Cubs 5, Astros 1
W: Travis Wood (6-11 4.23)
L: Fernando Abad (0-4 5.08)
By Sphinx Drummond
I like the way some have incorporated popular songs in their recaps. It seem as though there is a musical piece for any and every circumstance. If there is a story to be told, chances are it has been told in a song.
In 1952 composer John Cage released his most famous and most controversial composition, 4‘33“ (pronounced “Four minutes, thirty-three seconds”). Conceived over a period of years it is more challenging for the listener to hear than it is for any musician to play.
In 2012 the Astros began marketing major league games at their home field Minute Maid Park but infamously and controversially refused to supply a complete team of major league talent. Conceived over a period of years, the move by the Astros to use minor league talent at the major league level was/is more challenging for the fans to watch than it is for the players to play.
John Cage, unlike anyone within the Astros’ brain-trust, was an artist. Not an artist in the traditional sense, an experimental and avant-garde one. His famous piece is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of ambient sound as the musicians are instructed to merely hold their instruments, do nothing, and allow the sounds of the concert hall to be the music. A man clears his throat from the back of the auditorium, a woman fidgets in her chair, another person flips through the program. So it’s not 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence–that wouldn’t be music.
The Astros’ players aren’t instructed to just hold their glove, bat, or ball, and do nothing, while allowing the everything around them to happen without their influence, it only seems that way. So it’s not really nine innings of nothing happening on the field–that wouldn’t be baseball.
There was a scary moment in the eighth when Mickey Storey took a liner that hit him three times like some kind of magic bullet. Lucky for him it his hand and shoulder before his face, much of the impact had been absorbed by the first and second blows before the last one smashed his grill. After what happened to Brandon McCarthy, it was a relief to find Storey wasn’t seriously injured.
At least the Astros avoided a sweep in the Cub series. Now the red-hot-suddenly-fighting-for-a-wild-card-only-three-games-back Phillies are in town for a four game series. Maybe the Astros can silence the Phillies hopes and dreams of a wild card.