HOUSTON ASTROS (3-4) vs. TORONTO BLUE JAYS (3-4)

Rogers Centre
One Blue Jays Way
Toronto, Ontario, M5V 1J1
America’s Hat

One good thing about being a really bad team with not much hope of getting any better any time soon – when you start the season against two mid-to upper-level AL opponents and come out of it 3-4 … even if it was all home games, that feels pretty damn good.

On the other hand, if you go 3-4 to open the season and are at best a mediocre-to-average team, in the AL East … well, you are probably going to finish in fifth place, anyway. If you have spent a lot of money – or loonies and toonies, as Adam Dunn once called Canadian dollars – over the last few years, trying unsuccessfully to vault yourself into the AL East conversation, to no avail … that isn’t so good, either. And, if you look around and realize you play your home games in a pretentious little country with a huge inferiority complex, namely Canada, well … that is three strikes, and you’re fucking oot.

Apparently, Alan Ashby quit his announcing gig with the Blue Jays to join Bill Brown on Astros TV broadcasts and replace the departing Jim Deshaies. Prior to last season. TV broadcasts, hmm? I wouldn’t know.

The Blue Jays start all the games in this series at 6:07. Not 6:00, or 6:05, or 6:10, but 6:07. They also misspell the name of their stadium. Must be one of those Celsius-Fahrenheit things.

Their street name is pretty cool, though.

***************

SCHEDULE
Tuesday April 8
Houston vs. Toronto 6:07 p.m. CDT

Wednesday April 9
Houston vs. Toronto 6:07 p.m. CDT

Thursday April 10
Houston vs. Toronto 6:07 p.m. CDT

***************

I can’t stay knowing what’s going down
I can’t stay, darkness on the edge of town
Streetwise kids in an act of defiance
Out to defeat what’s already behind us
Rattle and shake their political cans
Giving directions without any plans

It is late at night when the darker thoughts come in. I am usually asleep by then; but every once in a while, I’m not.

I used to wonder what it was like, to be older. Well, not too much, to tell the truth … One of the greatest gifts the benevolent creator ever bestowed upon me was the self-awareness to know that wherever I was and whatever I was doing at any given time when I was young, it was probably one of the best times I’d ever have. I knew it right then, while it was happening. So I never had to worry, later on, that I didn’t realize how good I really had it, way back when. Oh, yes I did. Oh, yes I did.

I remember my brother and I had this ongoing conversation/running joke when we were in our late teens-early twenties. We would be sitting in our lawn chairs on the beach, a big 50-something quart Igloo cooler between us. The sun would be high, and glistening off of our coconut oil covered skin. The deep copper color of our hides was made even deeper when filtered through the polarized Wayfarers I always had on my face, back then. There were attractive young women in skimpy bathing suits and bikinis all around us. Actually, a lot of people would be around us … some were doing what my brother and I were doing, just kicking back, and being reflective; others would be throwing Frisbees back and forth, or just walking along the edge of the water, flip-flops in one hand, canned beer in a foam coo-zee in the other. There might be a few Sunfish sailboats skipping across the waves a little ways out and, closer in, people doing various things in the shallower water. And, all the while, the waves from the Gulf of Mexico would come washing in, in rhythm, one after another; and one could hear the noise the waves made, all along … over, in, and in between the noise from the car stereo, blaring out the ‘Stones or Aerosmith or Van Halen or whoever was being played on KLOL-FM that day.

The scene was a near-perfect portrait of what the late 1970’s in America were like, for me and my kind, anyway.

And somewhere in there, after we were both half lit, my brother would lean over to me and say, “I wonder what we’d be doing right now if we lived in Russia? Or Czechoslovakia?”

It wasn’t an idle question, entirely. The people on my mother’s side had only relatively recently immigrated to these shores. My maternal grandmother, who was Czech, was first generation American. My maternal grandfather came to this country at the age of 15, from Russia.  So, theoretically, if one or another thing had gone a little differently along the way, my brother and I might not have ever been there at all that day, on that beach, enjoying the all those wonderful aural, visual and tactile sensations. We might have been born and lived instead in one motherland or another, back in Eastern Europe, perhaps under one of the stultifying Communist puppet regimes that were so popular out that way, back in that time. We would have trudged through our mundane, oppressive lives, never having known about coconut oil or babes in bikinis or listening to the Stones and the ocean’s roar simultaneously, slouched in a lawn chair, out in the shining, glistening sun.

