So far, the offense is even better than projected, because (a) the power is there, (b) they’re drawing a ton of walks, and (c) they lead the league in steals, too.  The bullpen has been awesome – they are 18-1 when they have a lead at any point in the game.  The rotation is holding together, with those two at the top showing they were no fluke.

The Starting Lineup:
2B – Jose Altuve:  Signed out of Venezuela as an amateur.  Never considered much of a prospect because of his size.  All he did was lead the league in batting average last year, set the team record for hits, and win the Silver Slugger for 2b.  He’s started off this year hitting about .350 and showing a little more home run power (3 already).

3B – Luis Valbuena:  Acquired via trade from the Cubs this offseason.  Average defensively, projected to be about a .260/20 HR guy.  So far only hitting .200, but tied for the team lead with 6 HR.

RF – George Springer:  Former first-round pick by the Astros.  30 HR/30 SB potential.  Also has the potential to strike out 150 times.  Will never hit for big average, but draws walks well has hits the ball hard.  Excellent in RF – he could probably play CF for many teams.  So far only hitting .200, but with enough walks to have his OBP around .320.

DH – Evan Gattis:  Acquired via trade from the Braves this offseason.  Late bloomer – 28(?) years old but only in his third season.  Former catcher turned outfielder, but DH is really his best position – he’s terrible anywhere in the field.  If he stays healthy (which he never did with the Braves), could easily top 30 HR, and maybe reach 40.  Currently tied for the team lead with 6 HR.  Had a terrible start (like 0-22 with 12 K) but has gotten hot since then.

1B – Chris Carter:  Complete feast-or-famine guy.  Had a two-month stretch last year where he was the best hitter in the league.  Around that, has been a human windmill at the plate.  Also a potential 30-HR guy, but if he plays the full season, he could potentially strike out 200 times.   Has looked lost at the plate this year, only hitting .150.

LF – Colby Rasmus:  Signed as a free agent from Toronto on a 1 year deal after a down season last year.  Originally a first-round pick by Luhnow with the Cardinals.  Has been a CF his whole career until this year, clearly an above-average LF.  Moves to CF if Marisnick sits.  Another high-HR, high-K guy in the lineup.

SS – Marwin Gonzalez: Only a placeholder until (a) Jed Lowrie comes off the DL in July, or (b) Carlos Correa gets called up.  Decent utility guy, but not who you want starting.

C – Jason Castro: Former Astros first-round pick.  Big for a catcher.  Hit really well in 2013, not at all in 2014; made big improvements defensively in 2014, now grades out as above-average in pitch framing and throwing out runners.  Needs to start hitting if he is to remain the catcher of the future.

CF – Jake Marisnick:  Biggest surprise of the season so far.  Acquired from the Marlins last year, former first-round pick (notice a trend here?)  Gold Glove-caliber CF.   Expected to be a .250/10 HR type hitter with good speed.  Currently hitting almost .400 with 4 HR, and tied for the AL lead (with Altuve and Springer) with 10 SB.  If he can even hit .300, he’s locked in for the foreseeable future as our CF.

The bench:
This is modern AL baseball – there’s barely anyone on the bench.
C – Hank Conger:  Acquired from the Angels via trade in the offseason (in what was Luhnow’s most head-scratching move so far).  Rated as the best pitch framer in all of baseball.  Barely hit his weight in LA, has done better at the plate so far with a little pop.  Switch-hitter, so if Castro struggles, could push to be the starter.

Infield – Jonathan Villar: Acquired in the Berkman trade with the Yankees Oswalt trade with the Phillies.  Originally a SS, had to become a utility player to have a future with the team.  Capable of highlight-reel plays, but fails to make the routine plays.  Good pinch-runner.

Outfield – Robbie Grossman: Acquired in the Wandy Rodriguez trade from the Pirates.  Capable of playing all three outfield spots.  Has shown flashes of offense, especially in the second half of seasons, but never put it all together.

Starting rotation:
1.   Dallas Keuchel, LHP – never a hyped prospect, had a 4.50+ ERA his first season and a half.  Made a breakthrough last year and posted a 2.82 ERA to become the staff ace.  Has followed that up by winning the AL Pitcher of the Month for April with a 0.80 ERA.  EXTREME ground ball pitcher – might give up only 1-2 fly ball outs per start.  Put a good defense behind him and you’re in great shape.
2.   Colin McHugh, RHP – claimed off waivers from the Mets last year, the front office saw something they didn’t.  Astros started working with him to use his curve more often and change eye level with lots of high fastballs, and it has paid off big.  Now a high-strikeout guy and could easily put up a 3.00 ERA, which is right about where he is so far this year.
3.   Scott Feldman, RHP – signed as a free agent last year to give veteran presence to the rotation.  That’s about all he gives.  Just an innings-eater, won’t go below 4.00 ERA.  Has an interesting contract in that it was front-loaded; will only make $5M next year after making $15M last year.
4.   Roberto Hernandez, RHP – signed as a minor-league free agent this year, won the 5th spot in the rotation in spring training, then solidified his spot with (a) injuries to others and (b) effective work so far – has put up around a 3.80 ERA.
5.   TBD, currently Samuel Deduno – Deduno is supposed to be the long reliever in the pen, but was pressed into starting duty after injuries and ineffectiveness from others.

Bullpen:
Closer – Luke Gregerson, RHP:  Signed as a free agent from San Diego, had never been a closer before.  Pretty typical closer stuff – high velocity, good breaking ball, no third pitch.  Very effective so far.

Setup – Pat Neshek, RHP:  Signed as a free agent from St. Louis.  EXTREME sidearm motion, almost submarine – makes it very hard for right-handed hitters to pick up the ball.  Only allowed something like .160 average to RH last year.  Had a rough first couple appearances but has settled in well.

Setup – Chad Qualls, RHP:  Signed as a free agent last year, in his last year of his contract.  Closed effectively last year, but lost the job to Gregerson.  Strict fastball-slider guy.

Specialist – Tony Sipp, LHP:  Claimed off waivers from San Diego, can’t figure why they let him go.  Hinch will trust him to go a full inning, not just face lefties.

Specialist – Joe Thatcher, LHP:  Minor-league free agent signing, also a former Padre (was with Gregerson and Qualls in SD).  Typically used only against lefties.

Josh Fields, RHP:  Rule 5 pick from Boston last year, 99 MPH stuff.  Got knocked around a ton in the first half of last season then really settled in, and even got moved to closer when Qualls was hurt.  Having him at the back of the pen shows how much the pen has improved.

Will Harris, RHP: Claimed off waivers from Arizona in the offseason, also can’t figure out why they let him go.  Has pitched 12 straight scoreless innings to start the season.  Was originally supposed to go to the minors after Fields came back from injury but has been so good they can’t send him down.

Kevin Chapman, LHP: Just called up from the minors to soak up any long-relief innings until they get the 5th starter straightened out.  Won’t be here long.

On the DL:

SS – Jed Lowrie:  Signed as a free agent this year, was off to a great start but then tore a ligament in his thumb.  Surgery has him out until July.  Subpar SS and could move to 3B before his contract is up.

SP – Brett Oberholtzer: Acquired in the Michael Bourn trade from Atlanta.  Originally slated to be the #4 starter but developed blister problems in spring training.  Still inexperienced and there is no guarantee he can hold down the spot.

SP – Brad Peacock: Out indefinitely with a strained lat.  Was in line to be the #5 starter until he got hurt.

Top prospects:

SS – Carlos Correa:  #1 overall pick in the 2012 draft, now the #1 overall prospect in all of baseball.  Picture somewhere between Cal Ripken and A-Rod (without the roids).  Still only 20 years old, and leads AA in average, OBP, and slugging, with 11 steals thrown in for good measure.  Above average fielder.  Has gone from “should be here some time in 2016” to “should be here by June” so far this year.

SP – Mark Appel:  #1 overall pick in the 2013 draft, but hasn’t developed nearly as well as Correa did.  Absolutely bombed in high-A last year, but had a good fall and has been OK in AA this year.  Will still be a good #2 or #3 starter, but probably a pick they wish they had back.

1b – Jon Singleton:  Was given the chance to win the 1b job last season and absolutely dropped it.  Went 0 for his last 39 or 40 AB in September, had his confidence completely shot.  Went back to AAA to start this year and is hitting great.  Signed to a 6-year/$10M contract so will be given every chance to win back the 1b job.

This article has been edited to properly reflect that Villar was acquired from the Phillies, not the Yankees.

I’ve had some time on my hands (just kidding – I’ve really had no more time than usual) and been studying more deeply some various baseball statistics. And the more I study, the more I become intrigued by win probabilities. So this is (hopefully) the first in a series of articles examining the Astros (and perhaps some of the rest of the league) through the lens of win probability.

Win expectancy

Win expectancy is a fairly simple concept. For any given combination of inning, outs, runners on base, and runs ahead or behind, a team has a statistical likelihood (based upon historical outcomes) of winning the game.

To take it to an extreme example:

Let’s suppose the visitors are down by two runs in the 9th, with two outs, and runners on first and second. From 1957-2013, there have been a total of 1294 games that were in this situation; the visitors won only 70 of them. Therefore, the visitors have only a win expectancy of 0.05%.

But what if the next batter homers? Well, then you have the visitors up by 1 with 2 out and nobody on. There have been 6694 games in that situation, with the visitors winning 5548 – a win expectancy of 82.88%.

Win probability added (WPA)

Given these win expectancies, or win probabilities, it then becomes a simple exercise to determine how much a given play added to, or subtracted from, a team’s win probability. This is referred to as “win probability added”, or WPA.

In the above example, the home run would be a win probability added of (82.88% – 0.05%) = 82.83%. As mentioned, this is an extreme, as the typical play in the course of a game will be less than 1% WPA (positive or negative).

Why WPA?

Others have written that, if forced to look at only one overall statistic, WAR (or some form thereof) is the best reference. I disagree for the purposes of answering the following questions:

1. Which player has contributed the most to the ends of actually winning games?
2. Which plays have been the most meaningful to the ends of actually winning games?

For the second question, I believe that this is a self-evident advantage. Other statistics – whether rate statistics like BA, SLG, OBP, RC/27, or traditional counting statistics – do not differentiate for the end result of the play. Counting singles or strikeouts tells you nothing of what those plays contributed to the game; all context is removed.

For the first question, we should consider several factors about WPA:
1. It is objective. There is no consideration of a theoretical “replacement player” as used by VORP or WAR; win expectancies are generated entirely according to the record of all results since 1957.
2. It properly reflects the zero-sum nature of the game. For any given play, either the offense or the defense just moved closer to a win. Theoretically, the league should have a mean WPA of zero, because the pitcher is credited with the opposite WPA of the hitter for each play.
3. It properly rewards situational play. A strikeout with a runner on third and less than two outs IS different than a strikeout with nobody on; as fans, we all recognize this, so relevant statistics should recognize this as well.

With that preamble, let’s count down the 10 most valuable Astros of the first half, as ranked by WPA:

10 (tie) – Robbie Grossman and Jason Castro, 0.33%

Going into the season, Castro was viewed as a lynchpin of the team, counted on to give middle-of-the-lineup production from the catcher position. Robbie Grossman was going to hopefully be an everyday left fielder. Neither of these have occurred, but the fact that Castro is barely in the upper half of the squad is as disappointing as Grossman having a positive WPA is surprising.

9 – Collin McHugh, 0.34%

We now start to run into a flaw within WPA: because win probability will change more quickly in later innings, relievers tend to have disproportionately higher WPA than starters.
Regardless, we I think we can agree that nobody would trade McHugh straight up for…

7 (tie) – Darrin Downs, 0.44% …
and you certainly wouldn’t hesitate to trade Downs straight up to get…
7 (tie) – George Springer, 0.44%

Could a relief pitcher possibly be as valuable as one of the most exciting rookies in the game? Well, let’s consider a few factors:

1. Springer’s outs frequently occur with runners (cough, ALTUVE, cough) on base, and are therefore a “worse” out under WPA.
2. Downs has been in multiple “high-leverage” situations, as he is one of the only relievers Porter can depend upon.
3. WPA has no idea how far a #GeorgeGorge can travel.

6 – Dexter Fowler, 0.76%

Get well soon, Dex. This team is a whole lot better with you out there.

5 – Tony Sipp, 0.84%

The high-leverage relief pitcher rears its head again. That being said, it sure is nice to see Sipp in a game; good things have usually happened.

4 – Dallas Keuchel, 0.99%

Now we move into the true core of the current Astros squad. Keuchel has come out of seemingly nowhere, and has managed to overshadow the next individual and seem to be the ace of the staff.

3 – Jarred Cosart, 1.18%

With the emergence of Keuchel and McHugh, Cosart has somehow become the forgotten man of the Astros’ rotation. That’s a shame, because as evidenced by his WPA, he’s done a great job of going out every five days and giving the team a fighting chance to win.

