Boy, the dog days have settled in and we’re only halfway through June. This swoon feels almost Cub-like, though without so much delusion. But hey, I know what will drag this team out of the doldrums – two weeks playing against the American League! Yeah, that’s just the thing.

And now there’s even this bullshit talk about moving the Astros to the AL? Seriously? If you can’t trade Carlos Lee to a team that needs a DH, I guess you can just trade the team to the league with the DH. It’s like Lee’s contract has become such a drag on the team, that’s it’s formed it’s own weight and mass and is developing a gravity well.

So anyway, the Astros have the worst record in baseball and the Rangers are leading their division for now. Plus you know the Dallas area is just so proud of itself after the Mavs won their title, that a giant forcefield of Metroplex Smug will be enveloping the city. I’ve smelled it before – it’s like a film of oilfield grease under a thick layer of Mary Kay makeup.

Oh, and there are red flag fire warnings all over the state, so it will be hot and smoky and windy, plus the air temperature will be hotter than the devil’s balls. So nope, I’m not making the trip to Dallas, not even for a Nelson Cruz bobblehead. I’ve always hated Dallas, and I think right now I’d hate it even more.

Rangers Ballpark

Monday, June 20, 7:05 p.m. CDT
Tuesday, June 21, 7:05 p.m. CDT
Wednesday, June 22, 7:05 p.m. CDT

Now that the Rangers and Astros are playing each other, Fox Sports Southwest shouldn’t have any trouble getting an HD camera crew to the games, right? Because maybe it’s just me, but it seems like the HD broadcasts are getting less frequent, not more.

Notable giveaways

Monday – A Nelson Cruz Walk-Off Bobblehead, with Cruz supposedly calling his shot. I think he’s just pointing to where the wildfire is coming from, before wisely evacuating.

Tuesday – Reliant Energy Sunglasses. Can’t argue with cheap sunglasses, unless they look like shit or something.

Wednesday – the usual cheap food and shit

Projected Matchups from Astros.com

Monday
J.A. Happ (3-8, 4.95)  v. Derek Holland (5-2, 4.78)
Happ hasn’t won a game since mid-May. He’s never seen the Rangers, though he’s pitched to Torrealba and Chavez who are a combined 0-for-5 against him.

Holland is 2-0 in six starts at home this year but hasn’t won there since late April. He has faced the Astros once but that was a couple of years ago. Michael Bourn is 2-for-3 against him.

Tuesday
Jordan Lyles (0-2, 4.30)  v. C.J. Wilson (7-3, 3.03)
Lyles gets his first start against future division rival Texas. He’s still looking for his first career win, so a nice long stretch against the American League should do the trick.

Wilson is 2-1 against the Astros is several starts and relief appearances. Carlos Lee is 4-for-8 against him, and Jason Michaels is 4-for-9 with a single, a double, a triple, and a homer.

Wednesday
Brett Myers (3-6, 4.75) v. Colby Lewis (6-7, 4.80)
Myers has seen a few of the Rangers before and none of them have had much success. Ian Kinsler is 2-for-2 with a homer, and Adrian Beltre has a homer but is 2-for-14 overall against Myers. Endy Chavez is only 2-for-17 against him.

Lewis had a win and a loss against the Astros last season. Carlos Lee is 4-for-13 against Lewis but nobody else has more than a double off him.

Injury Report
Houston – In addition to the regulars, now Hunter Pence and J.R. Towles are banged up and questionable for this series. And in a rare break from tradition, but with a nod to reality, the Astros have decided to list Hunter Pences’ injuries separately by body part. For example, his heart and enthusiasm will always be listed as “probable,” while his head and arm will always be “questionable.”

Texas – Three relievers and three starters are on the DL, plus Mike Napoli is out until later this month.

Discuss today’s game in the Gamezone.

Memorial Day is for honoring those killed in action, as it should be. But this also seems like a good time to pay respect to those who have carried lifelong war wounds, both physical and mental. So here’s the story of one wounded veteran.

*****

I got my appreciation for baseball from my grandfather on my dad’s side; no one else in my family cared about baseball at all. And I didn’t even know my grandfather all that well, because I was still young when he died.

