PHILADELPHIA Phillies (94-49) at HOUSTON Astros (49-97)
September 12-14, 2011
MMPUS
HOUSTON (SnS) – It is mid-September, and another baseball season is grinding to a finish. The Astros are winding down a particularly unsuccessful campaign. I am not especially dismayed by that, though of course 2011 has been trying at times. What happens in the next several months, with the sale of the team and the possible move to a lesser league the AL, coupled with the Astros poor finish this year and the likelihood it will be another ten seasons or more before they are truly competitive again, may possibly weaken my attachment to the only team I have ever truly cared about. If that happens, I will be saddened. But eventually, I’ll deal with it. And eventually, I’ll move on.
They say every man must need protection
They say every man must fall
Yet, I swear I see my reflection
Some place so high above this wall
In the meantime, I’ve seen some terrific baseball this season. I do every season, but the last few have been particularly satisfying to me. More and more great pitching, and timely hitting, and grace and skill afield. The baseball just keeps getting better. The excessiveness of the “steroid era” seems to have receded entirely. Scoring and home runs are down, stolen bases and pitching are up. This is the style of ball I grew up with/on, and I am so happy to see the pendulum has swung back in this direction, finally. I am truly excited and energized by the trend, and I am already looking forward to next spring.
Baseball pisses me off sometimes, but it never really lets me down.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released
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SCHEDULE
•Sept 12 (Monday) – 7:05 CDT, FSH
•Sept 13 (Tuesday) – 7:05 CDT, FSH
•Sept 14 (Wednesday) – 1:05 CDT, FSH
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GONE, DADDY, GONE. The bundle was neatly bound by two rubber bands, situated about ¼ the way in from the outer edges of each end of the package, long ways. It was sitting on top of the sedimentary layers of school books, old tests and papers, past due library books, dirty gym clothes, and uneaten sack lunches that had been accumulating and building up on the bottom of my locker in C hall since the beginning of the school year. By now the pile was a couple of feet high. I couldn’t miss seeing the package, right off.
I didn’t know what it was at first. A present or something? It wasn’t my birthday. It might have been some obscure anniversary I’d forgot. Or it might have been nothing. I smiled to myself. My girlfriend was a real sweetie, and sometimes she gave me gifts for no other reason than “you just being you”, as she put it. My heart began to warm as I bent down to pick up the package in order to more closely inspect it.
The first thing I recognized was my scrawl on some of the folded notebook papers in the middle of the bundle. On the outside on both sides of the notebook papers were small stacks of white and pastel colored envelopes of varying sizes, like the kind greeting cards came in. The rubber bands were tight, and as I reached down into my jeans to retrieve a pocketknife, I mused that in an earlier time, instead of rubber bands, my package would likely have been tied with ribbons, and heavily scented with some kind of perfume or lilac water or something.
When I cut the rubber bands, the tension stored within the bundle was released, and I had in my hands what emerged as a sizeable stack of a collection of silly notes I’d passed my girlfriend last year in a German class we had together; a bunch of cards from of flowers sent or given for various occasions; and several heavy, emotional greeting cards sent from me to my baby over the preceding months for various reasons, the smarmy Hallmark sentiments in the interior augmented by dumb little additions of my own. I looked around in embarrassment. I didn’t want anyone to see me with that stuff, and ask to read a sampling. They made me cringe, and I was the one who had written them.
Meanwhile, I kept thinking . . . Why would my girlfriend take all these and package them up so neatly and return them to me? Didn’t girls keep that kind of stuff, even if they broke up with the dude? Sort of a sentimental impulse to preserve what once passed for a great love to a couple of overheated 15-year-olds back in high school? I didn’t get it.
Oh well, I would see her at her locker after the next period. I’d ask her about it then.
