for the dominance of Gotham City, MLB, and the rest of the known world.
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NUMBERS
HOUSTON – Home record (13-25); Road record (12-20); June 2011 record (4-11)
Extra Innings record (1-2); vs. LA 2011 record (2-1); W-L Sun (3-8); Mon (3-3); Tue (5-6); Wed (5-6); Thu (3-6); Fri (2-9); Sat (4-7)
Team Batting (9th) (.261/.318/.381)(.251/.320/.385); OPS .699 .704; OPS+ 97
Team Pitching (15th) (25-43, 4.63 3.78) WHIP 1.43 1.31; K/BB 2.08 2.26
LOS ANGELES – Home record (15-19); Road record (16-20); June 2011 record (5-9)
Extra Innings record (5-0); vs. HOU 2011 record (1-2)
Team Batting (12th) (.257/.319/.373) (.251/.320/.385); OPS .693 .704; OPS+ 96
Team Pitching (13th) (31-38, 4.10 3.78) ERA 1.37 1.31; K/BB 2.21 2.26
*Highlighted is NL league average for 2011
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Houston manager Brad Mills, he of the troubled visage, calm manner, and discordant ex-pitching coach, wades into battle in possession of a hit-and-miss offense; a sometimes promising, often maddening starting rotation; and a consistently fucked-up and useless bullpen that often has him out to the mound late in games, calling in another reliever more or less in the manner of some guy in a big, puffy paper hat dumping rum onto the burnt-up bananas in his flambé pan. His Astros have lost seven of their last eight. The Dodgers meanwhile, are coming off a quick three-game sweep at the hands of the stumbling Queen Pork Dickities. This weekend set of games in the stylish if gangland-dangerous Dodger Stadium promises to be one of those classic battles between an easily resistible force meeting an imminently movable object. The key to the series will be which one gives in and collapses less. Can’t wait.
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PITCHING
Game One: Friday 9:10 p.m. CDT
Houston – Brett Myers (2-6, 5.03) Myers has been his own worst enemy . . . Brownie summed up Myers starts this season during his most recent appearance, last Sunday vs. ATL – trouble early, then recovery and several innings of impressive work, then collapse around the fifth or sixth inning . . . he and Arnsberg were reportedly close, so I don’t know what latter’s demise means for Myers . . . it is hard to imagine him doing any worse than when Arnsberg was still here
Los Angeles – Ted Lilly, LHP (5-5, 3.98) A sometimes erratic lefty . . . Mattingly starts freaking out if Lilly gets past 90 pitches by the fifth inning or earlier, so if he is a little wild, he may not last long. Lilly has always been tough on the Astros, so here’s hoping he gets pulled early due to his pitch count.
Game Two: Saturday 9:10 p.m. CDT
Houston – Wandy Rodriguez (4-3, 3.13) Wandy is Wandy. He goes on the DL and misses three starts, then comes back and picks up right where he left off. Mr. Consistency.
Los Angeles – Rubby De La Rosa, RHP (3-0, 3.00) He has apparently pitched well, but who gives a fuck? “Rubby” is one of the coolest names I have ever encountered, anywhere. I figured it was short for something, but it’s not. It is his given name. Awesome. Rubby had to cut short his most recent start, last Sunday in Denver, because of “a cramp in his forearm”. Awesomer. Rubby and Wandy, Wandy and Rubby. I don’t even want to think about what Milo would do with that. Luckily, it is a road game, so we don’t have to find out.
Game Three: Sunday 3:10 p.m. CDT
Houston – Bud Norris (4-5, 4.38) Norris continues to pitch quite well, despite not getting a lot of support. This past Tuesday he pitched 7 innings against the Pirates, giving up three hits and one unearned run. He lost.
Los Angeles – Hiroki Kuroda, RHP (5-8, 3.31) The battle of the hard luck hurlers. Kuroda has lost his last five decisions, despite not giving up more than two earned runs in any of them.
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HAPPINESS RUNS. When I wheeled my Japanese 10-speed up in front of the O’Bannion’s 7-11 way down at the end of our street, my buddy Rocky was casually leaning against the front of the store. His back was to the brick façade. His left leg was straight and his right was cocked, with the bottom of his right foot against the façade, also. He had just finished off a Chic-O-Stick, the 2 oz. jumbo size, and was in the process of draining a 12 oz. (glass) bottle of Yoo-Hoo.
