The dinosaurs are all dead and gone now, deader than fuck … or, as my friend C-4 would say, they were never here at all; which is kind of stupid, since C-4 existed amongst the biggest T. Rex’s and Stegosaurus’s of all … but anyway, what the fuck? … can’t say anything bad about C-4, he was my favorite out of all of them — for a brief, shining time … anyway, where was I? … Oh, yeah … the dinosaurs are all dead and gone, having fallen victim to some kind of catastrophic event, a big-ass bang or explosion or something … right now, there is nothing running around out there but a bunch of cockroaches and centipedes and shit … if you stick around long enough, maybe you’ll eventually get to see some small multi-cellular life, mud skippers and small rodents, stuff like that … but it is going be a looong wait … or as my friend C-4 would say, meantime, let’s bang a gong, and get it on, baby … or was that T. Rex?
April 5-7, 2013
Oakland Athletics (2-2) vs. Houston Astros (1-2)
Minute Maid Park
501 Crawford
Houston, TX 77002
PITCHING MATCHUPS
Friday April 5, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT
OAKLAND – Dan Straily, RHP (0-0, —-)
HOUSTON – Brad Peacock, RHP (0-0, —-)
Saturday April 6, 2013 — 6:10 p.m. CDT
OAKLAND – Bartolo Colon, RHP (0-0, —-)
HOUSTON – Eric Bedard, LHP (0-0, 0.00)
Sunday April 7, 2013 — 1:10 p.m. CDT
OAKLAND – Brett Anderson, LHP (0-1, 2.57)
HOUSTON – Bud Norris, RHP (1-0, 3.18)
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My best friend, he shoots water rats
And feeds them to his geese
Everything about the Team Formerly Known as the NL Houston Astros this season is so new and weird to me … I haven’t kept up at all, obviously … I didn’t know the team had acquired Rick Ankiel or Eric Bedard, for example, two names I actually recognize … I have no plans to keep up much in the coming months, either, by the way … I just want that out there and up front, that I am an apathetic bystander in this, the Astros new adventure … so if at any time from now on I try to offer insights into this team, feel free to call “bullshit” … you’ll be right.
I had wondered at some point last fall, back during the initial period of transition, if it would not have been wise for Crane and Co. to just jettison the whole fucking Astros thing altogether, and rename the team to something wildly different, yet still identifiable with Houston in some way … not sure exactly what they could (or should) have called the team instead, but …
For anyone who doesn’t know – and I don’t know how anyone who has lived in this area for very long could not – the nutria rat (Myocastor coypus) is a large aquatic, beaver-type rodent who inhabits the bayous and marshes of southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana. Nutria are actually native to South America, but were introduced to this area in the 1940s because of their reputation as voracious consumers of water hyacinth, a pleasant sounding but nasty plant that, in dry times, proliferates and chokes local marshes, bayous, and canals. Interestingly, it turns out the water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) is a South American native, also. It was introduced to this area sometime prior to the 1940s. So naturally enough, nutria were brought into control the water hyacinth. Another fine example of man screwing around with benevolently husbanding the natural environment.
What no one knew (or at least thought about much) when importing nutrias is that, first of all, they have no natural predators in this area; and also, when not consuming water hyacinth, they apparently spend most of their time, well … doin’ it (scientific term.) Now there are gazillions of nutria rats in southeast Texas, and the water hyacinth still clogs the local waterways, especially in drought times.
The thing about nutria rats is, for one thing, they are kind of nasty. They are roughly the size of a mid-sized dog, and have oily fur, red eyes, and big orange-yellow front teeth. They have a reputation for nasty behavior, as well. Most of the stories of this nature I have heard happen when someone unknowingly corners a nutria rat, often near a nest; and actually, most mammals, including humans, are pretty mean and protective in situations like that. It just seems that nutria in particular are fucking crazy mean when defending home and hearth.
As far as meanness otherwise … one person I know, who lives near a branch of the Lower Neches Valley Authority irrigation canal, tells a great story about inadvertently cornering a nutria on his screened-in back porch one night. The cartoon-ish encounter ended up with the nutria calmly exiting the porch through the screen door – through it, literally – while my friend, frantic, and armed with a straw broom, the only reasonable facsimile of a defensive weapon available to him at the time, cowered on top of his patio table.