In fact, along with not caring about baseball, most of the family didn’t really care for my grandfather either. Years later, all I heard from distant relatives was what a mean old bastard he was. I’ve heard enough of their stories to know they were probably true, but I never saw that side of him.

I remember my mom and dad commenting several times that it was curious that the old man was so nice to me, compared to how he treated everyone else. And not only that, they were amazed that I asked to go see him every week; no one ever went to see him voluntarily. Somehow the cranky old war veteran and this scrawny, sickly kid had something in common.

The reason I went to visit him every Saturday was to watch the Game of the Week. It was the only time I could see baseball on TV, because nobody else in my house wanted to watch it. We’d get either an NL or AL game of the week; I always hoped for the NL game because Johnny Bench was my favorite player, but the Rangers had also just come into being and my grandfather had lived in Arlington for a long time, so he always wanted to see if they were any good. They weren’t, but we still enjoyed watching.

I would spread out my baseball cards on my grandfather’s coffee table and tell him about all the players we were watching. He’d just grin and nod, because he couldn’t really hear me. He was practically stone deaf, most likely from his time in World War I.

He’d have his easy-chair pulled up right beside the old black-and-white TV so he could hear it, but by the third inning he’d usually be snoring anyway. Just before he’d doze off, he’d always perk up for a second, and remind me that there was ice-cold Coke (in glass bottles) and a bag of Chips-Ahoy cookies in the kitchen. Like I didn’t know that already; my mom did all his grocery shopping and those two things were always at the top of his list. He’d usually wake up before the end of the game, and I’d give him a detailed recap, and then he’d call my mom or dad to come pick me up.

When I was 8 I joined a pee-wee league baseball team, but I wasn’t very good. I didn’t have anyone to practice with, and my grandfather was too feeble by then. But he still managed to come to all my games and sit right in the front row, and he’d grin and clap, even when I was striking out.

Soon after that he moved back to the Dallas area, and he died when I was 12. So the only clear memories I have of him revolve around baseball, but as I learned later, there was so much more to him.

I’ll tell you about that after the series preview …

Astros at Cubs – A Rookie and a Veteran

Wrigley Field

Monday, May 30, 1:20 p.m. CDT
Tuesday, May 31, 7:05 p.m. CDT
Wednesday, June 1, 1:20 p.m. CDT

I guess I don’t get games on My20pixels anymore. Dish Network used to carry them, but I guess they got dropped. Maybe the coverage will be better on FSN after the damn basketball season is over.

Not so notable giveaways

Extra absorbent for comfort where you need it most

Monday – A free piece of wearable asswipe for the first 10,000 fans. It looks like a T-shirt, but you can tell by the logo that it’s really for wiping your ass. Though maybe this is just a sneaky way to trick the dumbass Bleacher Bums into putting on a fucking shirt to cover up their man-teats.

Wednesday – Cubs Promotional Item to the first 10,000 fans. Really, that’s all their website says, just “promotional item.” I guess it’s just whatever shitty merchandise they have lying around that even Cub fans won’t buy.

Projected Matchups from Astros.com

Monday
Aneury Rodriguez (0-2, 4.98)  v. Rodrigo Lopez (no record)

Aneury has only allowed three runs in his last 11+ innings, but he still doesn’t have a win. When he was in the bullpen earlier in the season he pitched a couple of innings against the Cubs, and gave up two hits and one run.

Lopez has been in the Majors for nine years, but has been at AAA this season and is trying to nail down the last spot in the Cubs’ rotation. Good luck with that. Several Astros have batted against him but the only one who’s done any good is Hunter Pence – he’s 5-for-9 with a double and a homer.

Tuesday
Jordan Lyles (no record) v. Carlos Zambrano (5-2, 4.59)

Lyles was 3-3 in Oklahoma City and got the call-up after Wandy went on the DL. He’s going right to the front lines because his mound opponent is  …

Assmunch Zambrano. No current Astros have done much against Zambrano, with the exception of Carlos Lee. He’s 23-for-61 (.377) with six doubles and five homers. On the other hand, Bill Hall has 18 strikeouts in 44 at-bats against Zambrano.