When I first pulled up, I saw Rocky in silhouette, and he looked like the epitome of cool, or as close as an 10-year-old kid could come to it. Rocky was one of those kids who had a knack for looking cool, no matter what he was doing. He didn’t try to – that would’ve been pretty uncool. It just came natural to him. On this day he looked like an pubescent version of Paul Newman, or Steve McQueen . . . leaned up against the front of a saloon in some Old West town, trying to decide which woman to pick up next, or which wannabe desperado to gun down in the street.
Once I came around to the side and could see him in the sunlight, it was just Rocky, of course. He’d been waiting for me.
I had been up at the elementary schoolyard, by myself, throwing a tennis ball against the side of a portable building and practicing my fielding on the rebound. Because of the irregular shape of the sheet metal on the sides of the building, the rebounds were not always predictable, which I liked. We hadn’t been able to get enough kids together that morning for a real game, so I was kind of mindlessly honing my skills, instead. It was hot – mid June or thereabouts – and I was squinting because all around the concrete pad I was fielding tennis balls on was yards of white, generic-looking seashell, which was used for parking lot aggregate back in those days. That stuff reflected sunlight like the snowpack at Squaw Valley.
I’d been at the schoolyard for an hour or so when a kid rode up on his bike and said Rocky was looking for me, to get some change and meet him at the 7-11 right away. So I got on my bike, putting my glove over the handlebars and holding the tennis ball in one hand, and I rode toward my house, which was just up the street. I had a metal Sucrets box in a desk drawer in my room where I secreted away change for use in situations just like this. The Sucrets box worked, because my brothers thought it was medicine and would not go near it. It did make my money smell like bing cherry, but that was a small price to pay. I grabbed up some change and got back on my bike, and rode the ½ mile or so up to the convenience store. I’d learned to ride entirely without hands by then, and I rode all the way up to the store that way, leaning slightly this way or that to negotiate the turns. My last lean brought me into the parking lot of the 7-11, and I eventually pulled up front of the bagged ice locker.
Rocky pushed himself upright and laconically walked over to me on my bike. He told me there was a new lady working in the 7-11, and she hadn’t learned everything there was to know yet.
At that time, a pack of Topps baseball cards cost ten cents. For that you got a dozen or so regular cards, plus a stick of unchewable gum, plus whatever “extra” promotional thing Topps was packaging with cards that year. I collected for 3-4 years back in the late 1960s-early 1970s. One year there were mini-posters of star players folded up in there, another year black and white “deckle edge” cards the stars supposedly autographed. One season they had these collectable “coins” about the size of a quarter, with a color picture of the player’s head on one side, and some info about him jammed onto the back, sort of like the entire bible written on a grain of rice one saw on display at the county fair in the fall.
The reason Rocky had summoned me was he had wandered into the store earlier that morning to get his daily Yoo-Hoo and Chico-Stick and found he had a dime left over, so he slid it and a pack of cards across the counter, and the new lady/clerk slid him back his cards, and a nickel change. She thought the cards were only a nickel. Half-price. Word about something like that travelled fast, and I was glad Rocky had alerted me and I had showed up with most of my change, probably 70 cents or so. I spent it all on cards.
As I was leaving the store, riding my bike down the street alongside Rocky, I saw four or five kids riding hurriedly in the direction of the store. Apparently they’d already got the news. I bet the new lady wondered why the heck kids started buying up all the baseball cards all of the sudden.
Somehow or another I subsequently found out the lady working at the store was a teacher, working a summer job for the money. I thought she was “old”, though in reality she was probably in her mid-thirties, and nice-looking. Her name was Mrs. Streety; and though I wasn’t attracted to her in any sexual way – I was still a bit young for that – there was something about her that made her stick in my mind. She was something beyond your average 7-11 clerk of the day.
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PROMOTIONS
Game One: Friday 9:10 p.m. CDT
Friday Night Fireworks. The Dodgers allow their fans to come down onto the field to watch the show. They get a better view, and can help stamp out potential wildfires when they break out.
Game Two: Saturday 9:10 p.m. CDT
Universal Studios Hollywood Kids Ticket. This is one of those promotions that sound good at first, but . . . The first 15K kids get a voucher for a ticket to a B-grade movie park. The voucher is good only if the parents buy their own tickets at full pop.
Game Three: Sunday 3:10 p.m. CDT
Father’s Day BBQ Apron. Pretty cool.
