By Breedlove
Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com on February 22, 2001.

“Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient.” — Sam Walton

Easily the biggest complaint of Astros fans is that Drayton McLane adheres too strongly to the business style of his old partner, the late Sam Walton. They say he runs the Astros too much like a business, with the notion–seemingly outdated in today’s dot-com world–of turning a profit, not enough like a hobby that a “good” owner would sink his millions into. But Astros fans have enjoyed a special benefit from the Walton/McLane business philosophy, and it’s a big part of what makes and keeps them fans.Read More

By Breedlove
Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com on February 21, 2001.

“Already, (the Tigers) feel more like a family than Houston ever did. I don’t respect that organization at all. It’s a joke, from top to bottom.”

He switch-hit. He hit .300. He hit with power. He had more offensive ability than any catcher in Astros history. Yet with these sickening words, Mitch Meluskey made clear to anyone with doubt remaining exactly why the Houston Astros dealt him to Detroit. He has less class than a substitute teacher and about as much professionalism as Mary Kay Letourneau. There is no player more fit to wear the tools of ignorance.Read More

By Breedlove
Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com on February 15, 2001.

The Astros pitchers and catchers report to spring training today and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. Apologies, folks, but we remain in the throes of Quiet Time. The big move since last we met was exercising the option on Brad Ausmus. While the sense of direction indicated by that move is pleasing, this space goes to a treatment on the dreaded OPS.

What The…?Read More

By Breedlove
Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com on January 31, 2001.

Super Bowl XXXV is now in the books. The Baltimore Ravens are the National Football League champions by virtue of defeating soundly the New York Army Ants, and they were so scary-good they should have gotten two trophies. It will never be said in baseball that one team beat the other simply because they were bigger, stronger, faster and more feral. Baseball remains a pursuit that treasures skill as much as talent and smarts as much as brawn. There is no such equivocation in football, where a Big Apple team can have the body language of the undersized child pretending not to hear his tormentor’s comments from the back of the bus.Read More

By Breedlove
Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com on January 18, 2001.

In a well-timed announcement, the Houston Astros sent folks home for a January weekend with the promise that their biggest star on the rise, Venezuelan-born Richard Hidalgo, was inked with the team for at least four years. In his first season out of the shadows of Carl Everett and Derek Bell, Hidalgo responded by posting mouth-watering statistics and avoiding controversy — he was given the ball and he ran with it.Read More