I would lean over to my brother and reply, “Probably shoveling coal somewhere, in the snow.”

And we would both laugh. We knew we had it damn good, then and there. Even if we were a bit haughty about it.

***************

PITCHING MATCHUPS
Tuesday – HOU Obie Oberholzer (LHP 0-1, 4.76) vs. TOR Mark Buehrle (LHP 1-0, 0.00)

Wednesday – HOU Lucas Harrell RHP 0-1, 15.00) vs. TOR Brandon Morrow (RHP 0-1, 7.20)

Thursday – HOU Dallas Keuchel (LHP 0-1, 7.20) vs. TOR Dustin McGowan (RHP 0-1, 13.50)

***************

I can’t stay staring down a .44
I can’t stay dying on the killing floor
A man in blue and he’s drawing a gun
A child in the shadows, too scared to run
A crack in the mirror of a teenage dream
Like a lost generation on LSD

On the odd occasion that I am awake now, late at night, in the strange hours, as Loren Eiseley called them … the strange hours, when the darker thoughts come creeping in, when men have their most personal conversations with themselves … when, after having gone ‘round all day or all year with a sunny outlook, and spreading good cheer everywhere they go, they will that same night, in the strange hours, question their very purpose, their very being, whether the time they are spending here has any meaning at all. Would it even matter a bit if they did not wake up the next morning, and go about their positive rounds, spreading their good cheer?

I think it would matter. As I have grown up and matured a little, I have noticed that I have slowly moved away from my younger days, when I surrounded myself with cynical and negative or at least extremely fatalistic folks. Back then, I kind of looked askance at my perpetually cheerful peers. Maybe I thought one had to be moody and dark to really experience the meaning of life. It wasn’t always easy for me, feigning the moroseness. To be honest, moodiness and darkness were not part of my natural disposition. I had a reservoir of it in me that I could draw on, but I wasn’t inclined to immerse myself in it. I think I have come to realize I am something like my father was, in that way. He could be very dark, but normally only in brief, episodic bouts. For the most part he was funny, and he appreciated life’s absurdities quite a bit.

My father didn’t suffer fools gladly, but he didn’t mind being foolish himself from time to time, if it served a greater comedic purpose. He was a wonderful, truly gifted storyteller and physical caricaturist. It was his Irish heritage, I guess. All I know is, my brothers and I would beg him to tell us stories – about his youth, about amusing people he’d come across along the way, about family members and friends … from the time we were kids until we had grown up, we were always requesting new yarns, or asking for a replay of our favorites. If he was in the mood, he might launch into an intricate characterization, about one of our uncles, say … Perhaps our Uncle Don, who was a decent guy and had good qualities and all, but who could also be hopelessly pretentious. My dad would start telling us about the time Uncle Don, normally a chinos and t-shirt and Converse Chuck Taylors kind of guy, got involved in a small community theater in his town in the 1970s, and soon started going around everywhere in a black turtleneck sweater and horn-rimmed glasses, with a serious look on his face, and smoking a pipe. It was very much like some of the townsfolk/thespians in the film Waiting For Guffman, only this was many years before that fine movie came out.

You would had to have known my Uncle Don, and have seen my dad’s characterization of him, puffing thoughtfully on his pipe and scratching his chin while struggling to elucidate his ideas on method acting, to really get it. All I can tell you is, it slayed us. He would have my brothers and I literally rolling around on the floor in helpless laughter. The man had a gift.

It was a shame that the darkness in him won out in the end. I don’t know everything about that, but I know that darkness must have been very powerful; to be able to overwhelm all the good and fun that was in him, also.

When I was younger, I was harder on him than I should have been. I had the haughtiness of youth going for me, and I thought less of him for his failures, back then.

I don’t this less of him for it anymore, I don’t think. I am older now.  I know how fucking hard it all is.

***************

INJURIES
HOU – Nobody important. Dexter Fowler has been under the weather, but is supposed to return for this series.

TOR – J.A. Happ, LHP is on the 15-day DL with a sore back; Casey Janssen, RHP is on the 15-dqy DL with a sore back; José Reyes, SS in on the 15-day DL with a sore hamstring.

