Maybe Your Baby Done Made Some Other Plans

Brewers (60-55) at Astros (51-63)
Minute Maid Park, 501 Crawford St., Houston, TX  77002
a/k/a “The Juice Box”

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Friday, August 10 (7:05 p.m. CDT) – FSN

Saturday, August 11 (6:05 p.m. CDT) – FSN

Sunday, August 12 (1:05 p.m. CDT) – FSN

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The other day by chance I caught a snippet of a conversation on 790 AM between Milo Hamilton and the two giggling idiots who were hosting the call-in show he was on.  Those two host guys really sucked, whoever they were (could these be the infamous Mongrels Of Midday I have heard mentioned in the TZ?)  They apparently were mostly good at snickering like schoolgirls at some private joke.  They made Milo seem measured and erudite by comparison and, you know, that is saying something.

Then later, on the same station (I think) was Charlie Palillo, who apparently styles himself as Houston sports talk radio’s Cato the Elder, ending every droning utterance and oration he makes with the statement, “Ceterum censeo Purpuræ esse delendam.”  “And therefore, I conclude that Purpura must be destroyed.”  Whatever.

I don’t usually have time to keep up with Houston sports talk radio, praise Allah.  I live ninety miles away and in a different world most of the time.  Not that one need spend a lot of time and effort keeping up.  It is sort of like a soap opera.  You can turn it off and then back on again nine or ten months later, and catch up on everything in about five minutes.

I generally make it a habit to not listen to AM radio anyway, especially on the road.  But I broke the bracket for the XM and won’t be able to repair it until this weekend, and the FM I’ve heard isn’t sufficient for my needs.  But I’ll be goddamned if I am going to spend the next few days listening to mewling retards.  Guess it is time to get out the old Herbie Mann/Memphis Underground LPs, and burn me a CD or two for the road.  
 
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Projected Matchups from Astros.com

Friday
Dave Bush (9-8, 5.03) v. Tim Purpura’s Big-Ass Mistake (2-7, 6.11)

Dave Bush is making a run at a mid-1970s style pitching record this season.  Think Gaylord Perry, c. 1973 (19-19, 3.38); or from the same season, Stan Bahnsen (18-21, 3.57).  Except, Bush isn’t as good a pitcher as those guys were.  Not nearly.  On the other hand, in college (Wake Forest) dude majored in both psychology and sociology, which has to mean something. . . probably that he’s one of those annoying fucks who has an opinion about everything and ruins an otherwise perfectly good conversation.  At any rate, Bush has been a wholly unremarkable starting pitcher throughout his breif career, one of those guys you might wonder about from time to time, in the sense of wondering how he has an MLB job.  In short, he is an innings-eater, pitching’s version of a curio cabinet, or some other accent piece, whose only purpose is to take up space and yet requires dusting off from time to time. . . Tim Purpura’s Big-Ass Mistake’s arm should be fresh, if nothing else.  He spent a chunk of time earlier in the season convalescing on the DL;  since then he’s been practicing an economic pitching style, of a sort.  In his last six starts, TP’sB-AM has logged a total of 24.1 innings pitched – that’s 4 per start for you double Liberal Arts majors out there.

Saturday
Jeff Suppan (8-9, 4.84) v. Wandering Wandy Rodriguez (7-10, 4.50)

Jeff Suppan was supposed to be the anchor of the Brewers staff, along with Ben Sheets.  Instead, he has been very erratic, including after Sheets predictably went down to injury and his team was really depending on him.  Suppan has pitched decently his last two starts, and so is due to be knocked out of the box early on . . . Wandy Rodriguez, the prodigal son, is kind of like the kid you went to high school with who was a real  popular guy, a big man on campus, probably a jock of some sort, who had bragged about banging the homecoming queen, and a few of her attendants, too.  Then he graduated, and went off to State U. and greater glory.  The next time you saw him he was back home, ashamed after having spent most of his first semester of college drunk and playing cards in his dorm instead of attending classes, leading to academic suspension.  Now he was back, attending the same crummy community college you were, but looking to rebuild his GPA, and his social stature, on the home turf.  Simply put, Wandy (6-2 1.69 at home, 1-8, 8.16 away) should never leave home.  Period.

