There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all
My dad loved baseball. I know that’s pretty standard around here, but I’m grateful for it nonetheless. I’ve got daughters and though I know they will think of me when they think of baseball, they couldn’t give a damn about the game. When I die, it dies with me.
My great grandfather lived to be 98, or 101, some ripe old age fashioned by decades of rigorous work outdoors. I know he was at least aware of baseball because I remember him mentioning Tris Speaker. I don’t remember what he said, I had a real hard time having a conversation with him. Hell, he was 90 years older than I was. Just thinking about his age blew my whole concept of time.
The conversations I remember went something like this.
Me: “So you remember Babe Ruth?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Wowwww.”
Me: “Do you remember Ty Cobb?”
Him: ” Yes.”
Me: “Wowwww.”
And that would be that. My grandfather wasn’t much more talkative, he was that quiet working class German that put his head down and WORKED twelve hours a day, six days a week, no fooling around. Great guy, really, just not busy with entertaining little kids at the end of a day.
There was that day in the late 60s or so, where we all made the trek to Houston for a game. I don’t remember much of it other than there is a picture somewhere of us, four generations at the ball game. Time and evil has probably robbed me of that picture but I hope to find it someday.
Anyway, dad was the fan. He played for the various Little Leagues, then a little semipro here and there. I’ve seen a picture of him with a touring House of David team in the 1950s, and the Braves wanted to sign him but he decided to stay and marry my mom instead.
Dad was a catcher. I remember watching him play church league fast pitch softball for years, back when Hyde Park Baptist had a team. I loved going to those games, it was fun watching them and having dad tell me about catching, the pitchers and what they threw, etc. I grew up playing catch with my dad, later pitching to him. I wish I’d taken his recommendation to practice more because talent alone will only go so far, but I guess that path wasn’t meant to be. I still inherited the undying love for the game from him.
I read everything I could get my hands on about baseball. My school libraries and the bookmobiles were well-stocked with biographies of ballplayers and I read them all several times. Back then, our ESPN was the backs of baseball cards, and we spent hours going over them, memorizing statistics, pulling every scrap of information from them to learn about players we might see one Saturday a year on Game of the Week. I had My Turn At Bat pretty much memorized, because Ted was my dad’s favorite player.
“Close and back away. Pow!”
Every year we’d pick up these little fliers, sponsored by Schlitz, and they’d feature different big league players with some tip on fielding or pitching or hitting – Dick Groat on turning the double play or Rocky Colavito on hitting for power, and then there would be writeups about the local team. In this case, they were about the Houston Astros because that was the closest major league franchise to Austin.
We’d listen to the games at night on the radio sometimes, but the best treat of all was when we made the journey to Houston to go to the Astrodome. That gigantic building in the middle of that huge city with the orange and green haze in the sky was a big deal to me. I remember the parking attendants in jump suits and how bright all the colors were in the stadium once you got inside. The smell of the air conditioning, the grounds crew wearing space helmets and astronaut jump suits, the popcorn holders that became megaphones, and above everything else, the giant scoreboard display. The animations and the Home Run Spectacular, where you knew you were really in the Eighth Wonder of the World.
That was my Disneyland. We saw so many great players there. Not just the Dierkers and the Wynns and the Morgans and the Staubs and the Raders and the Wilsons, giving way to Art Howe, Bob Watson, Lee May – you know the rest. But in those days it was seeing those other legends that made it special. Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Dick Allen, Bobby Bonds, Ernie Banks, Roberto Clemente, Steve Carlton, Don Drysdale, Willie McCovey, Tom Seaver, Hank Aaron, Phil Niekro. These were dismal years to be an Astro fan. They had hometown heroes to be sure, decent players, but even in a league half as big as the one they play in now, these were bad teams. It took a long time to creep into any sort of respectability, one where hope to finish anywhere near the top was gone by June.
All of this worked in conjunction with collecting baseball cards. We’d skip lunch or hoard change so we could go to the 7-11 on the way home from school and buy as many five-cent packs as we could afford. We’d sit on the curb outside the store, opening up the summertime Christmas presents, their clean gloss covered in the smell of that waxy gum. The exhilaration of finally getting a Mantle tempered by the incessant doubles of Chuck Harrison or Dick Dietz filling the stack as they were opened. I always seemed to get a few Ron Brands, and those cards just weren’t worth much if you desperately wanted to trade for someone’s Lou Gehrig or Walter Johnson.