***************

I can’t stay knowing what’s going down
I can’t stay, darkness on the edge of town
The brain’s still twitching but the eyes are closed
My best friend’s dying of an overdose
A red light flares unaccounted for
It’s happening now and it’s happened before

When one is young, one simply doesn’t have a long enough experience of living to see the incremental good that accrues in one’s favor, just by getting up every day and not being a negative prick about everything. When we were young, it was so easy to fall into a facile, faux-existentialist stance – you know, the live fast-die young attitude. Cheap fatalism. Don’t worry about the future; you might not have one anyway. It felt so cool to be that way, just wake up every day and roll yourself out of the biscuit and pull on some clothes, and go out and face the world like a junior Jean-Paul Sartre, or maybe a still wet-behind-the-ears Albert Camus, at least. I shudder when I think of that now; but it felt real enough then. The sheer stupidity of youth – I don’t suppose very many of us were entirely immune to it. I certainly wasn’t.

And now … and now. I go to bed earlier, and soberer, for one thing. So I miss the strange hours, mostly, which is probably just as well. I get pretty bored pretty quickly with darkness and brooding and lightweight existentialism these days. I realize, too, that by this point, I have mostly surrounded myself with cheerful people, some of them relentlessly so. Good for them. I tell them stories, and make them laugh. They make me feel good, and lift me up with their energy. I am not a Pollyanna and never will be, but I have a longer view with which to operate from now. And I see the value in living life in a good and cheerful way.

I remember at my father’s funeral several years ago, so many people came up to me afterward, just wanting to talk about him a bit. It was odd in a way, because he had flamed out rather spectacularly some years before, and had left town – his hometown, the scene of all his triumphs, and tragedies. And he had never once come back. Until that day, when we buried him, I mean.

But various old colleagues and friends, male and female, some of whom I knew, and many who I didn’t know at all … all these people came up, and introduced themselves, and then said a few things … how it sure was a shame about the old man, he was a brilliant guy, etc., etc. Too bad things ended up the way they did. And then, to a person almost, they would begin to lighten up a bit. You could see some brightness come back into the features, maybe a small smile, and before long I would hear one or a couple of tales about my father either doing something hilarious or, in a few cases, quite good and altruistic, for all these people in his universe I had never really had any idea of. It was a little overwhelming to me; but I stayed until the last person left. I listened to every anecdote, or recollection of an act of kindness, and I didn’t hurry anyone along. I had a sense it was good for these people who knew him and in some cases loved him, to work back from their sorrow to a state of gentle happiness, thinking about how much fun or just how good the old man was, when he wanted to be.

I think it was good for me to hear it, too. And it makes me smile, thinking of it now.

My father’s life, from the beginning of it to the end, was not all there was to his story. I can see that now. The fact that his son could not fully appreciate all the nuances of it, and all the good in it, within his life span was not his fault, and I don’t think it was mine, either. That is just the way it works, sometimes. Thankfully, the memory of him and his spirit outlived the flesh and blood. I have made my peace with all of it and then some, by now. That is just an extremely gratifying thing; I don’t think I am eloquent enough to express how it feels to finally get to that place.

And the funny thing is, I would guess it will be the same for my boys someday, after I am gone.  Whatever happens to me after that morning that I don’t wake up, I am pretty sure they will hear things and have things related to them – especially if I last here for a while and they are a bit older than now when it happens – they will hear things about the old man that will make them smile when they hear them, and when they think of me. The same way I do when I am reminded of my father, now.

Meanwhile, the strange hours come, and the strange hours go. I am usually snoozing through them nowadays, dreaming of everything from hitting the game-winning home run to diving deep down into the deep, blue sea. And on the odd night I am still awake when they come, I might muse about things a bit; how I have come through so little and so much, so much darkness and so little light, and vice-versa. Only to find, having made it to the middle of middle age, when men are supposed to be brooding on their lives and their mortality and things of that nature, particularly in the strange hours … only to find myself totally unable to brood very much on anything, even in the strangest hours. I have been startled awake … and have found myself, in the middle of middle age, to be mostly at peace, and content, and very happy. Somehow or another.

Somewhere out there, I hope the old man is smiling at this. I get you now, man. I hope you can get me now, too. And so it is, as the world turns and keeps turning, spinning through the endless darkness. And yet somehow, the force field that is comprised of the endless darkness and the world spinning endlessly through it; and comprised of my father and his father, and of me and my sons, and of everything else we have ever thought of or ever could think of, and of all the people we have known and not known, all along the way, on our endless, spinning journey … somehow, just briefly, almost imperceptibly, the darkened void we are all spinning through is brightened just slightly, has just been made the tiniest bit better, by one man’s laugh, and another man’s smile, just at the thought of it.