2 – Jose Altuve, 1.33%

/does double take
//checks math
///reconsiders entire premise of article

2? 2?!?!?! How can ANY player be more valuable to the Astros than the man who set a franchise record for hits and steals prior to the All Star Game?

1 – Mr. Chad Qualls, 1.39%

A perfect storm of circumstance:

a. Qualls has been highly effective in his appearances, posting a 1.89 ERA with a 1.08 WHIP
b. Qualls has a front office that believes in the leverage model of relief pitching, encouraging their best pitchers to be used when it matters most. What, you thought they were just indecisive about naming a “closer”?
c. Because Qualls is not the “closer”, Porter has been free to use him when it matters most – for example, the decision to use him against Detroit’s 3-4-5 hitters. (The less said about Jerome Williams’ performance in the 9th, the better)

When you get a good reliever pitching in the highest leverage innings for a bad team, WPA will tell you that he’s the most valuable player on that team – because those wins they’ve had, he’s been able to finish the job, or get them much closer to that end.

As discussed initially, each play has its own WPA, and so we can determine the plays that have had the most impact on the games to date. With that said, I present to you the…

PLAYS OF THE (HALF) YEAR

10. July 4: Mike Trout homers off Tony Sipp in the 9TH – (36.4%)
9. May 10: Delmon Young hits a bases-loaded single in a 4-3 game with 2 out in the 9th off Anthony Bass – (38.5%)
8. April 11: Robinson Chrinos breaks the scoreless deadlock with 2 out in the 12th on a single off Brad Peacock – (39.5%)
7. June 27: Jason Castro’s walk-off homer in the 11th off Hardy – 41.9%
6. April 12: Michael Choice homers in the 9th off Chapman to make it the 5-5 tie – (44.1%)
5. May 21: Albert friggin Pujols homers with 2 out in the 6th to make it 2-1, where it would end – (45.8%)
4. April 19: Alberto Callaspo singles off Chad Qualls to tie the game in the bottom of the 9th – (50.2%)
3. May 10: Mighty Altuve singles home Keuchel(!) and Villar in the 9th to take the lead 4-3 (WPA doesn’t care that they lost!) – 61.8%
2. April 23: Kyle Seager hits a 3-run job, down 2, off Josh Fields with 1 out in the 9th – (67.7%)
1. June 28: Jerome Williams loses the game, and his job, on a 2-out, 3-run homer to Kinsler – (70.8%)

Well, that’s depressing. 8 of the 10 biggest swings have gone against the hometown 9.

Can we at least look at the 8 other plays in FAVOR of the good guys?

8. May 8: Altuve doubles in Corporan and Hoes to take a 3-2 lead in the 5th off Smyly – 26.2%
7. May 9: Carter grounds into a DP with runners on the corners in the 9th to cut the lead to 4-3. Yes, a GIDP in a losing effort makes the Astros’ top 10 plays for the first half. – 26.8%
6. May 10 (again!) Marc Krauss doubles off Hunter to put the lead run on second – 27.5% – note: this play and Altuve’s ensuing single combine for a 89.3% swing in that game – and they still lost!
5. July 12: Qualls gets a game-ending double play from Pedroia as his only batter faced – 28.2%
4. May 14: Dominguez delivers an RBI single with 1 out in the 9th, for a 5-4 win – 29.1%
3. July 9: Springer homers with Altuve aboard in the 7th inning with a 6-4 lead – 30.2% note: check out the difference between a two run and four run lead!
2. April 12: Grossman homers in the 4th with 2 on to take a 5-2 lead – 31.2%
1. May 25: A 6th-inning #SpringerDinger off Iwakuma to take a 2-1 lead – 31.4%

May was a nice month, wasn’t it?

If any of you have been lucky enough to attend a sporting event in Oakland, be it a Raiders game, an A’s game, a Warriors game, or a gang fight, you know that it’s not exactly the family friendly, all-American, Budweiser and dot races display you’ve come to expect from sporting events in the USA. Between the drabness of the Coliseum and a suburban fan base more suited to being Giants fans, you understand that your experience at an Oakland sporting event will likely be defined by its rough and tumble quality (hitting the bong, passing the Jim Beam, and getting into fights in the parking lot before the game) and its lack of attendance.

So it was with this mindset that I attended the A’s-Tigers game on a Saturday in mid-April. Now, one other essential aspect of Oakland sporting events I forgot to mention, but one that can be personally verified by thousands, is the expansive security force/ hospitality staff keeping the peace at the Coliseum complex. For example, I was at a Raiders-Chargers game two seasons ago where I actually saw a Coliseum security guard use defensive tactics to disarm some cholo with a knife who was angry at some poor accountant-looking dude who was caught making a negative comment about the cholo’s girlfriend’s boobs (which she’d just flashed to our entire section). I’ve seen several other incidents in this vein, and with every one it’s always struck me how well-trained and well-coordinated the security force/ hospitality staff seems to be. Having some experience working in crisis management myself, I can recognize the training when it comes out, and I can definitively say that it far outstrips your typical sporting event usher making $8/hour plus all the nachos he can eat.

So anyway, back to the story from Saturday. I met up with some of my friends and some of their friends and some people I don’t know at the farthest end of the parking lot (under a gigantic sign for the upcoming movie Thor), and engaged in some if not all of the pregame rituals I described in the first paragraph. We played some whiffle ball and went inside around the second or third inning (I seemed to be the only person interested in actually going to the game and perhaps even aware that a game was going on), and of course found seats about two rows above the home bullpen on the first base side.

Now as I mentioned before, the A’s don’t draw very well. This isn’t news to anybody who’s followed major league baseball since the late 80’s, but it doesn’t fully hit you until you actually attend a game on a Saturday night and take in the full minor league atmosphere. Playing in a venue as large as the Coliseum doesn’t help, as you have to see the always classy 30,000-seat-large tarps covering entire decks of the stadium, but when you can hear the seagulls flapping their wings between pitches it feels a tad unsettling. However, one silver lining of this is the rare experience of the players on the field actually being able to hear your heckling. The beneficiary on this day was Tigers right fielder Ryan Raburn (Raaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyburn), who our section had succeeded (or at least believed had succeeded) in coaxing an error while fielding a routine single with runners on.

So this is time at an A’s game. The mascot is an elephant out of your worst nightmares , the security team outnumbers the audience, and they seem far more invested as well. Not a half-inning went by without someone from security walking up and down the steps, eyeballs darting in all directions, particularly at people’s feet. After a while, I noticed a system by which the eyeball darter would patrol for one period, then a guy on the field would approach the next (with perfect overlap), all the time flashing the classic ‘just lookin’ around’ attempt at looking inconspicuous (an attempt almost comicly undermined by his steely, “I’m so pissed at my old lady for sleeping with my brother” facial expression). But whatever, you gladly accept this heightened security considering the element, and you also reassure yourself with the belief that they’re so concerned with the big stuff (stabbings, meth overdoses, etc.) that they’re not going to bother you unless you do the same (indeed, one of those present in our party swore there’s a tacit allowance of weed-smoking in your seats at the Coliseum, something he didn’t attempt).

Alright, now here’s where the story gets strange, and where all these variables came to a head for me. Around the 6th inning I get up to use the bathroom, and to get something to eat for me and my friend. The weird thing about Coliseum concessions is that they have this sprawling, low-rent, outsourced beer pub thing going on. Aside from the typical generic Aramark hot dogs and orange snot nacho stands, there’s all these stands sponsored by random pseudo micro-brews (the kind owned by mega beverage corporations). For instance, there’s one stand with a “Red Hook” sign above it that’s just as generic as the regular stands but happens to have Red Hook on tap and has one semi-atypical item like “Carnitas sandwich” along with the regular botulism fare. Another has “Guinness” above it, another “Fat Tire,” etc. After a lengthy walk, I end up at one such stand where I get an Italian sausage dog, a hot link, and a beer for my friend. A weird aside about this stand. Instead of being the open mall food court type counter that most sporting event stands are, this one more resembled a check-cashing place. The food service people were behind a wall of reinforced glass, with the only opening being a tiny 1×1 sliding window, the type big enough to receive your food but small enough to ensure that you’d have to shout all your communications and duck your ear up close in order to hear the vendor’s.

So anyway, I’m heading back to my seat with two sausages on a tray in one hand and a cold beer filled to the brim in the other. Foolishly, I kept both dogs in their original paper containers instead of taking them out and bunching them next to each other on the tray, which caused a precarious balance, especially considering the unbalanced weight of the beer. I’m not sure if I bumped into anybody, but at one point I lost my balance and felt one of the hot dogs start to fall off the tray. I fell to my knee in an attempt to keep the balance, but the hot dog fell out of the bun and onto the ground. I quickly picked it up and put it back in the bun, figuring that I would either throw it away or dust it off and eat it myself. Either way, it was my folly so I was going to take the responsibility. However, after walking a few steps away I was approached by a man wearing all black and a headset in his ear.

“Sir, did you drop that hot dog?”

I shook my head and told him it was okay.

“Sir, did you drop that hot dog?”

I told him that I did, but it was no big deal and I tried to keep walking.

“Sir, come over here please.”

I appeal to him again, but I start to feel that things would be worse if I didn’t go. So he pulls me aside. As I go, I try to pick up the paper container to put it in the trash but he again stops me.

“We’ll have somebody get that.”

So I reluctantly go with him, and he looks me in the eye.

“Sir, where did you buy that hot dog?”

“Uhhhh.”

“Was it there?”

He points to the nearest stand, where a lady behind a cash register is signaling me.

“No.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Some place over there I guess.”

I point in the general direction I came from.

“Come with me sir. We’re going to get you a new hot dog.”

So I follow the man for a minute or so and then he stops and tells me to wait. He walks off, leaving me alone, then comes back 2 or 3 minutes later.

“I need to get the head of concessions,” he says, and he beckons me to follow.

So we continue walking and he again tells me to stop. I see him walk over to a lady, maybe 28, wearing an all-black polo shirt, all-black pants, and a headset to match his. The man cautiously approaches her, and waits patiently while she finishes talking to the 4 people at once she’s talking to. Finally, I see him give some spiel that involves pointing to me several times. She nods several times and points as well, before coming over to me.

“Sir, did you lose your hot dog?”

“It’s no big deal!” I say, trying to sound more emphatic, but also not wanting to end up in the coliseum’s sex dungeon.

“We’re going to get you a new hot dog.”

So she has me follow her, and then she goes up to some such stand and talks for a moment with the person behind the counter before going back to me.

“What type of hot dog was it?”

“Hot link.”

Her eyebrows raised at this information.

“I know where you got it,” and she quickly leads me to the one and only Saag’s Meats.

She walks up to the check-cashing window and I hear her tell the cashier to give her a hot link. The cashier says that she can’t give away free food.

“Do you know who I am?” she says, and I swear to the ghost of Al Davis that she said these exact words.

She continues yelling at the cashier before I see the cashier relent. Then the head of concessions walks back to me.

“Did you have onions and peppers on it?”

She goes back, gets my onions and peppers, then gives me my new hot link. While she was doing this, I had been looking around for a nearby garbage can to throw away the old dog. Seeing this, she reached for the dog and I give it to her without hesitation.

“I’ll dispose of that for you.”

I thank her in an exaggerated way, feigning that I am pleasantly surprised by their going the extra mile just to salvage my mistake. She barely acknowledges this, and quickly beelines to the nearest garbage can before marching off to other adventures.

I have rarely in my life been so careful as on the walk back to my seats. Something tells me they would not have been so “forgiving” the second time around.

Chapter 1

December 23, 2009

I am sorry to say it, but as far as excitement over major holidays goes, Christmas isn’t really my thing.

I don’t have any objections to Christmas on religious or cultural grounds; in fact, I don’t really have any objections to Christmas at all. I think the protests by the sensibly secular in this great land of ours against the public celebration of Christmas are largely misguided expenditures of energy and emotion by basically well-meaning people who should put their earnest efforts into something of more practical value, like fighting world hunger or class divisions or economic disparity, or saving the rain forests.

Or, they can go fuck themselves, too. Whichever.

My vague disaffection with the holiday season is not based strictly on anti-commercialism, either. I don’t have a problem with the most of the “commercialization” of Christmas – in the generic sense, at least. In fact, I think the crassness of the season may well inadvertently reinforce the basic decency in most of us, and even cause us to consider, if briefly, moral values we might not think much about otherwise, at Christmas time, or any other time.

We go out shopping this time of year fight mind-numbing gridlock on the roads and the vehicular transgressions of other drivers in scary mall parking lots, and yet most of us seem to retain some basic good cheer; at least partly, I think, because we are reminded this time of year that it truly is better to give than to receive.

The tangled up traffic can promote road rage in some cases, but it also offers multiple opportunities to do something nice for a somebody – letting him or her cut in line; or yielding that parking spot you have been eyeing for five minutes and parking instead a half a block further away; or just holding open a door for some poor bastard loaded down with bags and packages.