Beautiful girl, lovely dress
High school smiles, oh yes
Beautiful girl, lovely dress
Where she is now, I can only guess
‘Cause it’s gone, daddy, gone
The love is gone
‘Cause it’s gone, daddy, gone
The love is gone away
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PITCHING MATCHUPS
•Game One (Monday 09/12)
PHILADELPHIA – Roy Oswalt (7-8, 3.72)
HOUSTON – Brett Myers (4-13, 4.66)
•Game Two (Tuesday 09/13)
PHILADELPHIA – Cole Hamels (14-7, 2.60)
HOUSTON – TBA (0-0, 0.00)
•Game Three (Wednesday 09/14)
PHILADELPHIA – Roy Halladay (17-5, 2.44)
HOUSTON – J.A. Happ (5-15, 5.77)
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I am the one who can face the heat
The one they all say just can’t be beat
I’ll shoot it to you straight
And look you in the eye
So give me just a minute and I’ll tell you why
I’m a rough boy . . .
BEING ABRAHAM MASLOW. As part of my ongoing quest for self-actualization, I am supposed to take an honest assessment of myself. There doesn’t seem to be any point to it, other than embarrassment. But, here goes. . .
MRI Image of Strosrays' Brain
1.) I am not particularly religious, but there are a half-dozen or so TV clergy I will go to great lengths to not miss their shows; everything from Catholic priests to some guys of whom I have no real idea what denomination they represent. There was even a rabbi-for-Jesus guy I liked to watch (I think he is dead now.) I don’t know the reasons behind this, except I am certain it is not some wayward search for spiritual truth (which is what my family thinks.) At any rate, I find those guys more entertaining than 99% of what passes for prime time on the networks.
2.) I don’t like sushi or steak tartar, but I went through a phase as a child where I really liked raw bacon. My mother nearly went crazy over this; she told me I would get trichinosis (which is some kind of worm, she said.) So I had to sneak the bacon. You haven’t known shame until you have been caught red-handed, or rather greasy-handed, sneaking a strip of raw Hormel out of the ice box.
3.) Since I was a kid, whenever I mow the yard I sometimes absentmindedly create vaguely geometric shapes. The shapes kind of look like crop circles sometimes. When I notice them, I never have any conscious recollection of having made them. Some say this is proof I have alien blood. Maybe. I should add I sometimes mix alcohol with yard work.
4.) I haven’t seen any ghosts, and I don’t really believe in that paranormal stuff. I did see my doppelgänger once; Webster’s defines doppelgänger as “a spiritual wraith, one’s own ghost,” which is pretty close. But I think I’ve told the doppelgänger story here previously. . . We won’t even talk about the time I tripped over a screaming banshee while running through my back yard one night (I was trying escape a vicious hobgoblin that was chasing me through the neighborhood . . . Note: A screaming banshee should not be confused with the screaming meemies, which are an entirely different thing – Eds.)
5.) I am haunted by plenty of live people, but no dead ones as far as I know.
6.) I have a friend who is afflicted with a malady called tone-color synesthesia; basically, whenever he hears music, he sees kaleidoscopic colors floating around in front of him. As afflictions go, that one doesn’t seem so bad. Anyway, music affects me more than it should. I have at various times based my entire lifestyle on certain music I liked. I have made long-term romantic decisions based on what a girl would or wouldn’t tolerate on my stereo. I once got a speeding ticket (88 in a 55, on Highway 69 in Lumberton) because a song I really liked came on the radio (“Under Pressure” – ZZ Top.) When it got to the part about, “she likes cocaine/And making it with great Danes,” it made me feel so good I just stomped on the gas — I never saw the DPS trooper with his radar gun, until it was too late. Even now, certain songs cause me to “zone out” — basically, to slip into another dimension; so that I may be sitting there right in front of you, but I’m not really there. This often happens at the least appropriate times.