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TEACHER, I NEED YOU. The first day of school in fifth grade was pretty mundane, not a lot different than any other day at that school, which was down the street from the house I grew up in, which I had attended since kindergarten. The administration and teaching staff were stable, as was the student population. About the only excitement at the beginning of each year was meeting the 2 or 3 ‘new kids’ in one’s grade level, if one had not already met them in the neighborhood over the summer.
It was very rare to get a new teacher; but as it happens, the fifth grade was getting one that year. Old Mrs. Shannon, who really was old, had finally retired the year before, and there would be a replacement to take over her duties as history and social studies teacher, and homeroom monitor for students with last names beginning with M-Z.
As I slid into my seat that first day, I looked up over the commotion and low murmur in the room to realize the new teacher was my old friend Mrs. Streety, from the 7-11 that summer.
What can I say? I was captivated by her.
This was in 1969, and back then kids were kids, and moms behaved like moms (and teachers like teachers.) Oh sure, some of the 1960s changing mores had begun to creep in, but not much. The operative examples to keep in mind were still June Cleaver (as mom) and Mrs. Landers (as elementary teacher.) Proper and prim, and essentially asexual, at least in the eyes of a pre-teen kid. Looked at in a vacuum, neither was unattractive; and maybe, away from the cameras, Mrs. Landers secretly danced in a g-string and pasties at some ‘gentlemen’s club’ a few towns over from Mayfield at nights, for the extra money and the thrills. Maybe after Wally and ‘The Beave’ were safely tucked in for the night, June and Ward retired to the bedroom, and June took of her pearls and sensible shoes and put on a leather bustiér and front-less black leather panties, enticing Ward over from his own twin bed to hers. And after she’d got him good and hard and slid the cock ring down to the base of his modest 7-incher, maybe Ward old boy would roll her over and start pounding that thing in earnest, until she was begging for more.
Maybe so; but we never thought about stuff like that, especially about our moms and teachers; and thank goodness for that. It is kind of creepy to think about, even now.
I was captivated by Mrs. Streety because she was, to me, an interesting person, and a little bit outside my normal view of a teacher. I felt like I knew her.
Most of my teachers lived somewhere other than my neighborhood, and it was rare to see one’s teachers at all, outside the context of the school day. I don’t think we considered our teachers as three-dimensional humans, to tell the truth. After the last bell, they got put up in a storage closet somewhere until the next day, when they’d be wheeled out again to their various classrooms. This was a comfortable mental arrangement, for kids and probably teachers, too. Having to look at that person up there writing out some other-worldly looking equation on the chalkboard as a complete person, with faults and emotions and quirks and even fetishes, would have complicated things for us quite a bit. It was much easier not to contemplate any of that at all. Probably made learning easier, too.
On the odd occasion one did bump into one’s teacher, at a restaurant or in a department store your mom dragged you into, it was weird. The teacher was often ‘out-of-uniform’, in capris and a top that might have accentuated her breastitude a little, instead of the matronly dress from school. Sometimes they’d be out of persona, too; instead of the friendly but stern mien of the classroom teacher, she might be silly and a little flirty and, well, normal. I remember being uncomfortable when stuff like that happened, partly because I sensed my teacher was a bit uncomfortable, too.
It was different with Mrs. Streety, for me, anyway. I had met and dealt with her on a more everyday level before I ever knew her as my teacher. The kids in my neighborhood frequented the convenience store where she’d worked that summer. I went almost daily, to buy cards or candy or gum, if by chance I’d run across some loose change in the sofa or somewhere. I saw her a lot, and dealt with her often in a customer–clerk dynamic. We didn’t get friendly, really; but we knew each other fairly well before school ever started.
That first day of school, when I slid into my seat and realized Mrs. Streety was my new teacher, I think I was pleasantly surprised, even if I didn’t know why. She gave me a quick smile when she saw me, and so I liked to imagine she was pleased to see me, too.
We were seated alphabetically, which put me a row or so over from an interior wall, two seats from the front. I was pissed. I liked sitting close to the exterior wall, with all its big windows that looked out onto the street that ran by the north side of our school. I would sit there and look out those windows and daydream, watching squirrels playing on the power lines, and watching the cars and occasionally people go by. That always seemed to me one of the more pleasant things one could do, to daydream; especially when trapped for seven hours a day in an elementary school classroom.