As we hope it will always be brightened, by little things such as this.

There’s a new kid on the block
And he’s taking my place
Walking on my grave

***************

Astros win the series, 2-1.

Since the first human eye saw a leaf in Devonian sandstone and a puzzled finger reached to touch it, sadness has lain over the heart of man. By this tenuous thread of living protoplasm, stretching backward into time, we are linked forever to lost beaches whose sands have long since hardened into stone. The stars that caught our blind amphibian stare have shifted far or vanished in their courses, but still that naked, glistening thread winds onward. No one knows the secret of its beginning or its end. Its forms are phantoms. The thread alone is real; the thread is life.

TORONTO Blue Jays (57-71) vs. HOUSTON Astros (41-85)

August 23-25, 2013
Minute Maid Park
Houston, TX

HOUSTON (OWA) – This is a pretty tough time in a pretty tough season, even for the most hopeful and optimistic of Houston Astros fans.

The team is coming off of a lovely series earlier this week with North TexasRead More

This preview was conceived, written, and submitted by 94CougarGrad. It is strictly prohibited to plagiarize, reprint or otherwise rebroadcast this series preview without the expressed written consent of 94CougarGrad and/or one of her legal representatives. Don’t fuck with her, man. That is my advice.

********************

Go to the Houston Astros’ website this morning and, at the beginning of the preview for tonight’s game, you’ll find this: “The Silver Boot series will make its last stop in Houston this season when the Astros and Rangers begin a four-game series at Minute Maid Park on Friday.” Then, you’ll read the next line, which is this: “The Rangers are 7-2 against Houston in 2013, and they’ve won five straight at Minute Maid Park since dropping the season opener.”

I have mixed reactions to those first two sentences. The reaction after reading the first sentence is: “Thank God! I *finally* get to watch some Astros baseball!” Then, with no warning- although I should’ve seen it coming- I’m unkindly reminded of the Astros’ poor record against the Rangers this season.

Well, you know what? Screw y’all, that’s what. Seriously, just fuck right off and hit the road, jack. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass like you smacked us in the ass with your stupid little keyboard and your stupid little words making stupid little comments about our stupid losing season in the stupid AL. What are you, a Rangers fan?

As a lifelong Astros fan who relocated to Rangers-land in 2008 for employment purposes, I have taken great comfort in the fact that when 95% of the Astros’ games were on television, I could turn on that television and watch my team. I’d plan dinner and schoolwork time around the opening pitch. I’d DVR games when they were broadcast on nights that I had class. I’d moved to unfamiliar territory, and turning on the Astros made things feel normal and happy, even when they lost, because that was normal, even if it wasn’t happy. And they were in familiar baseball territory. They’d be playing in San Francisco. Or Atlanta. Or Saint Louie. Or Chicago.

Now when the Astros play in Chicago, it’s gonna be against those guys in black-and-white who blanked us in the ’05 World Series. Now our boys have gotta use a designated hitter even when they play at home. Meh. Thanks so much, Bud.

As these few years have passed, I’ve come to enjoy living in North Texas. It’s really pretty up here. Lots of lakes, lots of green outside, lots of ducks and Canadian geese, lots of friendly people. As long as you don’t live in Dallas (which I don’t) or talk shop about baseball with Rangers fans (which I don’t) or, God forbid, talk about the ever-lovin’ Cowboys with football fans (which is an altogether different preview and shall not be discussed here). I’ve adapted. I move my potted plants around so they don’t bake in direct sunlight. I can hustle my family and animals into the inner bathroom of our home almost before the tornado warning siren starts. I’ve become quite adept at using my broom as an arachnid-apult to fling the invading wolf spiders (*shudder*) out the sliding door and into the backyard. I love being involved with the university community.

Something just doesn’t feel right this summer, however. I could pinpoint it on any number of things- the stress over researching and writing my thesis, the upcoming fall semester’s classes, Big’Un’s driver’s ed lessons- but, honest and for true, it really bothers me that I can’t just turn on my television in the evening and watch the Astros. I’m finding that I really don’t know much about this team, besides what I read on here or on the occasional visit to ESPN.com, or what I hear from the nearby trying-to-be-helpful-and-friendly Rangers fans. Their reports are usually worded in phrases something similar to: “Oh, the Astros? Geez, you guys really suck.” Yes, my dear, neighborly asshole… I know. And, believe me, it does *not* thrill me that I have to be dependent on *your* favorite fuckin’ team and its television deals and coverage to see *my* favorite team. You guys wanted the expansion of the Silver Boot series, y’all got it, and you’re thrilled about using that boot to tromp all over our newborn-American-League (bleh!) team. Believe me, the view of the boot is far more tarnished from the outsole than it is from the vamp, and the Astros are getting the shaft.

