Submitted by Joey Trum

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?).Read More

Submitted by Farmstro
December 2007

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.Read More

July 14, 1983.  When I woke up, I was laying crossways at the foot-end of a double bed in the beach cabin, on my back, uncovered.  I had on a pair of Lamar U. gym shorts, once bright red but now faded almost pink – magenta, maybe – with the white piping along the sides and bottoms of the legs fraying and coming loose.  The skin along my chest and belly and on the tops of my arms and legs had turned medium to dark brown.  I had been out in the sun a lot that summer.  After burning off a few layers of skin early on in the spring, I no longer got sunburned.  Rather, each subsequent exposure just turned me darker.  And, melanoma be damned, I didn’t use sun block; at times I slathered on a coconut-oil based Coppertone product called Savage Tan, something like that, which not only did not block UV rays, but I am fairly certain was formulated to actively attract them.Read More

by Alkie

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.Read More

Now that the Astros are done for 2003, things have quieted down here at OWA.  Of course, we haven?t quite approached The Void yet, so all the offseason banter has yet to get fired up.  Hopefully, however, the post-choke whining is over with, and if it?s not, then we?ll try to make sure that you don?t have to read it.Read More