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
Later on the trips to Houston were fewer. I remember working in a restaurant during the 1980 playoffs, sneaking into the manager’s office to watch pieces of the games on a small black and white TV set. The back-and-forth, the trading extra-inning wins until the Astros finally succumbed in the tenth inning of the fifth game – it was so exciting, so energizing, that the Astros were finally a legitimate team, a team in the playoffs who deserved to go to the World Series as much as anyone. After all those years of dismal records, the incremental gains and the awful trades, at last they were a real team that demanded respect. That was a great feeling.
1980 was the same year I got married to a girl from Houston, and we moved there in 1981, where I could see my team play regularly. I loved being at the ballpark, got to see Ashby’s home run in the ’81 playoffs and tried to never miss any of Nolan Ryan’s starts. The marriage didn’t work out and I moved away in late ’83 but by then my fandom had taken a quantum leap forward. I enjoyed living in Houston, loved the city, but what I really didn’t want to leave behind was the Astros, and the ability to go to a game just about any time I wanted to.
Since then I’ve made it a point to go to as many games as I get a chance to. Some years it’s more, some years it’s less, but I make the pilgrimage every year. We went to the last game at the Astrodome, and I made sure my daughters went and have at least some memory of it. We were at the first game at Enron Field as well, with both girls. I’ve taken them to playoffs, special games, anytime I could try to share some of my love for the game and the team with the ones who will survive me. I want to pass this on as a thread of my existence through them.
***
It’s a four-game series, one with very real playoff implications for the Phillies. They’re trying hard to break out of the shadow cast as Astro Farm Team and lurch into a Wild Card slot. They’ll be facing two pitchers with extreme home field ERA success in Harrell and Norris (NOTE – Norris is a late scratch for Friday, he’ll be skipped and will pitch Thursday in St. Louis).
Thursday, September 13, 7:05 PM CT, Minute Maid Park – Guys Night Out and Price Matters Days
Tyler Cloyd, 1-1, 4.24 vs Lucas Harrell, 10-9, 3.83
Friday, September 14, 7:05 PM CT, Minute Maid Park – Fleece Blanket, Friday Night Fireworks, Flashback Fridays with Jeff Kent first pitch
Marvin Miller Man of the Year Nominee Cole Hamels, 14-6, 3.03 vs Edgar Gonzalez, 2-0, 1.74
Saturday, September 15, 6:05 PM CT, Minute Maid Park – Los Astros T-Shirt, Oktoberfest
Kyle Kendrick, 9-10, 3.83 vs Dallas Keuchel, 1-7, 5.35
Sunday, September 16, 1:05 PM CT, Minute Maid Park – Dog Day at Minute Maid Park, Family Sundays, Hispanic Heritage Family Day
Roy Halladay, 10-7, 4.01 vs Jordan Lyles, 4-11, 5.33
***
Over the last few years I’ve developed friendships with this raucous lot on SnS. I never expected anything like this, that some anonymous group of people connected by a baseball team would pry the things out of me that it has. When I first found out about AC, not long before it became OWA, I couldn’t believe the level of writing on the site, the depth of baseball knowledge mixed with humor that made me laugh out loud constantly. I’m sure my wife got tired of me reading something to her that I thought was hysterical, but she never let on about it. I was absolutely scared to death about popping my head up in any kind of post for at least a year, and after that I slowly put my toe in the water, only to snatch it back quickly. I was intimidated by the quality here.
I was probably the poster boy for ‘RMPL’ around this place after I dared to jump in and make comments. The safest way for me to participate was either in some 70s-related music topic, maybe one about guitarists, or in the GZ, but I was often made painfully aware of how little I really knew. Eventually some of this began to sink in, and I got more comfortable – some might say a little too comfortable – with posting.
My reckless volume has coincided with some significant changes, both to the team and to those who follow the team and jump on here daily to comment and commiserate. Change is rarely without some form of pain or loss. For a variety of reasons, many of our illustrious participants have either moved on or have drastically reduced their presence here. I miss them all. Their contributions were important.
We’ve seen ripples of future change as well, the lapping before the tsunami that includes others I’ll miss, others whose style and substance won’t be here and that means the tenor and content will continue to be reshaped by those who take their place. We’ve been very fortunate to see a fine group of recappers step to the front this season – BudGirl, Sphinx Drummond, Reuben, NeilT and Mr. Happy, who powered the Game Zone for the vast majority of the year. They’ve all done fantastic work and I look forward to seeing more from them in the future. I look forward to seeing more from you all.
I don’t know what is going to happen next season. Well, I know the Astros will lose some games. Probably a lot of games. It’s going to be a while before this team earns back its respect, but I plan on being here to watch it happen, hopefully with all of you.
I’ve been through this before, and I’ll go through this again. It’s the team I grew up with. I don’t own any part of it, but it does own me.
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more