Detroit 9, Houston 0
W: Verlander (4-2)
L: Humber (0-7)
When I was 11 or 12 I somehow ended up playing on a church league basketball team. I have no idea how this happened – I didn’t go to church, and although I was big for my age and athletic, I really wasn’t much of a basketball player at all. I couldn’t dribble, couldn’t shoot, and I guess I could sorta rebound if the ball came to me because I was a little taller than most other kids, but that was all I brought to the court.
We were told that there were two teams and two levels in this league, A and B. B was for the younger kids, and A was for the high school guys. We found out the truth at our first game, when it was revealed that the B team was just the other high school guys who weren’t on the A team for some unknown reason. I think our season was eight games, and I remember getting beat regularly by scores like 110-4, 108-6, that sort of thing. We did get ten points once, but I don’t think any team scored less than a hundred on us.
My frustration was extreme, and being the preteen smartass I was, I ended up taking it out physically on other players. I’d foul the hell out of them, go up for rebounds with the only purpose to rake an elbow across someone’s face or drag a knee into their groin. It was very difficult for me to deal with, and I was a real piece of shit kid, so coupling those things made those games slightly more adventurous than they would’ve been otherwise.
I loved to fight though. Nothing made me smile more than when some guy decided he wanted to throw down with me. Looking back on things, and my outlook on life until I was, shit – lots older – I don’t know how I’m still alive and without a police record.
I’ve seen at least my share of death, disease, pain and horror. I’ve dodged life-threatening circumstances too many times to count, and not all of them came to me because of my big mouth and tendency to explode first and pick up pieces later. Time and the miracles of modern medicine have helped me to dial this back to the levels that everyone else probably operates under, but sometimes I miss barely holding back that bright edge. Sometimes I miss scaring the living shit out of people.
Which brings us to our little four-game set with the big, bad, scary Tigers. Did we expect to win one of these? I doubt it. Did we expect to at least make them competitve? Ennh. Maybe one of them, but surprisingly the first two were tight contests. The last two though, against Scherzer and Verlander – those were going to be fuckstompings of the First Order and sadly, the ones we will remember the most.
Detroit didn’t need Verlander for this one, and Houston probably would’ve rolled over if Mrs. Verlander had been pitching, but she wasn’t and this one was nothing but ugly from the beginning. A quick two-run shibby by Prince Fielder in the first was the first punch in the face, the one that got your attention. After that the Tigers batted around in the second and added five more. An hour in and two innings done, but so were the Astros on this bright spring day.
Verlander gave up a couple of walks and another runner reached on an error by Fielder by the seventh. Thus far it seemed likely that the Astros would be no-hit, if for no other reason than the amazing play made by Cabrera in the fifth.
It was beginning to look like Leyland would have a tough call to make in the ninth because his pitch count was going to be high when Pena finally broke up the no-hitter. After that the visitors banked the plane in and landed the four-game sweep.
When you reduce it to its elemental level, baseball is about hope. Right now, frustration is settling everywhere like a thick mist of dust. Houston has lost ten of eleven, four straight, and 18 of its last 22. The so-called pitching staff is being reworked to try to shake some of that cloud away, but it’s not going to disappear soon. We’re at the point we knew would come, where some of the early experiments failed, but we didn’t expect that point to come just yet. It’s here though, and it’s time for us to stand in there and take our beating while we try to keep that flicker of hope sheltered from the assault. While this numbing pain is being inflicted, it sure would make it easier to get some kind of reassurance that there is a plan, and that there are signs of promise instead of an endless future of these teams going all Mr. Blonde on us.
Too bad, suckers. It’s never, ever going to be easy. Pain and fear are the other side of the coin, and you’re either in it until it flips or too weak for the task. Buy the ticket, take the ride.