Wednesday
Brett Myers (1-4, 5.11) v. Doug Davis (0-3, 6.75)

Myers is 11-3 in 14 career appearances against the Cubs, with one of those wins coming earlier this year. ErrorMiss has two homers off him and Soriano has three, but they both have a ton of strikeouts too.

Davis is in his 12th season, and his record against Houston is the opposite of Myers at 3-11. Hall, Barmes, and Keppinger each have a homer against him, and Carlos Lee bats .538 (7-for-13).

Injury Report

Houston – The usual suspects, plus now Wandy and Quintero are on the DL until sometime in June. Jason Bourgeois starts a rehab assignment later this week.

Chicago – Marlon Byrd is out with a broken grill after getting plunked by the Red Sox; I’m guessing the irony of being beaned in Boston was lost on him.
Also, Brian Schlitter is on the DL; you may remember that name from my Opening Day preview with the Phillies, where he was also on the DL. The Phillies had claimed him on waivers, but then realized he was a Cub, and therefore damaged goods, so they sent him back to Chicago.
Carlos Zambrano has a pain in the neck but will probably pitch Wednesday.
And there’s some other Cubs on the DL, but who gives a shit.

*****

Anyway, the rest of my grandfather’s story has only come to me second-hand, at best, so I’ve probably got some details wrong. I heard bits and pieces from my dad and other family members, plus there’s even an old Texas history book from the 1930s that has biographies of notable Texans, and there are a couple of paragraphs about him.

But it’s been a long damn time since his war, and if I’ve gotten some of my grandfather’s details wrong, well, I don’t think anyone will know. There’s just no one left who would remember. But this is his story, as best I can piece together.

From what I can tell, he was working on a ship that was ferrying troops to England just as the U.S. was entering World War I. His ship was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat, but he survived and still made it to England somehow. He joined the Army and was assigned to an ambulance company, and he participated in five major battles. According to this old history book I’ve got, that’s the most battles any American could have been in. I don’t know what rank he achieved, or what honors he may have earned; I tried to get his military records from the government, but they were lost when the archives burned decades ago.

He would have been in his early twenties then, and I can’t even imagine what horrors he must have seen as a front-line medic in the muddy trenches of France. He didn’t escape unharmed either; at some point he was gassed by the Germans, probably with mustard gas. He survived because he was wearing a gas mask, but he carried scars from the blisters for the rest of his life. Until the day he died, his head was the only place on his body where he could grow hair, because it had been protected by the gas mask.

So after being torpedoed, sunk, shot at, and gassed, I guess it’s understandable that he came home with a burning hatred for all things German. Today I’m sure we would call it PTSD. I don’t know how that hatred played out over the next 50 years, but I do know some hazy details about how it affected him near the end.

As he grew old his body and mind began to fail, and he was in and out of VA facilities. At some point, I guess in the early 70s, he was in a regular civilian hospital for some reason or another. My dad got a frantic call to come to the hospital, because the old war veteran was out of control. He had attacked another old man with his walking cane and nearly beaten him to death. He thought the other man was a German.

My dad convinced the hospital to keep treating him, but they insisted that the old man had to be strapped to his bed. After a few days my dad got them to take off the restraints, at least while he was visiting. But one day he left the room for a few minutes, and when he came back the bed was empty. And then he saw his dad cowering behind the bed, peeking over the top. “Shhh, be quiet!” he said, pointing out to the hallway. “There’s Germans out there.”

My dad was a pretty tough old veteran himself; he’d served in the Pacific in World War II. One of the few times I ever saw him cry was when he explained why he’d had the hospital strap his dad back to the bed.

My grandfather lived a couple more years, and then whatever horrors he’d seen and done went with him to his grave. He didn’t leave much behind, but in his will he singled out one item – the beat-up old black-and-white TV. No one else in the family understood why he specifically left it to me, but I did.

