The last time we spoke (I missed you too), the Astros were coming off a week where they has gone 1-5 against the Cardinals and the Brewers. So in that respect, a 2-4 week is an improvement. That may be the only way to take anything good out of the recent on field product. Everything else about the week has been an epic, well, to use the vernacular of the internets…
The problem with promising something to people is they start noticing when you don’t deliver whatever it was you promised. I have enough trouble squeezing out more than two of these a year, so jumping to a couple a month was going to be more difficult than watching Top Chef and not hoping that Padma Lakshmi’s clothes are going to fall off during Restaurant Wars.
I tend to believe in sophomore slumps. When I was a freshman in high school, thousands of grey hairs ago, I was dating one of the better looking girls in my class…she liked to kiss, and with her, I instinctively knew the buttons to push (Blasphemous Rumours, Dr. Pepper on the rocks, maybe a Monte Cristo) so that on a good night, a little hand under the shirt action would be an option. As these things tend to go, the girl faded away, and I moved on to other things, but expectations were raised. Sadly for me, even though second base was easy to obtain with my next girlfriend, stretching it out to three was out of the question, not that I stopped trying. What I thought was aggressive, she began to regard as creepy, which lead to not even being able to double on occasion, and so began the summer of my discontent.
Which brings me to Hunter Pence.
Ed: Okay, great. Dermatitis. Thank you Lance. I’ll make sure that’s covered. Okay, now. Who wrote this “hysterical” one? Anal fissures?
Kaz: That’s a real thing.
Ed: Yeah, but no one here has it.
Kaz: (glances at camera) Someone has it.
So he’s going to retire…
There are going to be a myriad of articles over the remainder of the season trying to capture the impact that Craig Biggio has had on baseball in Houston over the past 20 years. Some will focus on his leadership, some on his on-field prowess, some on his relationship with the fans, or his family, or the evolution of the filth on his batting helmet. Anything imaginable will be fair game, and considering the hacks that cover this team the most, I would expect at least a few less than admirable attempts to sum up his brilliant career in 750 words or less.Read More
It is standard in my personal baseball watching experience to not really care about anything that happens with the Astros before Memorial Day. A time honored tradition, this dates back to the earliest days of organized baseball when grown men named “Babe”, “Rube”, “Dummy” and “Sparkletits” roamed the base paths and would routinely take at least the first several weeks to sweat out the drunk they had been working on since the long hard New England Winter set in.Read More