It was awhile before I realized the advantages of my assigned seat, on the other side of the room.
My seat near the front put me fairly close to the classroom door that led to the hallway. Right next to that door was this floor-to-almost-ceiling jalousie window, with opaque glass slats that could be opened or closed by a crank, according to the teacher’s preference. Mrs. Streety mostly kept it closed, I assumed to reduce distractions caused by people going by in the hallway. But occasionally, one would hear a rapping at the window, and Mrs. Streety would ease over and crank the slats open. Sometimes it was official business of some sort, but more often, it seemed to me, it was another teacher stopped by to chat.
On those occasions, the teachers would talk like the kids weren’t even there. It was weird. Either that or they assumed even if we could hear, we weren’t interested enough in whatever they were talking about to pay much attention. They were right about that, but sometimes it was hard to tune it all out. After awhile, I realized that what went on at that jalousie window every day would pass for prurient gossip anywhere else. And as much as I didn’t want to hear it, I realized after awhile that yeah, I did; and that I had begun looking forward to some distraught teacher coming by and spilling out all her troubles to Mrs. Streety, in clear earshot of me (and several others.)
Through it all, my teacher would remain calm and reassuring. No matter what crazy-ass shit she heard, she never (as far as I knew) reacted incredulously or with exclamation. A fair amount of the teachers in my school apparently looked to her as a confidant and advisor, probably at least partly because of her even, reassuring manner.
One of her most frequent visitors was Miss Smith, one of the kindergarten teachers, probably 35-40, and single. Even the dumbest, most out-of-it kids knew Miss Smith was what would come to be called a drama queen; her personal life was a mess, the details of which were known to most of the people – teachers, administration, and kids – in our school. She would often be in histrionic tears, babbling through the slats about some guy that hit her or another guy who cheated or whatever. She wasn’t the only one with problems, though. Sitting in my assigned seat near the front of the class, by mid-term I knew a lot of dirt on most of the teachers. I never told a soul.
I really liked Mrs. Streety because a person who is trusted by many with their most intimate secrets is almost by definition an admirable person. She was obviously discreet and, at the very least, a good sounding board. It was more than halfway through the school year that I unwittingly overheard a couple of my friend’s moms talking about her. According to them, Mr. Streety was a P.E. coach at another school, and kind of a dick. He and my teacher had a couple of kids, and a bad and deteriorating marriage. Perhaps because of this, Mrs. Streety developed a drinking problem, and a tendency to go out to bars at night without Mr. Streety, and to sometimes go home with strange men. Sort of an early Theresa Dunn (Looking For Mr. Goodbar), in a way. This sluttery/infidelity was why she lost custody of her kids and her house and everything else in the ensuing divorce, according to these moms I overheard. I didn’t quite understand all of it, but what I did understand left me with some mixed emotions about my home room teacher.
Mixed emotions that eventually coalesced, I am now convinced, into a complex kind of love. Mrs. Streety was pretty, I realized. She never wore anything improper anytime I ever saw her, but one didn’t have to use much imagination to see she was shapely, had great legs and a pretty face, and probably all sorts of other wonderful things under the plain but still stylish dresses and hose she wore every day. She was also thoughtful, and knowing. She could make my day with a sidelong smile that made me feel like we were in on something together. And, I knew now, under the smooth façade she was not exactly a model mom and teacher. I didn’t think too much about the details of what happened when, late at night and intoxicated, Mrs. Streety allowed some man to take her to his home, and strip off her clothes and throw her across his bed, before doing sloppy, alarming things to her. Knowing about this part of her behavior should have made me think less of her, as I was taught to. But for some reason, with Mrs. Streety, I wasn’t so quick to judge.
To me, Mrs. Streety’s alleged ‘immoral’ behavior just made her a fuller person, just rounded out the picture I carried of her in my head. Sure, what she did at night, if true, was not something to be celebrated or admired. On the other hand, it didn’t make her irredeemably bad. That so many of her peers trusted her intimately anyway confirmed that. And to think she stood up by that window, day after day, listening to her colleagues’ problems and calmly advising them and easing their burden, while all the while keeping to herself her own helter-skelter existence outside of the school. This more than anything made me think the drinking and sexual stuff was an aberration, not to be used to detract from Mrs. Streety’s overall character, which I – a snotty ten-year-old who didn’t know shit about anything – judged to be good. We are all sinners to one degree or another, I thought; and God loves us despite that; and perhaps He loves the sinner with exceptionally redeeming offsetting qualities the most. That last I came up with on my own. It may have been blasphemy, and it may or may not have been true; I believed it was absolutely true. The father loves all his children equally, but has a special place in his heart for the prodigal son. God loves all His children; but has a special feeling, just noticeable if you look quickly, in the corner of His eye . . . a special feeling for the child who wanders waaay out into the wilderness, but is still in possession of the tools and traits and qualities that will eventually lead it back to Home.