The overcrowded stores we wade into are often stressful and irritating; but on the other hand, we cannot stay aloof in a crowded store for long, no matter how hard we might try. One cannot stand in a queue at Best Buy for two-and-a-half hours and not talk to one’s neighbors in line; and if they seem relatively bright and/or mentally stable, one might even get to know them a little bit, no matter who they are or what they look like. The neighborly conversation flows naturally, and even if the catalyst for it is simply to commiserate on the consistently shitty customer service one finds practically everywhere nowadays, you can only talk about that stuff for so long.  Pretty soon you end up talking about other things, the weather, things you have in common, etc. That is the fun part. I sometimes find even a superficial conversation with a stranger in a long, slow-moving line will lower the blood pressure a bit, even make me feel a little better about the world, and maybe myself, too.

If you are like me, you get a little head rush out of doing something nice for or being nice to someone you don’t know, for no good reason. It is a pleasant feeling of well-being that just may have something to do with this ‘Christmas cheer’ one hears about this time of year.

So, I guess I have a positive feeling about Christmas, mostly. It is just that there are some celebrated cultural touchstones regarding the Christmas holidays I feel like I must have missed out on somehow.

I don’t like Christmas music much, for one thing. Some people I know get almost rapturous in late November or early December when they break out the Christmas music for the first time, digging out some Mannheim Steamroller CDs, a Pat Boone cassette or two, and, way in the back of the cabinet there, a scratchy old Harry Belafonte LP that has a great version of “Little Drummer Boy” on it.

Personally, I am indifferent to most traditional yuletide music. There are some non-traditional Christmas songs I kind of like. John Prine’s “Christmas in Prison” comes to mind, or maybe Springsteen and Little Steven and the E-Streeters doing “Merry Christmas, Baby.” At a holiday get-together once, I was asked what my favorite Christmas song was, and I blurted out, “Stranger in a Strange Land”. That brought some vacant stares. “You know, the Leon Russell song.” More incomprehension.

Listen to the lyrics sometime, is all I can say.

**********

I don’t have strong nostalgic feelings for Christmases past as some seem to. I have good memories, but I think part of my problem has to do with growing up with not much extended family around who at least got along well enough to get together for the holidays. The concept of huge Norman Rockwell-ish family get-togethers, all of us sitting around the groaning board eating goose and brandied plums and bread pudding at Christmas-time does not resonate with me.

Probably another impediment to me connecting with the Christmas atmosphere is that I grew up in a sub-tropical climate. I have seen snow at Christmas exactly twice in my life, and I am sure people from snow country would have laughed at it, as it was mostly just a dusting. In fact, it was often warm and humid enough around Christmas time here to wear shorts and a T-shirt. When I was 14 we had a warm front come through off the Gulf of Mexico right before Christmas, 75-80 degrees and humid as hell, and in the course of helping get our house and grounds looking nice for holiday visitors, I actually had to go out and mow the fucking yard. . . because it was three days before Christmas, and the St. Augustine was still growing. I remember pushing this heavy old self-propelled Sears mower that didn’t self-propel around the yard, sweating my ass off, all the while singing, “Mow the (fucking) yard and trim the (goddamn) hedges/Fa la la la la, la la la la”.

So there you have it, the confessions of one Southeast Texas semi Grinch-like individual.

“When the baby looks around him
It’s such a sight to see
He shares a simple secret
With the wise man”

**********

Well, I exaggerate a little. I’m not really a Grinch. In fact, I am kind of looking forward to Christmas this year.

Ed Wade and company seem intent on low-keying their way through the holidays, so far opting to put money down for stocking stuffers, rather than spending on any big ticket items. But there is always the chance they will surprise us. When I was a kid we’d look at the Sears toy catalog, and I’d secretly wish for about 2/3 of what was on every page. Nowadays, I am more realistic. All I want is a quality #2 starter, another solid bat for the lineup, and someone, anyone, above run-of-the-mill to emerge at catcher. That’s not asking for too much, is it?

My kids are ridiculously cheerful this time of year, of course, and act a bit more respectful toward their old man and his requests of them than usual. No doubt they have an idea in mind of not screwing up their potential presents from their mom and I. Not perfectly altruistic on their part, but I’ll take it.

I will get to see some family in the next few days I don’t see as often as I’d like to. And, I’m supposed to be getting a Kindle for my birthday (Christmas Eve), so I am pretty stoked about that. . . So anyway, you know, this Christmas could turn out to be a pretty good one, after all. Maybe that is why I have been walking around the last few days humming that “do you hear what I hear?” song playing in my head.

I recall that after all the hassle and hustle and bustle, for a brief moment on Christmas morning there is usually a sort of lull; a quiet time between opening gifts around the tree in the living room, and moving on to the dining room to commence the chowing down. In that lull, that quiet time, is it possible that some perhaps supernatural knowledge may be bestowed upon one, if one is open enough and enough at peace with oneself and the world to receive it? If so, then maybe all the things having to do with Christmas, the secular and the religious, the ridiculous and the sublime, will be put in order in one’s mind, if just for a brief moment.

It may even be just possible, in the brief quiet, to hear a voice, but faintly; singing of what this season is really all about, and why it all still matters as much as it does.

”And the baby looks around him
And shares his bed of hay
With the burro in the palace of the king”

He’s a stranger in a strange land
Tell me why. . . “

**********

And so it is Christmas. No, the war ain’t over, but I think am going to celebrate a little anyway.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, Feliz Navidad and Happy Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, and Ashura, and Happy New Year, too; to all of Whoopass Nation, and those beyond. . . to those within, and those without. Peace.

It does not matter who you are or what you look like or where you came from or what-all you believe in. You are my brother.

And, oh yeah, Peace on Earth, too. Maybe one day.

_________________________________________________

Then Ike happened. Sitting around alone in the hot, almost dark every night for over a week (the family had evacuated to Rayne, LA), listening to the thrum of a generator creating just enough juice to run a refrigerator, a few lamps, and a few box fans; with enough left over to power up this old Dell Inspiron laptop/boat anchor I had sitting around, well, some force compelled me to sit down each night and go about lashing this thing all together.

So I did. It is a little dark in a few places, convoluted in a few others. If you decide to read it, keep the context and setting of when and where it was written in mind, and maybe it will make a little more sense. Or not.

Anyway, everything in it is factual – all this stuff happened. I might have altered an ancillary detail or two in the interest of flow, but that is it. I did change a few names, not so much to protect the innocent – I don’t know any of those, and certainly no one in this story is anything close to it. No, I changed them on the off chance one of the principals might come across this on the interwebs, and feel compelled to come after me, with the intention of kicking my ass.

So, in a way, I guess I am protecting the innocent. That being myself.

*****

I was across the hall, sitting on a small divan thing in a little alcove, trying to make time with some skinny blond girl I’d just seen do three rails of snowy, white cocaine, right up her nose. That’s when I heard the shotgun go off. BAM! At that time, snorting coke was beyond my experience, so I did not know exactly what effect the drug would have on this girl. But I had heard for one thing it tended to turn your normal, everyday, All-American girl into a sex freak; and an already promiscuous one into a stark, raving nymphomaniac. That is what I was hanging around on the divan for, trying to cash in on this supposed aphrodisiac effect. I’m sure back then I liked to think, at least, that I could get what-all I needed without the girl having to be fucked up and everything. . . but I was 18 years old going on 19, and always looking for new experiences, you know?

The experience of that night would turn out to be way more than I had ever bargained for.

*****

My cousin and I were out riding around one afternoon in his pickup truck, around the rice field roads out west of town, drinking beer and listening to an Astros game. We liked to do that. There was something so peaceful and calming about riding around those empty two-lane roads, some of them barely paved, some of them no more than caliche and dust, riding around on the front end of a buzz and listening to the game. We would do that for hours. Out there, we were just outside the city limits; so we didn’t have to worry about cops, and there was just enough rural-ness about to make it seem like we were really out in the country, even though in most places we were no more than ten to fifteen minutes from town. Still, sometimes we could ride along for miles and never see anything but levees, irrigation canals, rice fields either flooded or fallow, rows of tallow trees along the fence lines, and every so often a collection of farm buildings and a house. I suppose the lack of visible clutter lent to the calming effect, that and the cold beer. But the Astros announcers – Gene Elston and Dewayne Staats on that particular day – lent to the good feeling, as well. We’d been listening to those guys broadcast Astros games on the radio, in one configuration or another, since we were kids.

One of my clear childhood memories is of being eight or nine years old, lying in my bed one night and listening to Elston and Harry Kalas and Loel Passe broadcasting a game against the Dodgers. I was listening on this Philco radio I had, larger than a transistor but still a portable, listening under the covers with it turned down low, because it was past my bedtime. It was late in the game and the Astros were down by a run. They were up to bat, and had made two quick outs, but then had got a man on. And up to the plate came Jimmy Wynn, The Toy Cannon. He was the Astros last, best hope, for that game anyway. It seemed like Elston’s play-by-play during Wynn’s at bat, and the commentary from Kalas, just heightened the tension of the moment. The entire time I lay there with my fingers crossed on both hands, and my toes crossed on both feet, hoping against hope that Wynn would get hold of one and really drive it. I was giving it everything, everything I had, as I am sure Jimmy Wynn was. . . but, alas, on that night it wasn’t to be. Wynn went down on a weak pop up; one could sense the disappointment in Gene Elston’s otherwise even tones. Dangit! The Astros were on their way to another close loss.

Of course, had I been more sensible back then, I’d have realized that the late, dramatic home run was pretty rare, probably a silly thing to wish for. But I wasn’t that sophisticated in those days. Had I been, it might also have occurred to me that baseball was full of disappointments, particularly if one was an Astros fan. But I didn’t realize that yet, either; and in retrospect, I am kind of glad I didn’t. Most of life’s disappointments were still ahead of me, and I was always naïvely hopeful when it came to the Astros. Good for me.

Now here we were, a decade later, all-knowing teenagers driving around drinking beer in a pickup truck. Still listening intently to the game, creating our own mental images of the action to go along with the commentary, as the countryside passed us by. I have often felt that one of the only true connective threads running through my by now pretty long and often turbulent life is my affiliation with and affection for the Astros. It is poignant to me to think that all along, no matter how fucked up I or my life was – or how un-fucked up, for that matter – I always kept up with the Astros, made as many games in person as I could, listened to the broadcasts when I couldn’t. Those days in the rice fields are just one example.

On that particular day, a gloomy Saturday afternoon and drizzling rain where we were, the Astros were taking on the Cubs, I think at Wrigley. The game had been going along for awhile, and it was tied or maybe Houston was behind by a run. We’d been through most of a six-pack and were coming around a ninety degree turn on one of the farm roads in the rain when the back tires skidded across the pavement a little and the truck spun out and ended up nosed in against a barbed-wire fence, facing across some guy’s field. It wasn’t any big deal, we hadn’t been speeding or anything. I think the beer and a preoccupation with the game on the radio had caused my cousin to forget to compensate for the fact the asphalt was wet and slick, and we sort of gently skidded partway off the road.

We sat there and collected ourselves for a moment and kind of laughed; a moment of quiet before my cousin would put the three-speed in reverse (three-on-a-tree, remember?) and back us onto the roadway again. He was about to do just that when we saw it. Out across this field we were facing, almost all the way to the back of it, was a gray wolf, standing there in the straw, looking over to see what the commotion was.

I’d seen red wolves before, out duck hunting; but they were pretty small, and very elusive. Pretty much the most I’d ever seen, in the half light, was the ass end of one as it disappeared over the side of a levee and off into the marsh. But this was a big wolf, and gray, no doubt about it. I don’t know what the fuck it was doing out there – I don’t think big wolves have ever been indigenous this far down (I’d seen signs of them around our place in Tyler County, in the Piney Woods, but never on the coastal plain), and this was pretty close to the city, which wolves generally avoid. Anyway, it didn’t really matter, it was an amazing sight. My cousin and I sat there for several seconds, mesmerized. Then before we knew it, the wolf was gone; and almost immediately we went about trying to confirm with and affirm to each other what had just happened. I don’t know why, but we were almost giddy about it for awhile. Eventually, though, the moment passed, and we got back to our beer, and the game. The Astros rallied late that afternoon, and pulled another one out in the end. Fuck the Cubs.

I never told my cousin, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that wolf, for a long, long time. How he was free, but not really. He was being fenced in, and he was probably not long for this world. But he had it in him to be free, he knew what it felt like. I couldn’t get over that. I kept thinking if I could have just looked into his eyes for a few moments longer, I would have been able to feel what that felt like, too. Ridiculous, but that is what I thought. For many years, on the odd occasion I had to pass by that field, I would stop my vehicle and get out and look. I didn’t really expect to see a wolf again. But I would see one, just as it turned from looking at us, not caring at all, and loped off across a field and then faded into the brush, as the pipes and flares from the Mobil Chemical refinery rose off in the distance, through the gray and misting rain, beyond the rice fields.