On second thought, maybe my dad did understand. At my grandfather’s funeral, the honor guard fired their volleys, folded the flag from his casket, and a soldier marched over to my father and intoned the solemn “grateful nation” speech:

“Sir, on behalf of the President of the United States and the people of a grateful nation, may I present this flag as a token of appreciation for the honorable and faithful service your loved one rendered this nation.”

And then he presented the flag … but my dad wouldn’t take it. Instead, he put his hand on my shoulder and told the soldier, “That flag belongs to this young man.” So the soldier took one step sideways, repeated the speech, and gave me the flag. And I still have it, alongside the one I got 20 years later at my dad’s funeral.

And there’s one last detail that makes all this a little more poignant to me. That cranky old war veteran wasn’t my biological grandfather. My mom and dad adopted me when I was born, into a family where the men had black hair and brown eyes. I have blond hair and blue eyes … and a biological line that goes straight back to Germany.

It was never a secret, so surely my grandfather knew. But he managed to put all that history aside and teach me a love of baseball and ice-cold Cokes.

He’s been dead for nearly 40 years now, but baseball lives on, and whenever I watch a game on Memorial Day it takes me back to a time when I could only watch the games on a black-and-white TV.

*****

Thank a veteran today, and then discuss today’s game in the Gamezone.

It’s Friday the 13th and the goddamn New York Mets are in town. What could possibly go wrong? Man, I don’t care if the Astros and Mets were playing across the road from me in the neighbors’ cow pasture, I wouldn’t go to that game. I’d rather stay inside with my two black cats, sit under a ladder, and break mirrors than venture out on Friday the 13th while the bumblefuck Mets are in town.

You never know what might happen when the Apple-knob-polishers are around. You might trip and accidentally commit a four-base error, or accidentally get in a Ponzi scheme, or divide by zero and crash the stock market. Some dumbshit might agree to pay Bobby Bonilla a million fucking dollars every year until the next Ice Age. And what the hell, maybe invest a gazillion dollars in Carlos Beltran. He’ll never get hurt. Or strike out looking.

So stay the fuck away from this series. Wait till the next homestand and see some other dumbass team like the Dodgers; at least you won’t run the risk of being infected by the festering ball of suck that is the New York Mets …

… who, by the way, just won two out of three in Denver against the Rukkakes. The mile-high finale featured three homers from the Ponzi-Rican whore. Ouch. On its face, you could say he was making mountains out of mole hills. He erupted, even.

Now the shit-heel Mets have made their way to Houston. It took a while though, because they had to hock the team jet, of course. Instead, they had to co-charter a bus with an Asian tour group in the Rocky Mountains. They had to stop at every interesting place along the way. Luckily that’s a shitty, uninteresting drive or they never would have made it in time.

Well anyway, when the Astros played the Mets a few weeks ago, I thought “Man that team looks like runover dogshit.” And of course that applied to both teams, but I meant it about the stupid fucking Mets. But I just looked at the standings and there are four other teams in the NL, not counting the Astros, who are worse than the Mets. Now it’s probably just a seasonal variation, like El Nino or whatever the hell. By the end of the summer the Mets will be firmly locked in the NL East cellar, just begging for a lick of the Nationals’ balls.  Of course by that time, the Astros may be asking the same thing of the Pirates, so I guess be careful what you wish for.

Minute Maid Park

Friday, May 13, 7:05 p.m. CDT
Saturday, May 14, 3:05 p.m. CDT
Sunday, May 15, 1:05 p.m. CDT

Notable giveaways

Other than the usual package deals and fireworks and shit:

Friday – A pink Astros tote bag. No thanks, though I’d take one if it had a Mets logo. Then I could use it to scoop cat shit AND be environmentally conscious. Seriously, if anyone ever finds a Mets tote bag, send it to me. I promise to post photos. And I have a lot of cat shit at my house.

Saturday – A Chris Johnson pink bat bobblehead. Nice try, but meh. I realize they have to do bobbleheads for someone, but I don’t think Chris Johnson has earned one yet.

I think they should do a Hunter Pence Four-Base Error Bobblehead, except not only the head, but all the feet, arms, legs, and hands would bobble too. And a little baseball could bounce from one to the other, then finally just roll across the floor and go all to the way to the wall.