7.) I was once loosely affiliated with a group that called itself the Cult of Nines. This was in college. The rather pretentious title was a philosophical conceit – it had nothing to do with religion. Basically, our group’s philosophy was to strive to always fall just short of some ideal – make a 99 on a test (instead of 100), give 99% effort, hit .299 for the season, and so on. Some of us believed our obsession with this was caused by overexposure to modern commerce and the practice of price-pointing, where everything in a store is $2.99 or $5.99 or whatever. Instead of just making it an even $3.00 or $6.00, so now everyone’s got a fucking dresser drawer full of pennies at home.
8.) I once started my own religion – Apostrophism – which was based on a giant lighted apostrophe I stole off the side of a building occupied by a Wilson’s department store. I hooked that illuminated punctuation mark up in my apartment, and I had my own set of commandments and everything. But I won’t go into that right now.
As you can see, I am basically normal.
Yeah, I am the jigsaw man
I turn the world around with a skeleton hand, say
I am electric head
A cannibal core a television said, yeah
Do not victimize
Read the motherfucker’s psychoholic lies, yeah
Into a psychic war
I tear my soul apart and I eat it some more, yeah
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INJURIES
•PHILADELPHIA – Jose Contreras (RHP), forearm. Chase Utley (2B), concussion.
•HOUSTON – Alberto Arias (RHP), shoulder. Jason Castro (C), knee. Sergio Escalona (LHP), ankle. Brandon Lyon (RHP), shoulder.
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DELLA WITH THE BLUE DRESS ON. I am sure she is still out there somewhere, rotating around some distant sun. All five-foot-nothing of her, straight brown hair almost down to her waist. Just a freaky little girl, a hippie chick, really . . . seems like she was always wearing a sleeveless blue denim dress that came down to her knees, and a pair of white Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the kind with wooden soles.
That is how I remember her, anyway; in those Dr. Scholl’s. She had great legs, did I mention that? Terrific legs. Not long, but a nice shape and slender, muscled calves. Calves, mmmmm…
Baby, let me follow you down
Baby, let me follow you down
Well, I’ll do anything in this God Almighty world
If you just let me follow you down
Can I come home with you?
Baby, can I come home with you?
Yes, I’ll do anything in this God Almighty world
If you just let me come home with you
One day in an Abnormal Psychology class the professor was lecturing about something or another – Carl Rogers, I think – but my mind was wandering. I was pondering the Eternal Question, for one thing: Does the study of abnormal psychology screw people up? Or are already screwed up people drawn to the study of abnormal psychology?
Don’t ask me, I was taking it as an elective. Anyway, it was during this daydream that I spotted a girl, or rather the legs of a girl, the next row over to the right of me, about three seats up. There were maybe 10 girls in that class, out of 25 or so students overall, and in the first few weeks none of them drew my particular attention. Including this girl, at least not initially. Turns out she was quite pretty, I just didn’t see it at first.
Della
But I was interested in her once I did see it. Over the next few weeks, I made it a point to fall in line with her walking out after class, and we began to talk. I found out that her name was Della, and that she was from somewhere or another. I cannot say what she thought about me at first; I found, on closer inspection, that I was attracted to her physically; but even more than that, she seemed to be a little off-kilter, a little skewed in her view of things. That was what really got me interested in her.
We ended up dating for awhile, this girl Della and I. On the fourth or fifth time we found ourselves walking and talking together after our Psych class, she asked me if I wanted to go to her apartment. I said that yes, I did, very much; and so we walked across a big open field on the edge of the campus to get to her place, which was in a one-story former Protestant church of some sort, right on University Drive. Someone had bought the building and had divided it evenly into six sections, put up some walls, and voila!, six apartments. Nothing much else was altered from the former church’s configuration – the steeple was on it and everything. This made for some interesting apartments. Like all the others, Della’s was long and narrow, a lateral cross-section of the old church’s interior. She was located in the former nave, and had a couple of windows. Some of the apartments did not have any.
Anyway, that day after class we went to her place. She didn’t have a television, which in those days was not unusual. We sat on this divan/daybed thing she had in there – the apartment was basically one big room – and we talked and talked, about whatever came into our heads.
