Astros 5
Reds 3

By NeilT

9th inning 3-run homer by Dominguez. Lopez closes.

Do you know the song “Passionate Kisses,” Lucinda Williams? A hard woman, seems to me, like from time to time it’s been much harder than someone with passion and intelligence and talent should have to expect. I’d be nervous if I didn’t recognize her and we were sat next to each other on a plane. But it is such a magnificent song, like so many of her songs:

Is it too much to ask . . .

Well, yeah. Sometimes almost anything is too much to ask.  This season almost anything is too much to ask.

I want a warm bed that won’t hurt my back.

You think about how hard it is for even those of us with the most charmed lives. Think of what the best things should be, children, sex, spouses, work, God, democracy, beer, paychecks . . . and how hard from moment to moment or duration to duration those things can be.  We’ve shared them, here, in this small corner of the universe, for a long damn time. Even among the luckiest among us those joys disappoint, frustrate, rub raw and leave us flat and unhappy and breathless, from time to time or duration to duration. And among us, this few, this brave few, you have to throw in baseball, and baseball means the Astros.

Is it too much to ask I want a comfortable bed
That won’t hurt my back
Food to fill me up
And warm clothes and all that stuff

And passionate kisses. From time to time passionate kisses. For once, tonight, we got what was too much to ask.

WP: Correia (10-8)
LP: Abad (0-3)

by Sphinx Drummond

The Astros got off to another bad start falling behind early. By eventually losing 6-3 the Astros’ won/loss record dropped to 42-95 and they now stand in at 53 games under .500. For the unwashed, that’s a real shitty won/loss record. Even if you throw out either of the Pirates best innings scoring-wise, the Astros would still lose 4-3.

Abad got the start for the good guys, he’s now 0-3 as a starter, still looking for that elusive first win. Hard to believe he’s lost only three.

The Astros interim manager remarked, ”I thought Abad could give us a chance but unfortunately we got down again early. It’s getting frustrating for us.”

There’s not much about the season that isn’t frustrating, for the players, coaches, or the fans. At least the players and coaches are getting paid. It seems wrong for a MLB team to be this lousy and still charge more than half price for people to see them. How it came to this is such a slap to the loyal fans who have followed this team for so long. But here they are.

I can’t even be happy for all the shitty players that otherwise wouldn’t have gotten a chance to play a big league game.

Now the NFL and College Football have started, there is even less interest in watching this shitty version of the Astros. That’s what happens when you’re shitty. People lose interest. Instead of names like Biggio, Bagwell, Cruz and Ryan, this team has Abad, Rodriguez, Bogey and Schafer. No wonder the home gate is so bad. People want to go to games to escape the beat down of everyday life not see it mirrored on the field. That’s not entertainment unless you’re a masochist.

Talent and name recognition are two of the most important factors in the entertainment business. Think about if the Beatles didn’t end up with John, Paul, George, and Ringo but instead had no talent bums like Doug, Wes, Steve, and Marty, they would have been shitty and nobody would have gone to their concerts or bought their records.

Pirates 6, Astros 2

Contributed by Reuben

I’m sick of watching Tyler Greene try to play SS. He is terrible. I actually feel kind of bad for the guy – you can tell he feels awful when he fucks up, and he just seems very intense, all around. Probably a little too intense, actually. Or too worried about booting another ball.

In any case, it seems clear that the guy is not a major league shortstop. Nor does Brandon Laird, on first impression, appear to be a major league third baseman, although that would put him in a rather large club of 2012 Astros, including pretty much anyone who’s set foot over there this year except for Dominguez and Marwin.

So yeah, awful, wretched defense kinda did Lyles in in this one, not that he didn’t make any mistakes, but then again plenty of pitchers this year have yielded multiple hits to Andrew McCutchen, AKA Superman.

This game bummed me out so much I had to spend an hour+ hunting down Misfits songs on Youtube. I got drinks with my brother earlier tonight, and during the course of conversation I discovered that he didn’t know who Glenn Danzig was (he’s only 25), so I wanted to direct him to some representative Misfits material. Damn they were a great band. Well, not a “great band” in the literal sense, of course, but those songs sure are fun to listen to, dark and fucked-up as the subject matter usually is. Theme For A Jackal, Where Eagles Dare, I Turned Into a Martian… it can quickly make one forget about a cringe-worthy baseball game.

“And Wallace hit an RBI double, whoa-oh-oh…”

Read even more scathing appraisals of the team’s defense in the GameZone thread.