Projected Matchups from Astros.com

Friday
Dillon Gee (2-0, 3.80)  v. Bud Norris (2-2, 3.16)

Gee pitched two no-hitters for Cleburne High School and also played at UT-Arlington. But he’s a Met now so fuck him. All I need to see is the orange “NY” on his cap, and “fuck him.” I’m not normally such a perfect judge of character, but when it comes to Mets, I’m golden. Anyway, he’s never faced anyone on the Astros, so, you know …. fuck him.

Norris is 1-1 against the Mets, and he faced them earlier this season and got a no-decision that the team came back to win. The Whore is 3-for-6 with two doubles off Bud, and Jose Reyes is 3-for-7. Scott Hairston, Daniel Murphy, and Josh Thole all have homers off him. Whoever those guys are. Oh wait, I’ve heard of Hairston, I just meant to forget him.

Saturday
R.A. Dickey (1-4, 4.50) v. J.A. Happ (2-4, 5.75)

Dickey has already lost to the Astros once this season. And it’s time to break out our secret weapon Met-Killer Joe Inglett, because he’s 4-for-7 with two doubles against Dickey. Carlos Lee is 7-for-18 with three doubles and a homer. Hunter Pence is only 1-for-9 against Dickey, but the one hit was a homer.

Happ is 1-2 in five appearances against the Ponzis. Beltran is 4-for-13 with two homers off him, and David Wright is 6-for-11 with two doubles and three homers. Ouch. On the plus side, Mets fans will still be paying for those homers in higher ticket prices through 2050.

Sunday
Chris Capuano (2-4, 4.93) v. Aneury Rodriguez (0-1, 5.50)

Capuano has a 5-4 record in 10 appearances against the Astros, but some of those games were back when Biggio and Bagwell were in the starting lineup. Current Astros are a weak 10-for-61 (.164) against him, with the only homer coming from Chris Johnson. In fact, at 2-for-6, Johnson is the best Astros hitter against Capuano. Too bad we can’t let the weekend broadcast team bat against him.

Aneury went two innings in relief against the steM earlier in the season. He only gave up one hit but it was a homer to Ike Davis. However, Davis is on the DL and won’t be in this series. No one on the Mets has more than one AB against Aneury.

Injury Report

New York – Ike Davis is out until later this month, and Angel Pagan should be back for the summer solstice. Bobby Parnell and Pedro Beato are on rehab assignments. Johan Santana is out. David Wright was doubtful for the last series so might still be hurting.

Houston – Jason Michaels should be back for this series, and Keppinger is on a rehab assignment. Arias, Bourgeios, Lyon, and Castro are still on the DL.

Balls in the Dirt

* I know I’ve bitched about this before, but the worst part of writing series previews is that I have to spend time at the opposing team’s website. For fuck’s sake, I’ve just spent an hour or more on the goddamn Mets website. I feel so dirty, I want to uninstall this unclean browser and install a new one like Chrome that’s never been to the Mets site.

* Or maybe I could invent a new Firefox extension that searches your history and removes any mention of the Mets. I’ll call it UnMet, or Sweep the Mets.

* Or Fuck the Mets.

*****

Discuss today’s game in the Gamezone.

This is probably going to be a disjointed preview because my internet connection took a shit Wednesday night and still hasn’t come out of the bathroom. We’ve been having bad storms the last few days and lightning hit the tower that holds our wireless repeater, or whatever the fuck it is. Some guys went up there and tried to fix it and a few spurts of Internet came leaking through, but now it’s dead again.

So I’m having to look up stats and schedules and stuff on my iPhone, which is a colossal pain in the ass. Plus, did you see the news that iPhones are tracking your movements, everywhere you go? I carry my iPhone to the bathroom all the time to take a shit and play Angry Birds, so I hope those movements are stored in my personal Apple database.