Maybe it was the ghost of that wolf I saw. Or maybe I was a ghost of myself, back to see that wolf again. I’ve never been able to work it out, and after awhile I get really confused trying to. But, God. I am haunted by a wolf I barely saw, thirty years ago. I am haunted by a freedom I never had, was never meant to have, never will have. And, I think, I am haunted by the scariest ghost of them all. That being myself.

*****

It’s weird when a gun goes off inside an enclosed room or structure, especially a shotgun. Such a rush of sensual stimuli. First, there is the concussive effect of the gunshot itself. Depending on how close to the shooting one finds oneself, it can be incredibly loud. A pistol shot is more of a sharp CRACK! Whereas a shotgun is more of a THUD! Or WHOMP! I never was very good at onomatopoeia, but the point is the respective sounds are distinctly different. If any kind of gun goes off at a loud, raucous party that has already been going on for hours and is spinning out of control into the night, it tends to get people’s attention. Or actually, that again sort of depends on how close to the shooting one is. I was right across the hall, and everyone in the part of the house I was in went into a brief, absolute silence just after the shot rang out. It was weird, because at that moment I could hear other people in the back of the house still partying on. Either they hadn’t heard the shot at all – it was a pretty big house – or they had but had disregarded it.

Actually, for an initial millisecond or so, I wasn’t really sure what it was I heard. A discharging firearm is not something one expected to hear, in the 1970s anyway, at a decadent teenage party in a tony suburban home in southeast Texas. Dude’s parents out of town for the weekend, call up a bunch of kids, arrange for some beer and tunes, and. . . This uncertainty of mine ended with the screaming that started coming from the bedroom across the hall, and then the clincher – the heavy smell of burnt gunpowder in the air. Holy fucking shit, I thought. What the fuck did those drunk-ass motherfuckers do now?

*****

My friend Rocky and I always kept up with the Astros, for as long we could remember. And we kept up with each other’s keeping up. We used to call each other, just to talk about what the team was doing that week. We went to dozens of games together, and watched dozens more laying around one or the other of our apartments, back in our pre-marriage days. Rocky was one of my best friends, one of a few. But he was the best baseball friend I ever had, by far.

Rocky also played. We played together, from Little League up through high school. Rocky was shorter than me, about 5′ 8″, and a bit stockier, but he was faster, and with more than a little occasional power, too. He usually batted leadoff, one of those uncommon players who threw right-handed but batted from the left side. Our junior year, our high school team went to the state playoffs, and we both made all-district. Quite a coup for us. After high school our organized baseball-playing days ended, but we kept it up by putting together a team and playing open slow-pitch in the city softball leagues for several more years.

Rocky was great, because I could get a wild hair at 2:00 on a weekday afternoon, call him up, and before you knew it, we were on our way over to Houston to watch the Astros play that night. It was as natural to us as running up the street from my apartment to the liquor store between innings to get another pint of cold gin.

One particular afternoon I got the urge to go watch the Astros play, a Friday, they were hosting Pittsburgh in the Astrodome, in one of the more meaningful series in Houston in some time, maybe ever. After years of mostly mediocrity, the team had really gelled that summer, and now it looked like they might have a chance to go all the way to the playoffs, for the first time ever. It was pretty easy to talk Rocky into making the trip, and another friend of ours, Seth, called and said he wanted to go, too. So the three of us headed over that afternoon after work, in my Wagoneer. On the way over, we talked about baseball, but also about women and work and getting fucked up, etc. The usual stuff. I thought I could sense a little extra excitement this trip, though. We were used to going over to catch a game. We weren’t quite as used to the game being truly meaningful this late into the season.

I think I sensed something was up around the time we crossed the bridge over the Ship Channel on 610 South. The traffic ahead seemed awfully heavy for a Friday evening. No way all those people were going to the ‘Dome, was there a concert or something going on at the Astrohall, too? But, it turned out, all those people were going to the Astrodome, or were trying to. We ended up getting stuck in traffic about three exits before Kirby, and then sat for an hour waiting to get off the freeway. We listened to the pre-game show on the radio, and then the top of the first inning. Just about the time we were getting off the exit, it was announced the game was a sellout, no one else could get in to the Astrodome on that night.

I don’t remember any of us being too put off by all this. Personally, I thought it was cool there were so many other people interested in the team now. A sellout at the ‘Dome was exceedingly rare back in those days, and on a Friday night? Get out. We ended up listening to the first part of the game on the radio, on our way to some music clubs over off of Westheimer (didn’t want to waste the trip.) I recall stumbling out of the last club at nearly midnight and suddenly wondering about the outcome of the game. No one where we were knew; I figured I would just check the box scores in the morning paper.

We got back to town about 1:30 a.m. I dropped off Rocky, and Seth, and then decided to go by my girlfriend’s house on my way home. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t still be up, but in fact, she was. The moment I saw her, I knew something wasn’t right. Her eyes were all swollen and red, and she looked like hell. “Everybody has been looking for you, all night,” she said. “Where were you?” I told her about impulsively deciding to go to a game and then not getting in and going clubbing instead. She looked at me and said, “Terry and some of his friends were in an accident tonight.”

Terry was my brother, a year-and-a-half older, a surfer, a lover, an athlete, musician. He was, to this day, the coolest guy I ever knew, in the truest sense of that word; and to be honest about it, I idolized him. Always had. “He’s okay, huh?” I said.

“Well, it was head-on, and the driver of the other car died instantly, but they took the guys in Terry’s car to the hospital. But. . . Terry didn’t make it, baby. I’m so sorry.” And she dissolved back into tears.

I was stunned, and had no idea what to say; or even what to feel, really. My first thoughts were of my parents, of my other brothers, of Terry’s girlfriend. . . but truthfully, after that just about everything I thought about was pretty fucking selfish. It had been such a great night. Yet, all that time I was trying to see the Astros, and carrying on in the clubs, my sweet brother lay dying, and I didn’t even know. I was used to getting knocked down a peg or ten anytime things had been going pretty good for me, but this? Of course, deep down I knew it wasn’t all about me, or really even about me at all. My brother’s own story could fill volumes, and I’d occupy only a very little part of it; but selfish thoughts were some of the first to come to mind, I am ashamed to say. All I knew was, the earth had just shifted on its axis, and there was a hole where my brother used to be. I didn’t have any idea at the time how to even begin to try and fill that hole, and to this day, I still do not.

My brother’s death wasn’t all about me, at all. But it would color everything I did, ever after.

*****

When I finally realized what I had really just heard was a gunshot, I jumped up from the divan and ran across the hall to my friend John’s bedroom, where all the noise was coming from. The door was shut but not locked, and I instinctively flung it open. I really, really wish I hadn’t. What I saw inside that room that night was like the worst scene from the goriest horror movie you ever saw, times ten. It is a vision I would give almost anything to be able to forget; but it was burned onto my retinas or something, and it is as vivid now as it was that night, nearly thirty years ago.

The images in that room were so overpowering, I don’t think my brain could process them normally. They came at me in stop action, frame by frame. The first thing I noticed was all the gun smoke hanging in the air. The first person I saw was this guy named Mike, who was standing there in a daze, spattered with blood and holding a 12-gauge Remington. The next thing I saw was a couple of other guys I didn’t really know, standing there looking down at the floor, off to my right. The next thing I saw was three or four girls. Two of the girls I didn’t know; they were the only one’s in the room not struck dumb at the moment, and were running around in small circles, holding their ears. That is where the screaming was coming from. At some point I realized everyone in that room was at that moment half-deaf from the sound of the shotgun blast; and half-crazy, too, from the effects of it. I saw another girl, one I knew. It was Colette; she was the long-time girlfriend of the guy whose house we were having the party in. His name was John. And that is who I saw next. He was laying on the floor to my right, his head blown almost completely off. He was saturated in his own blood. Behind where he lay, on the wall, was a black-light poster, which had blood and some other stuff on it. Bone, and brain matter, I was told later. There even seemed to be a fine mist of blood in the air, mixed in with the shotgun smoke. But I could have been imagining that.

I learned later what had happened. John’s parents had a lot of valuables in the house, and to them it seemed like a good idea to keep several loaded shotguns around, in the closets and whatnot, in case any intruders tried to get in. But god-fucking-damn, not only was it not a good idea, it was a terrible goddamn idea. They had to know that on weekends when they went out of town, which was pretty often (they were antiques dealers), John was having big parties there, with lots of drunk teenagers wandering around. On that night, while I was across the hall trying to make time with some little coke-head girl on the sofa, a bunch of people were gathered in John’s room, getting high. This guy Mike saw a shotgun leaning against the wall and picked it up and started waving it around, trying to be funny. John was either playing along or trying to prevent a disaster, and grabbed the barrel of the gun and pulled it toward himself, trying to wrestle it from Mike. Somewhere along the way the safety got turned off, and then Mike, trying to wrest the gun back from John, inadvertently pulled the trigger. At the time, the barrel-end of the shotgun was about six inches from John’s face.

It probably only took about 15 seconds for me to take in the scene in John’s bedroom, standing there in the doorway; though it seemed at the time like everything was moving in slow motion. The sensible, mature, good part of me may have been thinking I should try and calm everyone down, get the gun away from Mike, and call the cops and then wait for them to come. I don’t know. I do know every bit of all the rest of me was overcome with the overwhelming urge to just get the fuck away from there, and right now. Now time sped up again. I slammed the bedroom door shut, and took off down the hallway, toward the back of the house. I found my younger brother and my cousin, both of whom had come to the party with me, hanging around a keg in the back yard, and playing on a trampoline. I grabbed each by the arm around the biceps and started pulling them toward a gate in the wooden fence that enclosed the area. Neither had any idea what had happened yet, but panic was starting to filter through the rest of the party already, so it wouldn’t have been long. I pushed them through the gate and onto the driveway, then down to the street and about half a block, to where I had parked. The whole time, I was saying, “Keep moving, keep moving.” Over and over again, they told me later; I don’t remember it. Once I got them into the Jeep and got going, I began to tell them about the horror story going on back there behind us. I was driving down John’s street, away from what was left of him and his house, and I could already hear the police and ambulance sirens, coming from the other way. I quickly turned onto a side street, and then another, and then another, until we had completely lost ourselves in the maze of neighborhoods in that part of town.

*****

It was after my brother was killed that I think I first realized, I mean really realized, just how tenuous everything in life is. All the good things, anyway. Innocence, happiness, love, success. Mine is hardly a unique experience – in fact, I am sure it is almost universal in some form – but after that realization, my final loss of innocence, I never really believed in a “sure thing” again. Or in security. In happy endings, an end to all troubles, sustained success. What I finally really did then, after my brother died, was begin to grow up.

At some point, after one falls from grace, one decides how to live with what one is left with. Or does not decide. Myself, I do not recall ever having made some conscious decision, or having had any epiphany about how I should conduct myself in the aftermath. Rather, I can look back now, thirty years on, and realize that for whatever reason I just kept going, and never truly slipped into cynicism or despair; instead, I began to take each thing as it came, and each person. I began to value laughter and good times, and not take them for granted anymore. I learned how to get by when times were lean, waiting for when the times were good again. Rather than wallowing around thinking about how unfair it all was, I learned that what was most important – above all else – was to just keep moving. When one was always moving one was sometimes alone, even lonely; but better that than sitting around in a slough of despond, just waiting to go under. How I ended going down the path I did, in the manner that I did, I do not really know. Was it an accident? Nature? Nurture? Providence? It was probably some of each.

But I found a way to keep moving, that is the thing. To put it simply, after my brother died, I began to think like a wolf. Not a lamb.

Oh, and here’s one thing: This guy named Robert, one of the closest friends I had, was sitting on my living room floor one night, basically in a drunken stupor, rocking himself back and forth. He kept mumbling something over and over. At first I ignored him; but then it began to get really annoying, so I moved closer to hear what it was he was saying to himself. He was saying, “Absorb the losses. Absorb the losses.” Over and over again, like a mantra. At the time, I asked him if he would please shut the fuck up, I couldn’t hear the stereo. Later on, sober, I asked him about it. He did not remember the incident at all, or where the phrase he was muttering came from, or why he felt specifically compelled to employ it as an incantation that night, shit-faced, on the floor of my apartment. Who knows? We decided the words probably came to him from God, or at least from one of the Muses. Personally, I think he was facing his demons that night, whatever they were, and it was the only thing he could come up with at the time with which to defend himself.

We laughed about that night and his drunken, nonsense phrase for a long time; but to be honest, I kind of adopted it, and I have used it more than a few times myself over the years. I found that whenever I did, it seemed to ease my burden a little. . . if for no other reason than it brought thoughts of my friend back to me. Absorb the losses, yes.

The death of my brother was one of those losses I needed to absorb. It was a tough one, I don’t mind saying. It took me years to even begin to think about how to go about starting to absorb it. I sometimes think I still have not, completely.

And then there was my friend Robert. He was one who liked to wade way out, into the deep waters, confident always in his ability to stay afloat. And one day he just got fucking swept away.

The demons got him in the end, I guess. Absorb the losses.