After awhile, Della got up and walked over to a small desk, reached around behind the drawers on one side of it, and retrieved a Tupperware container. Inside was some brownish/greenish looking weed, some rolling papers, and also some accessories – a couple of alligator clips, and one of those stoner things, a small ceramic disc with a hole drilled through it. You put the joint in one end, held the disc, and smoked the weed through the hole on the other side. Kept you from burning your fingers.
Della came back and sat down next to me. She pulled the lid off of the Tupperware, and handed me the container.
I never was very good at rolling free hand – I couldn’t get the paper tight enough, or if I did, I’d usually torn it somewhere by then. So I took a $5 bill out of my wallet, folded it in half short-ways, and set a similarly folded rolling paper down into the crease in the folded bill. I dropped in a decent amount of weed – good weed, too, not many stems, and a lot broken up of flower tops – and then using both thumbs and forefingers on the outside of the bill, I rolled the nicest, tightest joint you’d ever want to see. I separated it from the fiver, licked the gummed outer edge of the paper and adhered it to the side of the cigarette, and we were all set.
Della fired my creation up with one of those long butane lighters you light candles and campfires with, and we passed the smoldering blunt back and forth in silence for awhile. About halfway through, Della wet her thumb and forefinger with her saliva and put the joint out. She put it back into the container with the rest of the weed. Then we both sank back into the sofa. I felt light-headed, but pleasant. It was kind of a weird high, actually; and much later I wondered if maybe that weed hadn’t been ‘enhanced’ with something. Though at the time, it did not occur to me.
After some moments of cannabis-induced introspection and silence, I came out of the fog a little, and looked over at Della, who was looking at me. We passed a few more silent minutes like that, then she calmly sat upright, and slowly pulled her long-sleeved sweater clear of her sizeable breasts, up over her head, and off. No bra, of course. She looked at me kind of sideways and gave me the sweetest smile. I was still just sitting there, gazing at her. I was in a state of awe. She was gorgeous.
It was one of those magic moments that is so hard to explain later on. The weed had something to do with it, of course; but it was mostly the combination of her good looks, her quirky but pleasant personality, my own image of myself at that time and how it fit in with this pretty girl, and so on. She was sitting next to me on that divan, in all her beautiful, half-naked glory, and it was too much. I almost had trouble taking it all in, I had to look away. The positive energy and good feeling was coming at me in such volume and quantity that I could hardly process it. I looked over again. Della in silhouette had a kind of pale glow around her – it was like a halo, except it was around her whole body, not just her head.
For a brief moment I felt like I saw all the way through Della. For just a second I thought I knew everything about her there was to know. What I saw might not have been appealing to a thousand other guys, but to me, at that moment, she seemed nearly perfect. Flawless. I was convinced it was no accident that I had stumbled into an encounter with this beautiful girl; it wasn’t just a random convergence of events that caused me to now be sitting next to her on her sofa, staring at her terrific looking breasts and areolae, while she undid her blue jeans and bent forward slowly and slid them down her legs. It was that day I had one of my first inklings that there was a plan out there somewhere with my name on it; and that while some aspects of that plan were pretty hard for me to take, there were also rewards like this moment, which made it all worthwhile. All of it. And then some.
It wasn’t fair to this sweet girl, and it sounds crazy in the retelling, even to me. But looking at the nearly naked Della that afternoon, I had the strongest feeling that I was really looking at God, or at some aspect of him, or some manifestation of his love for me, or some manifestation of his love, period. Like I said, it sounds crazy. I was sitting there next to Della on that sofa/daybed thing, nearly going out of my head with what I guess is called ecstasy . . . ecstasy, in the truest sense. It was too much of a good thing. I needed her to bring me back down, to get my mind and body back into line.