Anyway, the Astros have left New York and headed for Milwaukee on the dreaded red-eye “Ponzi to Fonzie” flight. It’s named after that hilarious three-part episode of “Happy Days,” where Fonzie’s dumbass cousin (who looks a whole lot like Fonzie in a fright wig) goes to New York and accidentally invests all his money in the New York Mets, and of course goes bust because the stupid fucking Mets haven’t even been invented yet. So then Laverne and Shirley offer to make all the money back by running a Ponzi scheme at the brewery, which starts off great, but then everything goes to shit and they get laid off because the asshole Republican governor (who looks like Fonzie in a suit) dissolves their labor union. It all ends well of course, because Laverne and Shirley get their money back and create the Green Bay Packers, though there’s a hilarious scandal years later when Brett Favre shows Shirley his crank.

Well at least that’s how I remember it. I’d look it up on Youtube, but my internet’s out.

Miller Park

Friday, April 22, 7:10 p.m. CDT
Saturday, April 23, 6:10 p.m. CDT
Sunday, April 24, 1:10 p.m. CDT

Notable giveaways

The highlight of the weekend giveaways is a John Axford bobblehead. So be sure to get there early Sunday.

Projected Matchups from Astros.com

Friday
Nelson Figueroa (0-2, 7.31)  v. Yovani Gallardo (1-1, 4.62)

Current Brewers have 13 hits in 43 at-bats against Figueroa, for a not-too-shabby .302 average. Kotsay and Kotteras both have homers off him, and they’re a combined 5-for-7 as well. With two K’s. Rickie Weeks is also 3-for-9 off Figueroa, but Fielder and Dicknose Braun are a combined 2-for-14.

The Astros bat .300 against Gallardo in 90 at-bats. Carlos Lee is 7-for-23 against him and Hunter Pence is 6-for-22. Lee has the only homer off Gallardo. Michael Bourn is 8-for-20 but also has 7 strikeouts.

Saturday
Brett Myers (1-0, 2.39)  v. Shaun Marcum (2-1, 1.90)

Pretty much everyone on the Brewers has seen Myers a few times and they go 29-for-94 against him. Prince Fielder is 4-for-13 and three of those hits were homers. Weeks is 4-for-15 and also has a homer. Braun is 4-for-15 and McGeHeeHaw is 4-for-12.

Okay, there should be a team meeting at Bill Hall’s locker before today’s game. Hall is 5-for-7 against Marcum, with a double, three homers, and five RBI. Now that’s how you mark ’em up. Joe Inglett is the only other Astro who’s batted against Marcum, and he’s 0-for-2, so he should also plan on attending Hall’s meeting.

Sunday
Wandy Rodriguez (1-2, 5.48) v. Randy Wolf (2-2, 3.18)

Of course plenty of Brewers have batted against Wandy, but the current crop of Sausages is only 36-for-136 (.265) against him. They also have 35 strikeouts with Fielder accounting for nine of them. Carlos Gomez is 0-for-9 against Wandy with seven strikeouts. The Brewers have three homers off Wandy, all by Dicknose Braun.

Hey, our old buddy Randy Wolf is slumming in Milwaukee now. The Astros bat a weak .252 against him, though Lee, Pence, and Quintero all have homers. Angel Sanchez is also 3-for-5 against Wolf.

Injury Report

Houston – Arias, Keppinger, Barmes, and Lopez are all on the 15-day DL until later this month. Which I guess is pretty soon since there isn’t much month left.

Milwaukee – Zach Greinke, Manny Parra, and Corey Hart are all rehabbing in AAA. Reliever Sergio Mitre is questionable for this series, and another reliever, Takashi Saito, is out. Nyjer Morgan has a thigh bruise that is so deep, other team members are saying he’s even a pain in their ass. Nyjer and his ass are probably out for this series.

Balls in the Dirt

* Have you noticed that the lamest Angry Bird is the Red Bird? The Red Birds always suck until that big fat one comes up.

* A FOUR-BASE ERROR? Holy fucking shit. That’s not just slap-dickery, that’s like getting slapped in the face with a whole box of dicks.

* I’ve got my first insta-mute TV commercial of the season, which I will mute without fail anytime it plays during an Astros game. So I’ll just leave you with this earworm … “♫ Let’s go out to the DMV … ♫”

Discuss today’s game in the Gamezone.