I used to duck hunt some in my youth, and most of my experiences of rubbing shoulders with our friend the nutria come from back in my duck hunting days.
At one time, there was a guy down in Labelle who paid a dollar apiece for a dead nutria, provided you had shot it in the head … which wasn’t all that difficult to do, since a nutria swims with only the top two-thirds of its head protruding above the surface of the water, so the head is what you aim at, anyway. This guy wanted them shot in the head because apparently there was/is a market for the pelts, which resemble a beaver’s, actually. At a dollar apiece, dude was making a pretty nice profit, I’d guess; but he can have it. He lived in a decrepit trailer about fifty yards from Taylor’s Bayou, with trash everywhere in his “yard”, and I don’t even want to know what he did with all those nutria carcasses after he skinned them.
I never resorted to nutria hunting myself, although not because of any high-mindedness on my part. Mainly, I just didn’t want to mess with these super rodents in any way, shape, or form (or, for that matter, with the guy in the fucked up trailer who paid a buck a head for them.) I did know guys who, if the duck hunting was slow, would just turn around and start blasting the nutria, which were pretty much everywhere one looked out there in the marsh. They could usually bag enough in about ten minutes to pay for a six-pack and gas money for the drive home.
I have often thought one of the local high schools should adopt the nutria rat as a mascot. When they combined all the high schools down in Port Arthur awhile back into one big mega-educational conglomerate and created Memorial High School, what did they come up with to call this group of former Bumblebees, Yellow Jackets, and Eagles? The Titans, that’s what … about as lame and underwhelming a mascot as one could imagine. They should have called them the Nutria Rats. It’d be unique. I envision a picture of their mascot on the sides of their helmets … sort of a rabid, crazed version of the whatever it is on a Buc-ees sticker, with huge orange incisors … plus they’d have a mascot that would intimidate the fuck out of their opponents. There’d be great potential cheers, too. “Nutria rat, nutria rat, rodent of might! Eat water hyacinth all day, and kick ass all night!!”
By way of disclosure, I should say my own ambivalence toward the lowly nutria comes from a couple of personal encounters, both thirty years ago, out in the marsh. The first one – when I stumbled upon a mom and her babies, who had built a nest in a long-unused duck blind I had impulsively decided that very morning to use again – was so gruesome and grotesque that a vivid description of it would make even Wes Craven or Steven King shudder; so I won’t repeat the details of it here. Let’s just say the blind was small, and the mother nutria really didn’t want me to come in, and it was dark, and I was startled and didn’t know and couldn’t see what the fuck was snarling at me, and instead of a straw broom like my friend had, I came armed with a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, loaded at the time with 3-½ inch magnum shells (goose shot) … and I reacted instinctively, you know?
Needless to say, that blind went on being unused for quite awhile longer after that.
My other close encounter of the nutria rat kind was more benign, but it didn’t end much better for the nutria, or for me, either. I was walking down a levee early one morning, moving from one pothole to another in the dawn’s early light, when I came upon a nutria guarding his nest. I was looking at this big fellow reared up on his hind legs in the marsh grass, about ten yards in front of me on this narrow path I was on, on top of the levee. He was staring at me with his red eyes, and flashing his overbite, with those big, bright orange front teeth. I clicked off the safety on the Remington, not sure what was going to happen next. What ended up happening was, after about 15 seconds of staring me down, that nasty motherfucker dropped to all fours, lowered its head, and charged me. I wasn’t expecting that, but managed to get the shotgun aimed in the nutria’s general direction by the time he was about fifteen feet from me. A shotgun can do a lot of damage from that range, even if one is basically just shooting from the hip.
I still shudder when I think about it. It is startling to be all alone in the marsh and have an evil looking water rat charge you, with obvious malevolent intent. The adrenaline rush from that encounter probably didn’t wear off me until sometime much later that afternoon.
For all that, though, I had a grudging respect and even admiration for that nutria, and still do. He had to know he had no chance against me and the 12-gauge. Charging me was suicide. But he did it, anyway; and he didn’t think twice about it. I think what scared me most, and got my adrenaline going, even though I pretty much knew ahead of time how things would to turn out, was that for an instant during his charge I could see the look in that nutria’s eyes, and I could tell that he just didn’t give a fuck. At all.
Hence, my respect for him, and his kind.