*****

When I got home from the party, after driving around aimlessly for half an hour and then dropping off my brother and my cousin, the first thing I did was take a long, hot shower. I think in some way I was trying to cleanse myself of what had happened that night. It didn’t work, though. By the time I dried off and pulled on some shorts, it was three-thirty; so I laid down on this ugly orange corduroy sofa I had in my living room, and tried to sleep. Except, no fucking way.

My mind was racing. I felt like I was a fugitive from something, or someone. From something I did, maybe from myself. I had this overwhelming sense of dread. It was palpable, and had heft; like a huge weight on my shoulders and chest. I felt like I’d done something really, really wrong. And I had, of course. I had been doing fucking everything wrong, for a long time. I had somehow become a fucking bad guy, who got fucked up all the time, didn’t contribute anything to anything, hurt people’s feelings, the people he loved. . . and didn’t even give a shit. This fucking shit. . . the fucking guilt, it was eating me up that night; and I knew I wasn’t done running, not yet. I had to go.

It crossed my mind to get in the Jeep and just start driving, find a cheap motel room somewhere, and hole up there and not tell anyone. I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone about what I had seen that night, and I didn’t want to, anyway. I just wanted to be alone, to live with it, to let it fucking batter the fucking shit out of me. Well, most of me wanted that. A tiny part of me wanted to come up for air, I think, wanted me to let myself up for air. I tried to think of someone, someone who could throw me a life line. . . and then I thought of Callie Ann.

Callie was my cousin, on my mom’s side. She was a year older than me, and we had grown up together, gone to the same schools, until my sophomore year, when her family moved to the Pasadena area, south of Houston. Even then, we still kept in close touch. We were pretty tight, for cousins. Callie said that since I had grown up without a sister, I had sought her out as a surrogate sister-figure, sort of like a boy who grows up without a dad often gravitates toward a father figure. I don’t know about all that, but she was kind of like a sister to me. She was the only female I knew – hell, the only person I knew – to whom I could just unload myself, and tell her everything, and never worry about it.

That is a tremendous asset to have, a confidant like that. And that late night/early morning I realized I really needed to be around Callie then. I hadn’t talked to her in awhile – she was one of the loved ones I’d been neglecting – and I waited as long as I could, until maybe 6:30 or so, and then I called her. Woke her up, and gave her some scant details, and she said to just come on. We would talk when I got there.

After high school, Callie had got a job at NASA, that had to do with NASA, working for a NASA contractor, something. I never could get it straight, a whole bunch of fucking acronyms that meant little or nothing to me. But it was a pretty good job, as I understood it. She lived in a nice place, in Webster or Clear Lake or Clear Creek, one of those (I never could keep them straight, either.) That area wasn’t nearly as built up then as it is now, but it was just taking off. Callie’s place was close to NASA Road 1, and had an extra bedroom and a pretty decent view of Nassau Bay (I think it was called), from a second story balcony. When I got there that morning, around nine-thirty or so, my cousin said “Hello,” and then promptly told me that I looked like crap. I said I hadn’t slept, so she set me up in the spare bedroom and left me alone. I threw my bag into a corner and laid down on top of the bed and fell into a fitful sleep.

I woke up in the early afternoon, around two o’clock. I felt much better. Actually, I kind of felt like I was at the beach – I caught the faint aroma of salt air, coming off of Galveston Bay. When I walked into the living room, I could see my cousin sitting in a plastic lawn chair out on the balcony. She had her toes up on the top of the surrounding railing, and a book in her lap she wasn’t reading. She was looking out at some boats in a marina, and at the bay beyond. Had on a pair of blue jean cut-offs and a bikini top. Catching rays, like always. I went to her fridge and got a couple of Miller Lites and walked through the sliding glass door out onto the balcony. Callie asked how I was, and I said I was better and I offered her one of the beers, and a cigarette, which I lit and handed to her when she assented. We had both always smoked the same brand (Kents, in a box.) I sat down, and looked out at the boats, too. For a few moments we were silent. Callie was a terrific listener, and I think she sensed I needed to tell her everything that was on my mind, and that sooner or later I would, on my own. And after a little while, I did.

Like the Virgin Mary, my cousin Callie saved me that day. Literally. I felt like my personality was about to shatter from everything that had been building up for a long time and that had culminated with the horror that was the previous night. I really felt closer to coming undone than I ever had, and I don’t know what would have happened to me if Callie hadn’t sat there for half an hour that day on that balcony in Nassau Bay, and just let me pour myself out to her. But she did, bless her, and after it was done I almost immediately felt vastly better.

After that, we lingered out there, smoking and drinking and talking about everyday stuff – our families, our loves, our jobs. And baseball. Callie was a big Astros fan, a true fan. She had grown up with four brothers and a sports-fanatic dad – and me – so she really had no choice. She knew strategy and the intricacies of the team, day-to-day. I’d been to several games with her over the years, and she always kept score, just like I did. That impressed me tremendously. She mentioned that afternoon on her balcony that the Giants were in town for the weekend, did I want to go? I think if anyone else had asked me that day, I would not have felt up to it. But somehow it sounded like a great idea when my cousin asked. So we made plans to drive to the ‘Dome that night and watch the game.

We arrived at the Astrodome about 6:30 that evening, and bought tickets for the field level boxes along the right field line. We each bought programs, too, and beer. Then we sat down, got comfortable, and started filling out our scorecards.

I loved to watch Callie keep score. Or rather, I loved looking at her scorecard after the game. Everyone who scores baseball games has idiosyncrasies in their styles, but my cousin was something else. I tended to be spare in my scoring, recording all the pertinent information while trying to avoid clutter. On the other hand, Callie’s card would look kind of like a drawing in one of those Richard Scarry books I used to read to my kids. Just a million different things going on, everywhere; you could look at it for an hour. She would fill up the designated block for each batter, then there would be all these long, string-like lines with arrows on both ends leading out to the margins or any other blank spot on the page, where there would be additional info; drawings of players, inanimate objects, even animals; and Callie’s own comments, which usually had to do with something going on in the game, but not always.

I hadn’t been keeping up with the team much over the previous couple of weeks, so as the game began Callie filled me in. The Astros had been stumbling along, and needed to turn things around soon. On this night they were sending out a nondescript starter named something-or-other to take on the Giants veteran lefty Bob Knepper. Not good. Then, BOOM! The Astros scored three in the bottom of the first, all the runs driven in on a bases-loaded triple by my favorite Astro of them all, Bob “Bull” Watson.

The Giants tied it back up in the top of the fourth, and then went ahead in the fifth on a solo HR by their leadoff hitter, Bill “Mad Dog” Madlock. In the bottom of the fifth, after a couple of quick outs, my man Watson came up again. I happened to glance up at the clock on the back wall of the Astrodome at that moment. It read 8:06.

The Astros had been running a promotion for two or three years by then, called “Foamer Nights.” Usually on Fridays, not always. If an Astro hit a home run when the clock was on an even minute, it was free beer for everyone in the stadium through the ninth inning. They even put up these small incandescent orange cubes that would light up on even minutes, when the Foamer promotion was in effect. On that night, I had a funny feeling Watson might deliver for us. He murdered left-handers anyway, and the woebegone Knepper was still out there and hanging on, but barely. He (Watson) had been mashing the ball all night – he already had a triple and a double under his belt, and it was only the fifth inning. As “Bull” dug in the box and looked out at Knepper, I looked up and, sure enough, the orange light was lit.

I told Callie later, taking me to the game that night was one of the better ideas she ever had. Somehow watching something I loved so much, with someone I loved so much, made me finally realize everything else would work itself out, if I would just let it. Oh, I knew I’d have to go back to town in a couple of days, and talk to the cops. I had called my brother that afternoon so everyone would know where I was, and he told me the police were making everyone who had been at the party go down to the station and give a statement, with parents in tow if they were under age. My brother said he didn’t tell them much, they were asking all kinds of shit about who was doing drugs and if there was illicit sex going on and shit that had nothing to do with the shooting. He said most of the kids were stonewalling, but a few had talked. Several told the detectives that I was in the bedroom when the gun went off. So they were looking for me, big time.

I knew I had to go back and face all that, and more, but it didn’t seem so daunting anymore. I looked around at the 15,000 or so other freaks in the stands with us that night, and over at my cousin scribbling away in her scorebook, and out at the field, where Knepper was fidgeting on the mound before stepping up onto the rubber to face Watson. I just felt really good, a thousand percent better than I had that morning. Everything was going to be all right, after all.

I watched Watson stand in and wiggle that huge bat he always used, and saw Knepper rock back and then deliver a slop curve, and then WHAM! Watson pole-axed it to left-center, waaay up and out. A foamer! Almost before The Bull had rounded the bases and the scoreboard had finished going off, the stands were emptied, as everyone went for their free brewskies. I stood there for a moment, reveling in the craziness, the pandemonium. Then I felt a strong tug on my arm. “Come ON!”

It was Callie. She didn’t want us to miss out on any of the free beer. So I followed my cousin up the steps of the field level section to the concourse and the beer stands beyond. I thought about the detective waiting to question me back at home, and about the gunshot and the blood in my friend’s house, and about a lot of other things, too – my parents’ split, my academic probation, my brother. . . and then I let it all go. I was scrambling like hell just trying to keep up with Callie, who was holding my hand, pulling me along, and making a bee line through the crowd for the beer vendor set up against the glass doors, underneath the Section 126 sign. “Come ON!”

The Good

The Hitters

The Legends as a team 4th with 23 triples. They are also 4th in homers (63). They also have been caught stealing 22 times, good for the third lowest total in the league.

Matt Cusick has dropped in many categories but his OBP is still solid at .381 (9th)

Colin Delome’s 6 triples tie him for 3rd most. His slugging % is .513 (8th)

Brian Pellegrini is tied for 7th in HR (13)

Craig Corrado is tied for 6th most stolen bases (27). He has only been caught 3 times as well.

Pitchers

Not too much good going on here, except the the bad isn’t as bad as it was last month.

The Crowd

The Legends fans are still coming to the park. Their average attendance of 5308 is good for 3rd in the league.

The Bad:

The Hitters

The Legends are in the cellar in hits and average, second from the bottom in strike outs, and third worst in runs, and OBP. No individual Legend is in the bottom 10 of any category.

The Pitchers

Lexington’s pitchers share a 4.70 team ERA which is the next to worst in the league. They have surrendered the most hits and runs. However, they have only the 2nd worst amount of earned runs. They also have the worst WHIP in the league.

Leandro Cespedes has allowed 51 runs and 43 earned runs which both tie him for 9th most in the league. His 15 home runs surrendered tie him for second worst in the league.

Carlos Ladeuth’s 9 homers given up tie him for 9th most surrendered.

My dad didn’t like baseball while I was growing up. It being the 80’s and him being a very 80’s type of businessman (Porsche driving, polo wearing, Reagan-loving Houstonian), he was more attuned to the growing white-collar hipness of the NBA than the old-fashioned nuance offered by MLB. Sure, he was an Astro bandwagon jumper in ’86 like everybody else, but overall he had a certain disdain for the sport that I’ve never understood. And the result of this disdain that is most relevant to this story is that I grew up playing basketball. Not just playing basketball, but absorbing everything about it. I was one of those kids who routinely stayed up late to watch random Big West teams complete ESPN’s Big Monday college basketball triple header, who went to the half-full Summit at every opportunity to watch the parade of lackluster complements to Akeem the Dream. I went to Pat Foster’s Cougar basketball camp 4 years in a row, and even went to the one at Rice a couple of times (Tommy Suitts?).

My dad was always the head coach when I played Spring Klein Basketball, and I was his starting point guard. In retrospect, this perhaps wasn’t the best idea from a team standpoint, as I was a horrendous ballhog, and though I was quick and played good defense, I was dubbed “the man who never met a shot he didn’t like.” The signature moment that sticks out to me was when I was maybe in fourth grade, and my Spring-Klein team was in the second or third round of the regional tournament. We were up by probably four or so points with only a minute or two left in the game, and my schoolmate Matt dribbling out the clock as my dad had instructed. I, however, was oblivious to pretty much everything except getting the ball and shooting the ball, and I hovered around Matt, yelling repeatedly to him to pass me the ball. “Matt! Matt! Matt!” Finally, he did pass me the ball, and I immediately dribbled in and took a crazy shot, which the other team rebounded and quickly brought back the other way for a score. We called timeout, and my dad reiterated the clock-killing strategy to me, which I probably said I understood, but in reality I just wanted the ball so I could shoot again. The next posession: “Matt! Matt! Matt!” but Matt wisely did not pass me the ball (I still remember the looks on his face as he was ignoring me), and we won the game. A round or two later, we lost to the ubiquitous bigger team from the unknown neighborhood, but I don’t remember much about that game except that I scored two of our only points of the game: a layup over two guys who seemed to be ten feet tall.