Sunday
Claudio Vargas (9-4, 4.97) v. Woody Williams (6-12, 5.21)

Claudio Vargas has been a good luck charm for Milwaukee this season.  While not pitching well at all, the overweight right-hander has put together a 9-4 record (to go with a sporty 4.97 ERA, no less), and the Brewers have won 15 of his 19 starts.  Still, he is a crappy pitcher, and his luck has to run out sometime.  Just like the Brewers . . . Woody Williams is like the guy who lived across the landing from me, in my very first apartment when I was 18 or 19.  Those apartments were 1950’s era (this was in the early 1980’s), poorly insulated, with antique appliances and few modern amenities.  But they were cheap, and centrally located.  For these reasons the complex, which covered three or four city blocks, was mostly populated by young students and/or drug dealers/pimps, and older pensioners on fixed incomes.  And people “in transition”.  Like my neighbor, who was in his 40’s and going through the business end of a fairly acrimonious divorce at the time.  I’ll call hime Jack.  I got to know him a little – we used to share a brew or three out on the landing when the weather wasn’t too humid (the apartments had small window units as the sole source of air conditioning, and one was always looking for a breeze) – and while we never got around to what caused his divorce, after watching him put away the beer pretty good while talking about all the skags he had conquested in his time (his favorite subject when boozing), I guessed he had at least something to do with his marriage falling apart.  Oh, he wasn’t really a bad guy, I guess, just kind of pathetic.  He was going through his “middle age crazy” period, and not faring too well.  Later on, I saw him one night, while I was out clubbing.  The place we were in was just off campus and catered to college-age kids, but here was Jack, his thinning hair blow-dried to within an inch of its life, polyester shirt unbuttoned an extra button or two to show off his chest, which had better hair than his head did, nursing a bourbon and coke with one of those swizzle straws in it, trying to get some girl half his age to give him a second thought.  It was sad, man.  I didn’t want to see him like that (or him to know that I had), and I avoided him that night.  A night that has stuck with me, I suppose.  There comes a point when one should realize the game is up, and it is time to move on.  Some get it sooner than others; only the luckiest among us gets it right on time.  There is no shame in staying around the party a little too long, many have been guilty of that.  But once it becomes painfully apparent one’s time has passed one by. . . I only ever saw Jack around town a few times after that.  He had moved out of that dump some months before I did, and we had gone our own ways.  One of the last times I saw him, in a grocery store, he introduced me to the middle-aged bleach blonde in too-tight jeans and flip-flops with fake jewels on them who was hanging off his arm.  She appeared to have been around the block a few times, to me anyway.  Somewhere between thirty and fifty, it was hard to tell. . . Jack said they had got married, or were going to, were in love, I can’t remember.  But, anyway, after his foray on the wild side, she was what he had ended up with.  I used to wonder if it ever occurred to him what all he had given up, to end up with the woman he ended up with. . . but never mind all that, this is about Woody Williams.  After a horrific start this season, Woody Williams has salvaged a bit of his pride and has even pitched well at times.  But this erratic up-and-down and then ending up 7-13 or something with a 5 ERA is about as good as it’s going to get from here on out, Woody.  You really want to end up like that?  It may be time for your boot heels to be wanderin’, if you know what I mean.  Reminds me of something the writer Michael Hall once said, discussing Cormac McCarthy and his Border Trilogy characters:  “Like the survivor in Cities of the Plain, we’ve all got defects of the heart that limit our vision and dim our desires, but we don’t want to die like him—old and alone and among strangers. Too bad, Cormac McCarthy might say. You should have died for love when you had the chance, your guts weeping out of your belly onto the streets of Sodom.”  Got that, Woody?  Hmmm?