I don’t know a damn thing about this year’s Astros other than they’re in the American League and they’re losing.  Badly. Here’s the thing, though. I’m still here, and I’m still an Astros fan. I still wanna know how my team’s doing. I still wanna go see them live. And I still wanna exercise my God-given right to turn on my frigging television and watch my favorite frigging baseball team play somebody else’s favorite frigging baseball team, even if the ‘Stros get their asses handed to them hand over choked fist.

Can your fan base say the same about itself, you two-time World Series losers? Would you still tune your television channels to baseball on a Monday night in September if the Cowboys were playing the Bears and the Rangers were on a six-game slide? Would Nelson Cruz’s “special muscle-building smoothies” still taste good right now if your team had a 37-76 record?

Rangers fans will be distracted by football soon enough, and I’ll be searching the upcoming schedules for Astros-Rangers games so that I know I can turn on the television and see my team play. But I’ll still be here, and I’ll still be an Astros fan, so help me, Bud Selig and CSN Houston and Baseball Gods of Wrath.

Just… somebody, for the love of this lil’ Houston-area gal transplanted to somewheres else, PLEASE get their heads straight and get a tv broadcast deal with somebody. I can’t stomach much more of this dependence on the Rangers and their fans. If your incompetence, or whatever it is, is going to continue to prevent me from seeing non-Rangers Astros games on the tube, just lock me up in Huntsville, already.

Friday, August 9, 7:10 pm:

M. Garza (1-1, 2.82, RHP)
vs.
Bedard (3-8, 4.29, LHP)

Bedard ain’t won a game since June 26. Garza pitched the only Rangers’ loss in their last 10 games. Oh, and don’t forget the stRangers’ 13 stolen bases in the last two games. Lordy, Lordy, Lordy.

“Big and Bright Friday Nights” t-shirts to the first 10,000 fans, followed by Friday Night Fireworks (sponsored by Marathon Oil Corporation, where this Texas City girl’s daddy worked for 26 years)

Saturday, August 10, 6:10 pm:

Holland (9-6, 3.02, LHP)
vs.
Peacock (1-4, 7.25, RHP)

Holland is 7-1 and 2.61 in 12 road starts this season. Peacock’s current numbers make him the kind of pitcher that the guys in my old fantasy baseball league would’ve tried to pass off to me, the only chick owner, as part of a trade with some other young and untried player in exchange for a pitcher of Hershiser’s caliber and Jim Gott back in the day.

“Houston Astros vs. Texas Rangers commemorative baseball to first 10,000 fans
Houston Methodist presents Houston Astros Blood Drive, 2-7pm; eligible donors get an Astros t-shirt
Texas Country Street Festival, 2-6pm on Crawford St: live beer, cold music, and activities… or something like that.

Sunday, August 11, 1:10 pm:

Perez (4-3, 3.81, LHP)
vs.
Keuchel (5-6, 4.96, LHP)

Over his last 4 starts, Perez has improved his ERA from 9.00 to 3.81. He’s never faced the Astros before, though, so I predict that by the end of the day, his ERA will either balloon to 7.64 or improve further to 2.22. Preferably it’ll be the former. Keuchel’s moving back to the rotation from the ‘pen, and what a relief, since he seems to be pitching better as a starter than as a reliever.

No freebies
No giveaways
No fun stuff (unless the Astros win)

Monday, August 12, 1:10 pm:

Darvish (11-5, 2.72, RHP)
vs.
Oberholtzer (2-0, 2.53, LHP)

The businessmen get treated to a late lunch with Yu, and I’d like nothing more than to see him get royally trounced by our chopsticks… I mean, bats. Please. I haven’t seen Oberholtzer pitch, but he’s got some good things written about him. Plus I get a warm-fuzzy-baseball-happy feeling about the kid. He’s a redhead, and I’ve got a redheaded son. His last name’s the same as one of the dorms at my alma mater, which brings up some fun college memories. So… there. Pitch your ass off, kid.