And why I think the nutria would be a great team mascot anyone could be proud of. Even, you know, a former NL team just exiled to the junior circuit. All I’m saying to Jim Crane, et al, is, think about it.
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INJURIES
OAKLAND – Nakajima Hiroyuki, SS (15-day DL, strained left hamstring) Should return in mid-April; Adam Rosales, 2B (15-day DL, strained left intercostal) Should return in mid-April.
HOUSTON – Fernando Martinez, OF (15-day DL, strained left oblique) May possibly return by mid-April; Alex White, RHP (60-day DL, right elbow strain) Hard to imagine him ever pitching for Houston, not that it matters much.
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It’s a black sky forming on the ridge
It’s a woman waiting, standing on the bridge
It’s the price that you pay for walking on the ledge
It’s everything you do and nothing that you did
My throat was dry, and I needed a drink. It didn’t help that for the last twenty blocks or so, I had been walking along, listening to this tool named Jack something-or-other prattle on and on about himself and his overdeveloped intelligence, his knowledge of all things baseball, his prowess as a teacher of the language of English, his once fervent belief in Moneyball metrics, and the crisis of confidence all this stuff had currently brought him to.
It is not that I disliked Jack, exactly; okay, yes, I did. He was a retarded know-it-all, easy pickings for anyone with any sense who knew anything about life and baseball, particularly. Lord knows I had skewered him and his over-heightened sense of himself and his belief in the infallibility of his knowledge in the past. With pleasure I had, many times. But now, he was so fucking pathetic, I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
The northern California air was crisp and cool, sort of well but not so crisp and cool as to be really crisp. Just sort of more like cooler than what I was used to but anyway I was trying to tell this strosray Dark Star fellow who is hirsute but not as hirsute as me, especially my muscular chiseled bare chest, chiseled from years of athletics and excellent in and around the environs of Tranquility Bay, in my youth. We were in a northern California town, walking up and down streets, and I was explaining to this Dark Star what a turn things had taken for me.
We finally ducked into a rustic looking tavern. It was dark inside and our eyes had to adjust. I took that for a good sign. The first beer was really cold, and I thanked the creator once again for cold beer. It could make even a day spent with Jack S— seem almost bearable.
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ASTROS TIDBITS
• The Astros are currently on pace to strike out 2200+ times this season, shattering the team record for strikeouts in a season (Arizona, 1500-something, in 2010.)
• The Astros are currently on pace to be shut out 108 times this season, which I am pretty sure would be some sort of record, as well.
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I was in northern California because it is known for ‘squatch activity. One of the things I have become interested in lately is Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) I believe in them and want to study their metrics, you know their range factor and zone ratings and stuff. My friend and attorney named Moneymaker says they swing at trees with sticks. Moneymaker gets really excited by this but I would like to know how many times they stand there just looking at the tree but not swinging. Crypto-homonid plate discipline, you know?
The Astros got bought and are run now by guys who adhere pretty strictly to the sort of baseball metrics that I have always championed. I mean yeah, the still lead off with Altuve, but … now I am onto this Sasquatch thing, I strangely don’t care about the Astros so much. I mean, you know me – I’m still down with OBP, and all; but now, like somebody’s bee-yotch – I’m down with ‘Squatch, too.
It is like my friend Lisa Gray was saying to me the other day …
Jesus Christ! The mention of that dingbat Lisa Gray caused me to order another beer, with a George Dickel chaser. Jack S— just needs to shut the fuck up about her.
About then, I looked up in time to see this huge, dark, and hirsute figure looming in the front door of the bar … the figure surveyed the scene for a moment, then ambled in, with a distinctive gait … and headed straight for the table where Jack S— and I were sitting. Jesus Fuck, he was big. Ugly, too. And he smelled like one of those Waste Management landfills that Waste Management says do not smell.
I was more than a little taken aback; but I stole a glance at Jack S—, and he was positively swooning, is the only way to describe it … (To Be Continued)
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I am on an open sea
Just drifting as the hours go slowly by
Julie, with her open blouse
Is gazing up into the empty sky
Now it seems to be so strange here
Now it’s so blue
The still sea is darker than before…No wind disturbs our colored sail
The radio is silent, so are we
Julie’s head is on her arm
Her fingers brush the surface of the sea
Now I wonder if we’ll be seen here
Or if time has left us all alone
The still sea is darker than before…
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