Seventh grade rolled around, the first year of official middle school ball, and I finally got to play basketball ‘for real.’ I was the smallest kid on the middle school team, and considering this, my mom always used to ask the coach why I made the team at all. My coach would always respond with “I wanted someone who could walk and chew gum at the same time.” I never told my mom, and would have been mostly unable to if I wanted, but I knew that it was because of a game that my sixth grade Spring-Klein team played at the middle school gym the previous year. It was on a school night, and I don’t remember anything else about the game except that my P.E. teacher showed up halfway through to clean up some equipment or something. Knowing that this man would be the coach of the seventh grade team, and in general wanting to impress him in the same way that kids generally want to impress familiar grownups, I abruptly turned up my game to Fennis Dembo levels and had what must have been the best ten minutes of basketball of my life. I remember pulling up to the left of the free throw line (my spot on the floor) on two consecutive possessions, and swishing two jumpers in a row. I remember completing the old sneak-up-behind-the-guy-dribbling-and-steal-the-ball-away trick, which I followed with a coast to coast layup. But most of all, I remember looking over after one of those baskets and seeing that my P.E. teacher was watching, seeing the casual expression he held, knowing deep down that I had made an impression. And the next year, after tryouts were over, I was somehow not nervous when I went to check the final posted roster, and I was not surprised when I found that I was on the team.

Now, my seventh grade team turned out to be something very special. Our starting point guard had moved to Northwest Houston just in time for the season, and I will never forget the looks of amazement when he pulled off his first TJ Ford-esque bounce pass during tryouts. Our starting center was the tallest kid in the school, but that rare tallest kid in the school who was actually coordinated and skilled. The rest of the team was filled out mostly with linemen from the football team, but coordinated linemen and, like good football players, willing to take instruction on rebounding and basic offensive moves. The coach was that classic Rick Pitino/Larry Brown late 80’s basketball coach, prowling the outer perimeter of the coaches box throughout the games, willfully borrowing from Nolan Richardson’s 40 minutes of Hell defenses and Dean Smith’s man-to-man-crippling motion offenses. Our season, too, took on an archetypal quality. We started out with a few big wins, then lost the proverbial ‘game we shouldn’t have lost’ on a miracle, last-second half court shot that shouldn’t have even mattered anyway. Then we gained confidence after winning a tournament we didn’t think we’d win, after which we named the point guard the captain of the team (to the chagrin of the tallest kid in the school). A month and a big winning streak later, we won the district title by handily defeating the school with the ubiquitous bigger kids from the unknown neighborhood, and had one helluva pizza party at Mr. Gatti’s on FM 1960 and Champions Forest Drive.

I was the third string point guard on this team, and over the entire season I did not enter a single game that was realistically in contention. In fact, the U.I.L. had even recently added a rule mandating a five minute, running clock, “fifth quarter” to allow scrubs like me a chance to play during district games. “How,” you might be wondering, “did a kid who had dedicated so much of his childhood to basketball, who once put on such an impressive pseudo-tryout for his coach, not get into a single game unless it was a blowout or it didn’t count?” Well, thinking about it then and thinking about it now, the reason to me is clearly that I was afraid. As I said before, I was the smallest kid on the team, and instead of this bringing out some kind of Spud Webb/Mugsy Bogues eye of the tiger, all it brought out was timidity and overcautiousness. I distinctly remember an early-season non-district game where we were beating some team by 9 or 10 points with less than a minute left, and the coach decides to put in the scrubs so we could get some playing time. Well the other team keeps its regulars in, and they maintain their desperate full-court press, and they stole the ball from me three times in a row for three straight layups before time mercifully ran out. I remember going into the locker room after the game and hearing the coach joke to his assistant that “another basket and I would have put the starters back in.”

Or take the example of a late-season practice where the 7th grade team scrimmaged against the 8th grade team, who was experimenting with some new full-court trap that they wanted to use in their big upcoming game against the district’s first place team. Not too surprisingly, the 7th grade team was pretty much dominating the 8th grade team, who was understandably getting frustrated that we were breaking their fancy press so easily, but to us it was a great source of pride in how far we had come as a team. Well, at this practice, the normal second string point guard was on a family vacation, so that left me as the only other point guard on the roster, and when our starter/captain needed a breather, the coach logically put me in the game. Holy shit was I scared! Those eighth graders were way taller and faster on the court than they appeared from the sidelines, and I was amazed that we were able to do anything against the trap they were laying on us (“Fire,” as I still remember it was called). Still, my teammates were not fazed, or at least it did not appear they were, and before I knew it we had broken the trap and were advancing the ball up court. I migrated to the middle of the court like I was supposed to, and my teammates passed the ball to the point guard like they were supposed to, ready for the inevitable, gratifying, three-on-one fast break that was to come. But the ball sailed above my left shoulder and out of bounds, my hands not responding enough to even reach up and grab for the damned ball. The coach shrugged to the starting point guard, who understood that he must forego his rest and replace me. Needless to say, what followed was more press-breaking and more domination of the eighth graders.

This was my last year of organized basketball. The next year, I tried out for the eighth grade team and didn’t make it. I was bothered enough by not making this team that I never tried again. In the years that followed, I played countless pickup games at Cypresswood Park, but I always gravitated toward the games with the smaller players. One time I do remember playing in the full-court, big-player game with some of my friends, getting thoroughly rejected by a young Gabe Muoneke, and never trying to get into that game again. I did become a pretty good high school tennis player though, finishing second one year in district doubles, but even that avocation, I think, did not become what it could have for similar reasons.

I often think back on this time in my life, and to a lesser extent on the usual social rigamaroll that accompanied it, and I wonder what could have been. It is not that I harbor any delusions of being some great athlete or anything, or that I look back and carry some great wistful regret, but rather that I wonder what my realistic potential might have been had I been able to harness my talents when it really mattered. As an adult, it is very easy for me to understand the concept of the intrinsic, unapologetic honor of trying your best and, indeed, I very much live by the idea that doing your best work on your own terms can be more rewarding than any external honor. But as a kid, I had not yet brought into focus enough of the drive, focus, and self-awareness that would have led to athletic success. I understood the game of basketball from an analytical perspective probably better than any of my seventh grade teammates, a truth illustrated by the vividly subtle memories I still carry about the intricacies of that season, and I had no problem with confidence back in the good ol’ Spring Klein days when my dad was the coach. But somehow when the pressure was on, when the kids got bigger and faster and I was on a team where others were as skilled as me, I shriveled and began to embody the little man. The irony is that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve actually grown to capture competitiveness as a strength. Whether it be a barroom game of shuffleboard, gambling on the NFL, a game of tennis, drinking, rock and roll, or any other competition I’m invested in, I seem to automatically take on a certain kind of competitive focus where I naturally begin to see clearer, and intrinsically inflate minor situations into Bjorg-McEnroe epics.

Four years ago I was working as a special education teacher at a residential facility in Austin specializing in kids with severe emotional disturbances. One of the classes I taught was a group of high schoolers, mostly from the inner city of Philadelphia, most of whom were sent to the facility as a condition of probation. Being well-experienced in the system, these kids had a lot of time to play basketball, as it is the main recreation at many such facilities, and nearly every day I would join them in their pickup games during recreation hour. Most of these kids were bigger, stronger, faster, and definitely more intense than I’ve ever been, but I always held my own. One day, I remember participating in a one-on-one game against Spencer, a 17 year-old kid who had a major problem against me because I’d just a week before gotten him in trouble for reporting some such infraction I can’t remember. We start the game, and he’s driving on me and bulling me over and he ends up taking a pretty decent early lead. I battled my way back, and toward the end of recreation hour I had gotten to within 7-8 (playing to 11) with the ball. I pump faked from the top of the key, then drove by him for an easy layup. 8-8. He then gives me space from the top of the key, verbally taunting me to take the shot. I do and swish it. 9-8. Recreation hour ends and the unit staff whistles for the group to line up, but we continue our game as everybody congregates in a loose line, now watching our game. I dribble to the right baseline, give a crossover, step back, and swish another jumper. Game point. I go back to the right baseline, right in front of the congregation, go with the same move and, swish, same result. Game over. The unit staff snickers and makes some joke about that being over fast, and Spencer, shocked, sullen, and embarrassed, lines up with the rest of the inmates.

Twas the night before Christmas in the Farmstro house
Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse.
The caller IDs were turned on with great care
In hopes Ed Wade’s number soon would be there.

The prospects were nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of Minute Maid danced in their heads.
And Ma in her Hooks shirt, I in Valley Cats cap
Had just settled down for a Hot Stove League nap.

When from the new Dell there arose such a clatter
I slid out of my bed to see what was the matter.
The house it was dark , ‘cept the glow of the screen
And the DSL box with its high tech green gleam

I picked up my ‘lanche towel, rubbed the sleep from my eyes
Then there on the screen was a Christmas surprise.
In a suit of brick red, looking sharp as a bill
Was an erudite man who resembled George Will.
His ear held a phone, He read scouting reports
His briefcase held printouts of various sorts.

He spoke to the sky and his charges arrived
They were ready it seemed for a new pennant drive
“On Hunter, On Puma, On J.R., and Miggy
Caballo, and Ausmus, Now, Kazu, and Wiggy
To the top of the standings the Central will fall
Now swing away, swing away, swing away all.”

He then lay a finger aside of his nose,
“I hope I find pitching to augment Roy O’s”

Then the man in the brick red suit put his notes down
Relaxed for a moment, his eyes looked around.
He dialed his phone, and I saw a great sight
The phones of the prospects lit up in the night.

He left each a message after their phone did ring
“Please join me in Florida this upcoming Spring.
From there on to Salem, or Corpus, who knows?
Or Lexington,  Round Rock we’ll see how it goes.
You may not reach Houston ‘til 2010
But I’ll watch your swinging and pitching ‘til then.”

He hung up his phone and my Dell booted down
The prospects still snoring the home’s only sound.
As his face on the monitor faded from sight,
“Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.”

Anyway, I lay there, admiring my tan, with the white, four-blade ceiling fan whirring clockwise at medium speed overhead.  I could smell the sea breeze coming through the open windows on the south side of the room, and hear the waves washing up on the distant beach, faintly.  The daylight was bright and streaming in at an angle from the east.  Without a clock or anything to look at, I guessed it was about 10:30 a.m.

I glanced to my right, and saw my girlfriend, Diane, in light-blue panties and an oversized  Moose Head baseball T-shirt (mine, actually), sleeping in a semi-fetal position on her side and facing toward me, up near the head of the bed.  Poor girl.  I would nearly kill her in the bed at nights sometimes.  I tended to flop around like a fish in my sleep, especially after a lot of drinking; meanwhile, Diane would reactively move around the bed, sort of like a hermit crab, trying to avoid me.  I’d met Diane originally at a friend’s party, and we’d been together for nearly a year.  I wondered sometimes how she put up with me.

She was goddamn beautiful, Diane was.  She was about 5’ 6”, slender but not skinny.  Between blonde and brownish hair, I don’t know what you call it, with (she said) natural streaks in it. Physically, she had most of the right things in pretty much all the right places, and I never could decide which of her many assets I liked the most.  Which was a nice problem to have, mind you.  Even better than that, she was funny, and intelligent, and could and would party her ass off.  She could drink most women (and a lot of men) under the table, without being obnoxious about it.  And, she liked hanging around with me.  Just about a perfect girl.  We partied together, laughed together, made love, talked about Thomas Mann and Kafka and Goethe and Herman Hesse – I’d been bogged down in Dostoevsky for quite awhile by that time, the fuckin’ Karamazov brothers and those guys, and Diane was the one who got me off the Russians and into the Germans, bless her. 

One other thing Diane had going for her was she could wake up in the morning, first thing – her eyes all swollen, hair going everywhere, no makeup – and still look, well, very desirable.  As I lay there that morning, just looking at her for long moments while she slept, all the while suppressing an almost overwhelming urge to get up and go relieve myself, I wondered idly, if I washed my face and brushed my teeth while I was up, could I come back to the bed and maybe wake her up and interest her in a little early morning fun time?  Hmmm…  I should probably say, I was a bit of a self-centered prick back then. And kind of still am, really.  And always sort of will be, I guess. 

But don’t get me started going on about Diane, man; or this thing will never get to where it needs to go.

**********

The 1983 MLB season had begun as one holding reasonable hopes for the serious Houston Astros fan.  People forget, but the first half of the 1980’s was similar in some ways to the late 1900’s-early 2000’s for the Astros.  That team had actually begun its run in 1979.  I’ll never forget it, because I cut the standings out of the newspaper and saved the article for some time – on July 4, 1979, Houston was 52-31, in first place in the NL West, ten-and-a-half games ahead of second place Cincinnati.  Like most Astros fans, by then I felt certain the team, which had never won anything up to that point, was having a special year.  Of course, they immediately went into a tailspin, losing something like 13 of the next 15 games, letting everyone else in the division back into the race.  A race the Reds eventually won, besting Houston by a game-and-a-half at the end.

The team recovered to come within an eyelash of going to the World Series in 1980, and made the playoffs as the “second-half” winner in the fucked up 1981 season, the one split in half by a player’s strike.  The Astros fell back some in 1982, but were reloading for another run by the beginning of ’83.