Coca-Cola Value Days

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let me assure you, I’m not cynical about the Astros. I’m just feeling more distant from baseball than I have in previous years, which really pisses me off. I hate that they’re struggling, and I hate that I can’t see them on tv, and I hate that they’re in the AL, but I’m still a fan, and I believe anything can happen.

Proof that anything can happen, you ask? That aforementioned fantasy baseball trade in which I traded away Hershiser and Gott, and received two youngish but decent guys, Morgan and Harkey, in return? Hershiser went on the 60-day DL the very next day. Morgan and Harkey did okay for me– not great, just okay– but Tim’s team plummeted in the standings because of the Hershiser injury, and my team improved enough to have a respectable finish at the end of the season.

So the moral of that story is… God bless Jim Gott.

Submitted by chuck.

July 9 – 10, 2013

Houston Astros (32-57) at St Louis Cardinals (53-34)Read More

June 14-17, 2013

Chicago White Sox (28-35) vs. Houston Astros (23-44)

Minute Maid Park
501 Crawford
Houston, TX 77002

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

SCHEDULE
• Friday June 14, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT

• Saturday June 15, 2013 — 6:15 p.m. CDT

• Sunday June 16, 2013 — 1:10 p.m. CDT

• Monday June 17, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

DEAD

If somebody is haunting your mind
Look in my eyes, let me hide you
From yourself and all your old friends
Every good thing comes to an end

I’m taking a rain check for this here Series Preview. I hope it is okay with you.

I wanted to quit this fucking Series Preview gig altogether, here at Orangewhoopass. I grew to fucking hate the process; and – even more – to hate myself for not being able to steadily produce within it. And I just wanted to fucking quit, altogether; but I could not bring myself to do it. I still want to write stuff here, and enjoy it, and have other people enjoy it.

But I just cannot do it right now. Not this time, anyway. I hope it is okay.

I was out fishing last weekend; out in the Gulf of Mexico with a friend of mine, on his boat. Fishing for black drum. We caught a few of them, too.

At one point, not much was happening, and I was just sitting there in a chair on his boat, just kind of contemplating the sea water as it floated by. Meditating. Thinking about how my life had drifted by, mostly; just like this sea water was drifting by. Pretty and blueish green (we were 18 or so miles out from Bolivar, near some unmanned gas rigs) it was, but even so, mostly unnoticed. Mostly not worth noticing.

It was the violence of life that usually roused me from my somnolence along the way, at least temporarily.

Back in pre-school, they always told us about the happy times, and the gaiety of life … but, as I recall, no one ever spent too much time on the violent aspects. How you could be going happily along, then suddenly – like a great shark rising unexpectedly out of the water to take away your catch, just as you were about to boat it – the violence would rise up and snatch your best friend away when he was 9 (under the guise of some kind of cancer); or kill you cousin, or brother; or make your dad a drunk and ruin your home life forever. It never fucking failed.

It never fucking failed.

I would be roused to the utter ugliness of existence, but I never had the energy to buy into it for too long. Sooner or later I would succumb to the enticement of happiness and gaiety, once again, and believe that my life was truly charmed, and idyllic.

Until the shark jumped up again, that is; exploding through the water’s surface to twist and writhe ever so briefly in the silver sun, before snatching away my happiness again, and pulling it down, down, down … down into the darkness of the water’s depths.

That is what makes me not able to do this right now. I hope it is okay.

I’ll be happy again, though. And, next time, I promise … I’ll do better.

I hope it is okay.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

PITCHING MATCHUPS
Friday June 14, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT
CHICAGO – Chris Sale, LHP (5-4, 2.68)
HOUSTON – Eric Bedard, LHP (1-3, 5.34)

Saturday June 15, 2013 — 6:15 p.m. CDT
CHICAGO – John Danks, LHP (1-2, 4.13)
HOUSTON – Lucas Harrell, RHP (4-7, 4.52)

Sunday June 16, 2013 — 1:10 p.m. CDT
CHICAGO – Hector Santiago, LHP (2-4, 3.12)
HOUSTON – Dallas Keuchel, LHP (3-3, 4.37)

Monday June 17, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT
CHICAGO – Jose Quintana, LHP (3-2, 3.86)
HOUSTON – Bud Norris, LHP (5-6, 3.87)

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

DEAD

Someone was ’round here asking questions about someone who looks like you
I said I don’t know where you are
He said that he was going to be back
So I told him where you are

I was dead, just this one time. In college.