My vision of blessed holy loveliness was down to just a pair of peach-colored cotton panties by then. She sat back down next to me, as close as she could get, and then she put her arms around me, and she kissed me ever so gently. It wasn’t a frantic, tongue-thrashing, purely lust-driven kiss. It was languid, and soft, and slow. On the lips, a little wet and almost sloppy. But actually, it was perfect. Della had maneuvered around all the painstakingly constructed bullshit I surrounded myself with, and had gone straight to the tender heart of me, just like that. How she knew how to do it is a great mystery, among so many other great mysteries. But she did. At that point, after that kiss, I simply melted into her.
We made love that day for hours and hours – slowly, almost lazily – on that couch, or whatever it was. It seemed like it went on forever. The weed had entirely destroyed my sense of time, but I knew for a fact our Psych class had ended at 1:30 p.m. that afternoon. By the time Della and I had finally run out of steam, so to speak, it was nearly dark outside.
I was totally drained, and it took me a little while to get myself together long enough to pull on some clothes. Then I decided to walk around and straighten up Della’s place a little. She was drained, too, and I told her to stay put there on the divan while I picked up. She was lying on her stomach, and I noticed it wasn’t just the front of her that was powerfully appealing. I hated to do it, but I pulled out a comforter and covered her. She’d said she was cold.
Della tried hard to stay awake for me. I put everything we’d got out back where I thought it went. Then I went over and knelt down next to the daybed/divan, like I was going to pray, maybe. I put my hand on Della’s back near her shoulders, between her deltoid muscles, and I caressed her a bit. Then I kissed her gently on the forehead and then on the lips, lightly. With that, I coerced a little smile out of her, which is what I was going for. I told her good night, and kissed her again; then I gathered up my stuff and let myself out. She had fought herself to stay awake until I left, bless her, but I had no doubt she was asleep even before I turned the lock on her front door and walked out and pulled it shut behind me. The thought of her sleeping gently there on her daybed, still naked under the comforter I had placed over her, made me feel so warm inside.
I want to live with a Cinnamon Girl
I could be happy the rest of my life
With a Cinnamon Girl
A dreamer of pictures, I run in the night
You see us together chasing the moonlight
My Cinnamon Girl
Love is just a kiss away, the song said. And so it was, to my surprise. My experience had been that love was often hard to find, real love. And hard to fall into. But what I learned from Della is that sometimes it was easy. Especially if I wasn’t trying to fall in love, especially if falling in love was about the last thing on my mind.
I also realized, not for the first time and not for the last time, that being in love – whatever drawbacks that might have – is infinitely preferable to not being in love. I learned that the message that is out there everywhere, is out there for a good reason. The message that God loves me, that God is love. He told us we were put here to love one another. We can love one another on many levels; but whatever the level, the operative phrase is always the same. Love. One. Another.
I had a long walk back to my car that evening. From Della’s apartment, just off the northern boundary of the campus, to the auxiliary parking lot on the other side of MLK, on the extreme south side, was a mile, at least. The evening was pleasant, though. It was spring, and near dusk. The temperature was moderate, and there was a light breeze.
As I walked along back to my car, I was walking on air, almost. I felt so exhilarated. I knew I sometimes treated meeting a terrific woman as a religious experience, practically. That may have been wrong, wrong, wrong in a theological sense, but I was pretty simple, I didn’t know any better. I knew I was incapable of being ‘saved’, in the sense that some people meant. I thought it was silly, a mental trick one played on oneself, to believe one could be “born again.” You are born once, you only get the one chance. It was not to say one was irredeemable, or even that one could not be saved. But it was all part of one life, all of it – the good, the bad, and the indifferent.
And you took your saviors however and whenever they came. As I climbed the steps up to the pedestrian walkway that ran high above MLK Parkway and came down in the parking lots on the other side, I thought of Della. Sweet, naked Della, lying there on her couch with the halo glowing all around her. Being with her that day, opening myself up to her more completely than I ever would have to a confessor, I supposed . . . Being with Della that day had freed me from something. Something I was not even aware of and that I am not sure about, even now. All I know is being with Della lifted something off of me that was palpable. I felt lighter, literally and in spirit, because of who Della was, what she was, what she looked like. And because of the unlikely but doubtless fact that she looked upon me kindly, and would occasionally grace me with a beatific smile. I came to realize the thing that was lifted off of me, whatever it was, was malevolent in nature. It would have eventually pulled me down and maybe under. But Della had saved me from that.