I loved Mrs. Streety because she was the first teacher and one of the first grownups I ever considered in a complex, non-stereotypical way. She was the first woman who engendered vague sexual stirrings in me, similar but different from the ones I had for my little girlfriends on the playground. She looked at me sometimes and made me feel like we were equals, almost. She seemed to acknowledge me as something more than a cheese-eating little kid; she seemed to look at me rather as a complex person who would grow up one day to have the complexities of a grown-up like her, and hopefully to have the redeeming qualities like she had, the ones that outshone all else. Maybe some gossiping suburban 1960s moms couldn’t see those redeeming qualities, but God could; and thanks to Mrs. Streety, so could I.
Mrs. Streety made me feel like I was a real person, a part of the world, with a chance to grow up and be a redeemable person even with perhaps some not-so-redeemable traits. A chance to be a human being, in other words, imminently able to fit into the complex web of humanity, to be complex but worthwhile, with the ability to see that the sum of us is so much greater than any individual part. Mrs. Streety made me start thinking in complexities, when I was not at all inclined to so otherwise. She made me start thinking in a way that would eventually allow me to step out of my limitations, imposed and otherwise, and become something more than I might have been. She taught me to focus on a person’s positive aspects, rather than the negative.
In other words, Mrs. Streety taught me the things that allowed me to love the world. In other words, she taught me how to love.
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INJURIES
Houston – Jason Castro. Alberto Arias. Humberto Quintero. Jah love, Jah love, Protect us.
Los Angeles – Who gives a fuck? We’ll miss some of their better players, like Casey Blake, Jon Garland, Rafael Furcal, and Jonathan Broxton. Another guy, Hong-Chih Kuo, is out indefinitely with an anxiety disorder. I am thinking of joining him.
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COMING BACK TO ME. I lost track of Mrs. Streety along the way. She left our elementary school after her one year there, as did I. I don’t know where she went; I went to junior high. And I grew up and while I did not entirely forget my old fifth grade teacher, she went to the back of my mind. I probably didn’t even think of her specifically along the way, during those introspective times when I would examine myself and realize I had a lot of bad qualities, to go along with whatever the good ones were.
I know she probably popped into my mind a few times over the years, though I cannot remember specifically.
I spent most of a day thinking about Mrs. Streety recently, and I could not remember if I had thought of her much before, over the last 40 years or so. Probably the only reason I thought of her the other day was because someone pointed out her obituary to me, on a local funeral home website. She died two weeks ago, and is already long-buried, probably already moldering. She was 75 at her death, which is beyond my capability to imagine. All I can see is a neat, deceptively pretty blond in a tasteful 1960s dress and heels. Thankfully.
According to the obit, Mrs. Streety had long ago stopped being Mrs. Streety. She had remarried, and it lasted her until the end. Presumably then she found some happiness, and was able to corral some of the demons that haunted her back in the days I knew her. I really, really hope so.
I loved Mrs. Streety once, in an unconventional way. That love ended eventually, as I moved along to more grown-up things. And it would be wrong to say that, upon learning of her passing, I realized that I still loved her. I didn’t, in all honesty.
But, you know, it is possible I might run into her again, somewhere down the line. And if so, it is not outside the realm of possibility that I might find, upon seeing her, that I love her again, that the love I had for her that I thought was long dead was actually smoldering, so low it was unnoticed for many, many years. But that, upon the slightest vision of her, it flamed back up again immediately, as if it had never been gone.
Hopefully, I will fall in love with Mrs. Streety again; and this time, in the place where we will hopefully be, there will be nothing wrong with it. For Mrs. Streety and I, everything will finally be all right.
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Astros win the series, 2-1
The summer had inhaled and held its breath too long
The winter looked the same, as if it had never gone
And through an open window where no curtain hung
I saw you, I saw you
Coming back to me
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