Etcetera

Notable giveaways

Sunday is Craig Biggio Day.  The first 40,000 fans through the gates (the first 40,000?) get a Biggio 3000 Hit T-shirt, and the first 10,000 will get a commemorative Biggio 3000 Hit figurine.  Kitschy, of course, but a fitting tribute, all in all.

Injury Report

Milwaukee – None 

Houston – Hector Gimenez (labrum), Brandon Backe (Tommy John surgery), and Adam Everett (forelock), out forever.  Hunter Pence (See: expectations, weight of,),  Chris Sampson (strained right ullnar elbow nerve thingie), out a bit less than forever.

Our ‘Interesting Things To Look For This Series’
(a/k/a “Proof That Aliens Have Sabatoged The 2007 Season”)

• BELIEF:  Crop circles have periodically appeared in the outfield grass at MMPUS*.
  PROOF:  The turf had to be resodded during the last road trip.
  *There is no evidence to support the counter-theory that the circles are worn spots where the Astros outfielders stand, and also represent the entire extent of their range.

• BELIEF:  Jason Jennings is an alien abductee, and has been replaced by a look-alike extraterrestrial (with a rag arm.) 
  PROOF:  2-7, 6.11

• BELIEF:  Craig Biggio is an alien.
  PROOF:  He hustles on every play.
  PROOF:  He is obsessed with “playing the game the right way.”
  PROOF:  His long-standing habit of referring to himself in the first person plural in his interviews, usually thought to be because he carries a small mouse around on his person everywhere he goes, is actually the result of him having had his body taken over by an alien many years ago. . . the alien who took him over is thought to be Gazoo, from the old Flinstones series. . . Biggio is thought to have suppressed memories of this duality, and thus sometimes slips up and refers to himself as “we.”

• BELIEF:  The roof at MMPUS is actually a giant receiver for alien transmissions.
  PROOF:  The roof is often left closed, even when the weather outside is very nice.
  PROOF:  Remember a couple of years ago, when green mold was growing all over the exterior roof panels?  The team badly needed an additional bat that season, but the management said there wasn’t any money for one.  Yet, they somehow found the cash to have the roof cleaned off, right away.

I really shouldn’t dislike the Brewers as much as I do.  They are just another small-market team, trying to make do.  They have some admirable players, a decent manager, a great announcer.  And I CAN’T FUCKING STAND THEM.  The Astros are coming off a three-game beatdown of the Cubbies, while the Brewers have been floundering.  I am expecting good things.  I wonder if it occurs to anyone in Milwaukee that as well as the team has played all year, and as shitty as Houston has been, the Astros only trail them by 8.5 games.  Don’t look back, fuckers.  Something might be gaining on you.

Anyway, I do expect Brewer Fan, when the time comes, to handle the last minute collapse with much more dignity and reserve than his Chicago bretheren.  Milwaukee kind of has an inferiority complex, anyway.  The giant crane drops the 20-ton roof section and falls over the side of the stadium about once a week on one of the Discovery channels.  They have to share an NFL franchise with a town about the size of Sealy.  They have Bud Selig.  Randall Simon.  Bernie the Brewer.

Methinks they worry too much.  In a hundred years from now, people won’t care that the Brewers blew a season long division lead, right at the end, then let the ATL slip by them to grab the wild card; any more than they will understand what the big deal was about the giant sausages running out of Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment and down the street.

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Astros sweep the series, 3-0. 

We are the hollow men
OK, the Brewers, then
Leaning together
A juggernaut filled with straw. Alas!
Our starters’ ERAs
When added together
Are quite enormous
As we swing and miss again
Holes in our bats where the hits had been
Back before the summer weatherShape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;Those who have hoped
With all hope, that this was the year
Will remember us — if at all — not as losers
Or worthy competitors, but only
As the hollow men
OK, the Brewers, then. 

I want to love you but I get so blown away