Della saved me. No way around it, I had been saved.
I stood in the middle of the walkway above MLK. It was dark by then, and I looked west down the busy thoroughfare, at all the headlights from the traffic. People commuting home. The long line of lights moved slowly, snake-like, in gentle curves. From the west unto the east.
The evening breeze blew through my long-ish hair as I threw my books into the back seat of the Jeep. Just before climbing in, I turned around to face south, and I blew a kiss. My only hope was that the gentle breeze that had blown through my hair would carry my expression of love, back across the campus and the open land, back to the one it was meant for. Back to the intended receptacle for my expressions of love. The one who lay gently then, in angelic sleep.
Back to my baby.
You can take all the tea in China
Put it in a big brown bag for me
Sail right around the seven oceans
Drop it straight into the deep blue sea
She’s as sweet as Tupelo honey
She’s an angel of the first degree
She’s as sweet as Tupelo honey
Just like honey from the bee
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PROMOTIONS
•Game One (Monday 09/12)
Mini U.S. Flags – No information on what size “mini” is. Promoted by some package store. Also, Heroes Night – No information on this. Perhaps on this night everyone’s walk-up music will be this timeless epic. Not bad at all. Beats the hell out of Lee Greenwood.
•Game Two (Tuesday 09/13)
None – The Astros promotions tend to mirror the baseball team, value-wise. Price Matters days aren’t a good deal at all, except in comparison to the exorbitant everyday prices charged in MMPUS for tickets and consumable commodities. I heard a commercial on one of the XM broadcasts recently, a team was promoting $5 beer night, like it was a great deal to pay five bucks for 12 ounces of tepid beer in a plastic bottle. Geez, they must think we’re really stupid thirsty.
•Game Three (Wednesday 09/14)
Latin Day – First DMM fans in togas win a free hot dog pine nut sausage and Coke sour wine, a retail value of XXII dollars. Roberto Clemente Day – The spectacular Pirates right-fielder has been dead nearly forty years, and the Astros are finally getting around to honoring him, the week after his team, the Pirates, left town.
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Astros win the series, 2-1.
This marks the end of another season of writing Series Previews for me. Since 2007, I have had the honor of doing these things 7-8 times a year. Mine are not the greatest source of information on the upcoming Astros series, and they are hugely self-indulgent. I apologize for that. But I sure do enjoy writing them, on the whole. And I like the feedback I get from them, too. I like that a lot. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank everyone who took the trouble to read these previews, and I want to thank even more those who took a few minutes to comment. I am lucky – probably 90 % of the comment feedback I have received has been positive.
The past year has been a particularly trying and painful one for me, personally. I figured that was a good thing in the long run – adversity and pain are supposed to be excellent generators of the kind of creative tension needed to write what you call your great works, you know? But I think now what is meant is adversity that can be reflected upon with some detachment, from a distance of time. Not adversity that is happening right now. I have never had a harder time putting these previews together than I have this season. There have been times that – you know – I feared I might not have anything to post at all. This struggle is evident in the lack of quality in some of this year’s entries. I think I came up with some decent stuff here and there, but I want to apologize for my 2011 Series Previews generally, and hope I will get another chance to write them, next season. With all the crap that has happened this year, I look forward to a banner year for Series Previews in 2012.
I have rambled on far too long. I hope everyone has a nice off season.
This is it for me. Done. Like it used to be said on television and in the movies, by some guy named Roger . . .
Over and out –———-
Sodom and Gomorrah, let the DJ play
`Cos I`m only gone tomorrow and here today
Shout for all the people who have nothing to say
`Cos were only gone tomorrow and here today
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