Astros’ kismet being what it is, those early hopes for 1983 were dashed quickly. The team stumbled out of the gate, losing its first nine games.  They didn’t even get to .500 until the end of June; but from there they played pretty good baseball, finishing the season in third place in the NL West, six games back of Los Angeles.  Coincidentally, starting catcher Alan Ashby went down with an injury around the same time in June that the team finally broke even, and shortly thereafter a minor league backstop named George Bjorkman was called up to help Luis Pujols fill in for Ashby (3rd catcher John Mizerock was sent out when Bjorkman was called up.)  It was a move that probably went unnoticed by a lot of Astros fans at the time, certainly by me.

**********

My best friend Rocky and I had worked it so we were both off the same week in July.  It really wasn’t that hard to do.  He was operating heavy equipment for a large local construction company, and had vacation time coming.  I was going offshore, working as a deck hand and racking pipe on a big-ass semi-submersible rig about 100 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, off of Grand Chenier, LA.  Two weeks on, two weeks off.  Rocky and I had also made arrangements to secure a beach cabin down on Bolivar Peninsula for the week.  Well, our girlfriends made the arrangements, actually – we couldn’t arrange shit, then or now.  But anyway, Rocky and I set it up so we (and our women, and numerous other acquaintances who drifted through the cabin that week) had nine straight days to look forward to, of nothing but drinking, sitting out in the sun, surf fishing, and sleeping late. 

Which we proceeded to do.  Our basic itinerary for the week was to wake up about 11:00 a.m. or so, mill around, ice down beer in the coolers, eat breakfast, get the girls moving, then be down on the beach – in lawn chairs, oiled up, stereo blaring – by noon at least.  I had these 12-foot long fiberglass rods with big open spinning reels we would wind with 20-pound test line.  At the end of the line we tied heavy weights that had little flanges on them, like tiny anchors, and about three feet up from that we’d fix our bait, and about three or four feet up from that, a float.  Then we’d wade out to chest deep water, and cast out as far as we could.  The idea was the weighted anchor would secure the line in the sand on the bottom, the float would keep the line more or less perpendicular to the surface, and meantime the currents and wave action would keep the bait moving around like it was swimming.  We would walk back to the beach, playing out line, and then set the drag and put the rods in these holders I’d made out of heavy rebar with plastic tubing wired to it, which we’d hammered down a couple of feet into the sand.  From there, it was Forward Drink!  If a small shark or hardhead or, hopefully, speckled trout hit one of our lines, the drag would sing out and we could tend to it.  Meantime, we were listening to tunes and slamming down cold ones, while the girls talked about whatever, looked for seashells, went for walks on the beach, etc.

Around 3:30 or 4:00 p.m. we’d be “all in,” and would collect our stuff and go back to the cabin. Next up was a shower, something to eat, and a nice long nap.  By the time we awoke again it would be dark out, so we’d load up and go back down to the beach and party some more, build a fire if there was enough wood laying around, and so on.  And then, sometime much later, we’d go back to the cabin and go to bed.  Good times.

When I woke up that morning at the foot of the bed, I didn’t have that draggy hung over feeling like I did most mornings, because I hadn’t gone back out drinking with the others the night before.  I did have a bump on the top of my head, though.  The previous day, we’d come back to the cabin mid-afternoon after several hours on the beach.  After a tepid shower, I was walking around the living room area in my briefs when one of our other friends who was visiting challenged me to show off some of my karate kicks.  I didn’t really know karate at all, but after enough beer I could be persuaded that I did.  Some of my “friends” liked to take advantage of this from time to time.  So, anyway, after awhile I was well into it and was doing my famous flying Bruce Lee spin and kick move for them, but unfortunately I was doing it through an open doorway, and at the apex of my jump I slammed into the underside of the door frame with the top of my head, and then dropped like a rock to the floor.  For entertainment value, it was great, I guess – everyone present laughed like hell.  But it gave me a serious headache, and a bump on top of my head which was painful to the touch.

I finally got up out of the bed and walked stiffly to the bathroom, where I off-loaded some of the previous day’s beer, and then washed my face and brushed my teeth.  Then I crawled back into bed, and “accidentally” woke up Diane.  She wanted nothing to do with me, though.  She was pissed off at me for kicking her in my sleep the night before.  I tried to explain the kicking probably happened during a recurrence of the dream I had intermittently for years, the one where I was playing center field for the Astros in the ‘Dome, and was trying to run down a long drive in the left center gap while simultaneously keeping an eye out for Bob “Bull” Watson, who had got up steam and was careening in my direction from his spot in left field.  Diane wasn’t placated, though – “Bob Bull who?” – so I eventually gave up on her and went off looking for something to eat.

**********

Luis Pujols was a nice enough guy, solid defensively, but he never could hit worth a shit.  When Alan Ashby went down to injury in late June of 1983, and someone named George Bjorkman was called up from the minors to help out behind the plate, Pujols was chugging along at a .205/.227/.229 clip, actually not too bad for him.  One supposes Astros skipper Bob “Flea” Lillis figured, what the hell?  So he handed the starting job to Bjorkman upon his arrival.  To that point the rookie had zero big league experience.

George Bjorkman went 6’ 2”, 200 lbs. and hit right-handed.  Had kind of a modified flat-top haircut.  He’d come out of southern California to attend Oral Roberts University and helped lead ORU to its only College World Series appearance, in 1978.  That summer, he was drafted in the 4th round by St. Louis.  Bjorkman spent the next several years working his way up through the Cardinals’ system.  At one point, the Giants had acquired him in the Rule 5 draft, but he was ultimately returned to St. Louis.  His breakout year was in 1981 when, at age 25, he led the AAA American Association with 28 home runs.  From the comment and statistical record extant, it appears Bjorkman was adequate defensively. Offensively, he was a low average hitter with some power and above average plate discipline.  His offense would probably be somewhat more appreciated today than it was in his time.

Bjorkman got to Houston on July 10, and then started the next 13 games at catcher for the Astros.  He hit .225/.326/.425 in that stretch, and managed not to mess up too much behind the plate.  Ashby returned the last week of July to reclaim his job.  Over the next 2 ½ weeks, as Ashby worked himself back in to playing shape, Bjorkman started 5 more games and he caught well, but his hitting began to fall off.  He went below the Mendoza line on August 10, and was farmed back out in favor of Mizerock.

Bjorkman was called back up by the Astros on September 1 when the rosters expanded, and got a half dozen more starts behind the plate in the final month of the season, as the Astros – out of the NL West race by then – gave some younger players a look.  He hit .304 in those starts (7-for-23) and raised his batting average by 35 points.
   
Despite the positives at the end of the 1983 season, George Bjorkman never played in the majors again.  Spring Training 1984 saw 22-year-old catcher Mark Bailey burst onto the scene for the Astros.  Bjorkman, at 27, was past prosepect status, was considered no better than Mizerock or Pujols, the established backups, and he was looked on as a journeyman at best.  The Astros sent him to Montreal in late March as the PTBNL in an earlier deal made in February for another 27-year-old journeyman catcher, Tom Wieghaus.  Wieghaus appeared in all of six games for the Astros in 1984, going 0-for-10.
   
Bjorkman moved to the Expos farm system, and was released after 1985.  He was last seen at the major league level as a Spring Training NRI by the Cardinals in 1986.  However, he failed to make the team.

**********

After I bashed my head on the door frame, and had done my duty as an object of derision for all my closest friends, I went into the other room to lay down for awhile.  I was still buzzing from the beach, and my head hurt like hell.  So I took a short nap, and it seemed to revitalize me.  I woke up with the sudden urge to go watch the Astros game that night.  I hadn’t been keeping up with the intricate details of the team that week, needless to say, but I had listened to parts of games here and there over the radio in the midst of us perambulating around the beach.  I knew the Expos were in town for a three-game set, and that Nolan Ryan would be pitching on that night.  So I asked Rocky, as serious an Astros fan as I was, if he was interested.  But The Rock was pretty deep into a terminal trip at the time, in the midst of a serious downward spiral.  For one thing, he’d taken to drinking Jack Daniels on the beach at night, mixed with pink grapefruit juice.  I’d never seen anyone do that before.  He would buy one of those glass half-gallon containers that Tropicana juice used to come in – tall, rectangle-shaped, with a hand grip molded into the side – and he would pour out one-third or more of the juice, and then fill the container back up with Jack Daniels.  Shake it up good, and then drink it straight out of the juice bottle the rest of the night.  Nasty, nasty.

So, anyway, Rocky wasn’t interested in going.  Neither was Diane, really. She humored me in my baseball obsessions, but truth be told, she wasn’t really much of a fan.  It was her only serious flaw, as far as I knew.  Bottom line, no one wanted to go to the game with me; but my resolve was strong, and I decided to go by myself.  I’d made the trip from the beach to the ‘Dome a few times before.  If one was used to driving over from Beaumont, the drive from Bolivar wasn’t bad at all – after the ferry, straight up Broadway through Galveston to the causeway, then up 45 to the South Loop, and then in a few miles, the Astrodome.  Around a quarter to six that evening, I waved goodbye to my friends, kissed Diane, jumped into the Chevelle, and headed up the beach highway, in the direction of Port Bolivar and the ferry landing.

The drive to Houston was uneventful, and the traffic wasn’t too bad.  I had the windows down and the stereo turned up, as usual.  As I passed through Dickinson and League City, I thought of some cousins I had living there.  I was driving up the infamous “I-45 corridor”, the killing ground for one or several serial killers, from the early 1970’s to the present.  32 bodies recovered in all so far, mostly young women.  But I didn’t know from serial killers at the time.  I didn’t know a lot of things.  I was just heading to the game, man, with hardly a care in the world.

**********

I arrived at the ‘Dome about thirty minutes before game time, and walked right up and bought a ticket for a seat in the mezzanine, first base side.  I stopped on the way in to purchase a bucket of popcorn, a large beer (in a waxy Aramark cup), and a game program.  The crowd was larger than the usual mid-week ‘Dome crowd of the time, due to Ryan, no doubt.  My seat ended up being right in front of some people I knew from Beaumont, which was kind of a long shot, I’d guess.  Perhaps, were I the reflective sort back then – and I wasn’t – it would have occurred to me something special might happen that night.  Nothing like that registered, though.  I sat down, situated my beer and popcorn, and began filling out my scorecard.

By 1983, the Expos had been a good team recently under manager Dick Williams, but then Williams had left in 1981, and successors Jim Fanning and former Astro manager Bill Virdon had seen the team fall off from its 1979-1980 heyday.  The 1983 squad, led by Virdon, featured many of the all-time Expo stalwarts – Gary Carter, Andre “Hawk” Dawson, Tim Raines, Steve Rogers – as well as capable baseball vagabonds like Al “Scoop” Oliver and Chris Speier, and some decent starting pitching.  But the ‘Spos were destined to be no better than a .500 team that year.  Against Nolan Ryan that night, they were sending out righthander Charlie Lea, an unspectacular hurler who was having a good year.  He would end up 16-11 with a 3.12 ERA that season.

Filling out the Astros side of the card, I penciled in many familiar names – Puhl, Thon, Garner, Cruz, Doran – but who was this Bjorkman guy?  Never heard of him.  I briefly thought of Glenn Borgmann, a nondescript backup catcher for the Twins through most of the 1970s, but he’d been retired a few years by then.  Bjorkman, hmmm?  I resolved to check him out during the course of the game.

A game which moved along smoothly at first.  Ryan was pitching well – he would go on to win his eighth straight game that night, raising his record to 9-1 – and Lea was getting the job done.  Bjorkman had come up in the bottom of the second (he was hitting eighth), with Bill Doran on second base and two outs, and was intentionally walked by Lea to get to Ryan (who grounded out to end the inning.)  The Expos put up a run in the top of the third; but then the home team exploded for five in the bottom half.  Jose Cruz drove in two with a triple, and in his second plate appearance Bjorkman got credit for a sacrifice.  He bunted Doran to second with Ray Knight on third and one out (the Expos screwed up the play, and Knight was able to score.)

As far as I could tell, Bjorkman was holding his own behind the plate.  He was a big guy, but moved around pretty good back there.  I was impressed two blocks he made, on a couple of the 58-foot curveballs Ryan would sometimes let loose with.  Ryan was calling his own game, obviously; but he and Bjorkman appeared to communicate pretty well.  There weren’t many shakeoffs or meetings between the mound and plate or anything like that.

The Expos got one run back in the top of the fifth on a Tim Wallach home run.  In the bottom half, Phil Garner led off for Houston and reached on an error.    He was balked to second and, two outs later, Bjorkman came up and drilled a single to right, between the first and second baseman, scoring Garner.  The Astros were up, 6-2. 