My roommate Rusty and I locked (well, barricaded) ourselves into our dorm room for a week once, my sophomore year, and did purple micro-dots, for a week. Never once left our tiny dorm room. Never bathed, or ate, once. For a week.

We were dead. Dead.

We saw hideous things in that time. I know I did, anyway. At any rate, whatever we were, neither one of us was real keen to go outside then. We were too fucking paranoid.

We finally came out of it. Me, first. I walked down the hallway of the dorm to the communal shower, with a towel. And I took a fucking shower. I bathed myself; and as I washed myself in the water, I realized how crazy it was to stay holed up in a tiny room for a week, doing powerful psychedelic drugs, and not eating or bathing or even sleeping very much. When I was done with my shower, I walked back down the hall to our room, and I convinced Rusty it was crazy, what we’d been doing; and eventually, he emerged, too.

In a way, I think we bonded, Rusty and I did … relying solely on each other in that scary fucking room, for a week.

Didn’t do me a lot of good, though; to bond with Rusty. He didn’t last too long, after that. He wasn’t all that reliable, anyway. And he was dead before I knew it, about the time I was settling down to get married the first time, and raise kids.

Gone.

His bones have been moldering in the ground for close to thirty years now. Nothing left of him. Nothing.

Just what I remember. That is all that holds him to this earth at all, anymore.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

PROMOTIONS
Friday June 14, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT
Big and Bright Friday Nights – Fireworks and T-Shirts! Fuck, yeah! What more could you want? Fucking fireworks and fucking T-shirts! Fuck, yeah!

Saturday June 15, 2013 — 6:15 p.m. CDT
Orbit Bobblebelly – Fuck, yeah! Awesome! An Orbit bobblebelly! Fucking hell yes!

Sunday June 16, 2013 — 1:10 p.m. CDT
Picnic in the Park – No fucking little kids running the bases! Fuck, yeah! No fucking bratty-ass little kids! Yeah! Fuck, yeah!

Monday June 17, 2013 — 7:10 p.m. CDT
Coca-Cola Value Days – Nothing! Fuck, yeah! Fucking nothing! Oh, yeah! Fuck, yes!

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

DEAD

I met an old mistake walking down the street today
I met an old mistake walking down the street today
I didn’t want to be mean about it
But I, I didn’t have one good thing to say

I have gone through powerful changes through the years, all the while hanging onto my memories of Diane and I.

She was the one who got away. She was the one I never got over, in all of this time. I cannot even explain why.

I loved her and I loved her and I loved her. And then, just like that, she was gone from me, never to return. And I still loved her. Still.

From those crazy days in college, all the way on. I never forgot her, never forgot what it felt like when I saw her walking my way, with just that hint of a smile curling up on the edge of her lip, on the left side of her face.

She was glad to see me, goddammit. No doubt about it.

Goddamn, it made me happy to see that hint of a smile.

I have gone on, and Diane has gone on. I have married, and raised children, and divorced. And remarried.

And Diane has done all the same. And now we are both happy, in our separate lives, forever apart. And we are destined to live on, and to die that way. Forever apart.

I cannot even remember what it was that made me ever think it would ever be otherwise. Why did I ever think we could be happy together, and last, and last? Maybe it was her friend, Cathleen. Upon seeing a Polaroid of Diane sitting and smiling in my lap, taken at a local club we hung out at, at the time, Cathleen had told me, “You two look like you belong together.”

I will never, ever forget what Cathleen said to me that day, or how she said it. It was like a benediction from God. I believed it immediately, with all of my heart.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Astros lose the series, 0-4.

Strolling the hills overlooking the shore
I realize I’ve been here before
The shadow in the mist could have been anyone
I saw you, I saw you
Coming back to me

Small things like reasons are put in a jar
Whatever happened to wishes wished on a star?
Was it just something that I made up for fun?
I saw you, I saw you
Coming back to me

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

DEAD
That is all I have. It sucks, and I know that it sucks.

I have asked myself and asked myself. What happened to me? How did I fall so far? Why is it I cannot even seem to string three or four coherent sentences together anymore, without it all sounding hackneyed and trite?

I am so tired, and I am so destroyed. I wish I was not, but I am.

Fuck, I am so sorry. It is not okay.

It is not okay.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>