Montreal got another run in the top of the sixth, this time on a Dawson jack to deep left center.  In the bottom of the seventh, with two out and no one on, Knight doubled, and Doran followed with an infield single.  Runners on first and third, two outs, and Bjorkman, after working the count to his favor, drilled a shot high and deep to straightaway left.  A three-run ding-dong. The Astros went up 9-3, and the game was officially out of reach.  Ryan sailed through the eighth.  Montreal scratched out a run against reliever Bill Dawley in the ninth, but the game was well in hand by then, thanks largely to rookie catcher George Bjorkman, playing in just his third major league game. 

Bjorkman’s line for the game?  Two official at bats, one run, two hits, five RBIs.  (1.000/1.000/2.500).  Not bad.  Apparently he was a modest guy, too.  When asked afterward if the three run blast was his biggest baseball thrill, Bjorkman said no, catching Nolan Ryan was.

It was the best game of Bjorkman’s major league career, by far.  And by chance, I had been there to see it.  Neither one of us realized any of this at the time, I am sure. 

**********

There weren’t many other cars on the ferry with me on my ride back across from Galveston to Bolivar that night.  And even less people out on the deck, milling around.  Most drivers, after they have made that ferry trip a few dozen times, get jaded and just sit in the car for the duration of the crossing.  Not me.  I’ve made that trip hundreds of times, but I always get out, and either lean against the steel gate on the bow, watching the waves, or go up onto the walkway around the second level.  Not so much to see anything, but to feel something.  Or, to see and feel something – the wind blowing through my hair, the unique and indescribable smell of the ocean, the heavy night air, the lights of Galveston receding into the distance.  I don’t want to go into a swoon about it or anything, but there is no other feeling like that – the sensation of being out, at night, traveling across the water.  Not anywhere I have found, anyway.  I sure as hell wouldn’t miss it to sit in a hot car for twenty minutes.

On that night, from my spot on the little walkway down in front of the ferry’s wheelhouse, I could look out across the blackness of Galveston Bay and see a few lights on the point at Port Bolivar, and if I squinted hard enough, or perhaps imagined, I could just make out the outline of the Bolivar lighthouse, a black hulk in the night now, which shone light no more.  Looking toward the Gulf, I could see the lights stringing out along the horizon from all the merchant ships, waiting at anchor for their turn to travel up the Ship Channel.  A little further out, I could see the blinking lights of a platform rig, almost too faint to be discerned, almost over the curve of the horizon itself.  Looking up (it was a clear night), I could see a billion million stars, arranged at various unimaginable distances away from me.  Would it have been too much for me to think, just for a brief moment then, that those stars were put up there, in just such an arrangement, just for me?  The sheer vastness of it all. . . one might think one would be overwhelmed by it.  But seeing the firmament at night like that, and all that was laid out underneath it, surrounded by water, never made me feel small or insignificant.  Rather, it always made me feel really big.  Alive. Important, vital, somebody.  Like a ten-ton manta ray, as Hunter Thompson once said. My chest would fill up with pride.  Or was it with love?  A feeling of contentment?  Or perhaps just an extreme sense of well-being, however temporary; and a sense of thankfulness, too, to God, or Allah or Buddha or Albert Einstein, whoever, for laying it all out there for me on this night, just so.

I don’t know what George Bjorkman was feeling that night.  I imagine he felt pretty damn good.  Maybe he, the major league baseball player, felt something like I felt; me, a relative nobody standing in the dark on a boat, having deluded himself into thinking he was as bad-ass as King Kong or somebody.  Maybe, like me, George Bjorkman, in all his fullness of himself at that moment, had a vague sense, too, that the bright shining moment wouldn’t last forever, and resolved to enjoy it while he could.  I sure hope so, but I don’t know.  Just a brief moment in the sun is all most of us can ask for.  To have it, and to also have a sense of how fleeting that moment will almost surely be, is more than almost any of us could ask for, me and George Bjorkman included.

As I got back into my car that night, and the ferry gate lowered down to meet the dock at the land’s edge, I felt like a million dollars, or whatever today’s equivalent of that would be.  I was happy.  I had just been exhilarated by the ferry ride.  I was coming from watching my team pummel the opposition.  And I was on my way to a place I knew had a lot of ice cold beer in it, a lot of good tunes in it, a lot of good times in it.  A place where there were people waiting up late for me, including a girl who was so fucking beautiful that, even after a year of seeing her at her worst and her best, she still took my breath away, every single time.

I didn’t know then, even if I had a vague sense of it, how brief that time would be, the time of feeling carefree, and happy, and content.  I didn’t know any more that night than George Bjorkman knew, his major league career only having about a month-and-a-half left in it.  I am pretty sure Bjorkman, in the glow of his achievement, allowed himself to imagine a full time MLB catching job, and several seasons of productivity before a well-earned retirement.  I am sure, in my exhilaration, I allowed myself to imagine a long future of partying, of loving Diane, and of doing whatever the hell I wanted, whenever I wanted.  Pretty much, anyway.  To paraphrase something Joe Ely once sang, I thought the road went on forever, and the party would never end.

I am sorry that it did end, but I am thankful for the moments that I had.  And I’ll bet if you asked George Bjorkman today, he wouldn’t give back the two-plus months with the Astros, or the otherwise run-of-the-mill, mid-week game between two non-contenders on a humid July night in Houston in 1983.  Not for a million bucks, he wouldn’t.

But none of that mattered to me at that moment.  As I drove off the ferry, clattering across the steel gate that, only moments before, I had leaned against to watch the ocean go by, I impulsively decided to put the top down on the Chevelle.  So I did, and then I shoved Lou Reed’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Animal into the tape deck  Reed’s live version of the Velvet Underground standard “Rock And Roll” was blaring forth by the time I blasted through Port Bolivar, on my way back to Crystal Beach, down the beach highway.  Or, as Joni Mitchell put it once, down the free, free way.

“Hey baby, rock and roll
Despite all the amputations
You can dance to a rock and roll station. . . all night”

If you’re interested in submitting a guest column for From Left Field, please contact Andyzipp via Private Message and we’ll get you set up.

This season promises to be unlike any season we’ve ever seen before. Mostly because that’s how linear time works. Spring Training is winding down and the rotations are almost set. Except for the last spot. And the spot before that.

As everyone puts together their fantasy team (for some reason) and gets out the ol’ Rainbow Gut from the mothballs, I notice people paying good money to buy predictions at other websites on how this season will play out. Well, fuck that! As part of my good will toward man (and child), I will offer these 101% guarantees for the 2007 season, absolutely free to you, the listener.

• Roger Clemens will return to the RedSox on May 25, demand a trade to the Yankees on June 1, retire for good on June 26th and return to the Astros at the break.
• Jason Lane will make the All-Star team. In Japan.
• Morgan Ensberg will take his magic Odd Year Balm (wink wink) and fall off his fucking treadmill while washing his truck.
• Brad Lidge will blow at least one game this year. Write that down.
• The Astros will come in 4th place, at best. Unless the Cards, Brewers, and Reds are worse than the Astros, in which case they will come in 3rd place.
• Luke Scott will end up catching 45 games this season and you’ll be thankful he did.
• Jason Jennings will emerge as the true ace of this staff. Of course it’s a fucking joke, people, HE’S A NUMBER THREE AT BEST.
• Alyson Footer will hold a contest in the TZ to win a date with her. It’s all just a cruel joke with no real winner, but what some of you people will do to win a 3-hour conversation with a beat writer is truly amazing.
• Jose de Jesus Ortiz will join the TZ under the nickname “pravata.” Shit, was I not supposed to say that?
• Richard Justice will join the TZ under the nickname “pravata.” Then “MusicMan.” Then “pravata.”
• The Astros will sweep the Pirates in the opening series and spirits will be at an all time high around here. Popes will rejoice, commoners will rant, and trolls will stalk JimR. Then the series with the Co-ards will fix everything.
• Wednesday, June 27th, Milwaukee. Turning point of the season. Walk-off grand slam. Epic extra innings battle. Blood. Everywhere.
• The days the Astros will be in first place – April 2-4, 19, 23-26, May 18-23.
• Carlos Lee will drive in 108 runs and hit 36 HRs. Give or take 40 RBIs and 20 HRs.
• MLB will go back to the old baseball caps when everyone except Kobe complains about the way they feel.
• Your division champs: Rockies, Brewers, Fish. A’s, Twins, Blue Jays.
• Big trade at the break-Curt Schilling to the Astros for Jason Hirsh, Willy T, and…..oh nevermind.
• Dontrelle Willis for Roy Oswalt! Read all about it! Somehow, Orioles involved!
• You will stop making Real Father of Anna Nicole’s Baby jokes. Eventually.
• The Yankees will be grossly overrated, but will make the playoffs as the Wild Card. When they get swept out in the DS, all major media outlets will wonder how a rotation consisting of old men and Wang didn’t outscore the opponent.
• Jim Edmonds will spend the entire year on the DL, limiting him to .452/.600/1.412 at Minute Maid.
• Brandon Backe (remember him? Entertainment Weekly has him as our #2) will come back much earlier than planned. One week before we’re eliminated.
• Barry Zito will have a worse year than Roy Oswalt. Suddenly, it seems this Purpura fellow has learned a thing or two from Hun. I miss Hun.
• Gerry Hunsicker returns to Houston! To sell his house!
• The Silver Boot Series! This Time, It Counts As 6 Games In The Standings!
• Mark Loretta will start a majority of the games this year at 2B. Biggio will be moved to DH once he hits #3000.
• Because Houston is not in New York State, hit number 3,000 will be a 3 second mini-highlight on SportsCenter. And the crowd goes wild.
• Domingo! Domingo! Domingo! Lance! Twinkies! Blood! We already made this joke!
• Cubs fans will want Dusty Baker fired by June 1st. You’re lucky they figured out Dusty was, at some point, their manager.
• Fuck me in the eye. I just remembered the Cards are defending World Champs. Ready yourselves for a year of the Best Poor Sports in Baseball.
• Why doesn’t anyone bring up the amazing parity in MLB? You didn’t even realize that the last 6 World Series were won by, in order, NL West, AL West, NL East, AL East, AL Central, NL Central. Find me another sport like that.
• The debate will rage on into the night: are we a drinking site with a baseball obsession, a baseball site with a drinking obsession, or are we all just a very well crafted figment of Billy Spiers imagination?
• Greg Lucas will do all games this year FULLY CLOTHED.
• Year Two of “Is that Dolan or Raymond? HONEY, is this Dolan or Raymond???”
• Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit’s THRU THE…..WHOOOOOOOA! He! Put a blue! SAFE! ASTROS WIN! ASTROS WIN! ASTROS WIN!? It never gets old. Neither does Milo. And why is that?
• The Chronicle will report the Astros’ toenail officially ingrown on July 13. We’ll show THEM.
• Even with the Astros out of the playoffs, you won’t be any more productive at work this October than you were last October.
• Hunter Pence will fail to make a single out while at bat this year. They will name him King of Round Rock, give him the Wendi Selig’s hand in marriage, name a disease after him, and still not call him up until September.
• Viacom will sue Limey for poisoning the world with YouTube.
• Sheriff Blaylock will finally lose his post to Sheriff Lobo. You thought I’d make a joke about Wolf brand chili, didn’t you? I ain’t touching that with a rented dick.
• Speaking of rented dick, does anyone else think Manny would make an excellent 3B?
• You’ll question your true fanhood when you find it that when it’s translated from Spanish, it actually means “Fresh Vagina.”
• The NLCS is on TBS this year. It’s not so much a prediction as I can’t say it enough. I don’t even care who calls the games. No Buck, No McCarver for the NLCS. If you feel like hitting your kids, just bookmark this, come back, and read that last line until you’re completely relaxed.
• Minute Maid, even without Clemens or Pettitte, will produce below average runs scored. Every single sportswriter will continue to refer to it as a bandbox. Which is true, I mean, it’s only been a neutral-to-pitcher’s park for like 5 years.
• Jeff Bagwell will…Jeff Bagwell will…..Jeff..Bagwell….will..WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! I. Can’t. Do. It. WAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
• Your very real, biggest trade deadline pickup by the Astros: Mo Alou.
• $4m per month is roughly $8,000 per pitch. To play baseball. For a living. You’d do roids too. I’m KIDDING. I JOKE. It’s what I DO. Sheesh.
• The fansite war to end all fansites finally occurs, paid for by the Houston Chronicle. You, the careless reader, become real sports news for some reason and hundreds of overpaid semi-professional Astros fans with thin skin and too much time at work will whine. Egos will be bruised. Nasty things will be said that can’t be taken back. Someone will point out that AstrosDaily doesn’t even fucking HAVE a forum. We will be educated. Oh yes. We will be educated.
• Morgana returns!
• Astros finish 86-76, in 2nd place. You will be blamed and everyone will have a better idea of how to run this team than Purpura, who will inexplicably get to keep his job; mostly based on his 1) real world experience running a ballclub and 2) his ability to keep from making stupid trades like Roy Oswalt for Lastings Milledge. You’ll watch all 162 games and you’ll complain. But in the end, it will be the best 486 hours you spend all year.

My GOD, I miss baseball. Let’s get this show on the road.