Woke up at 3:30 thinking that Ensberg should've either run harder or held up at first on the ball he hits off the wall after Berkman's shot in the seventh. Thought that was important. You're not particularly rational when you wake up and start pondering things at 3:30 in the morning, and that clearly seemed to be key to the game.
Thought that if Game 5 of the LDS is to be referred to as The Inches, then last night's Game 5 should be called The Icarus. Kind of liked that one at 3:45 am. On wings of pastrami. Pretty sharp.
I went on to think also that I'm just about done with this shit. When you're 37 and not actually paid to play or manage, you're way too old to be waking up in the middle of the night thinking about botched ballgames. I mean, don't I have enough real stuff to be concerned about? Aren't sports are supposed to be a pleasant diversion? I've
been through this rodeo enough times. Do I really need to subject myself to it again?
Later this morning, I am surprised that I'm thinking only slightly more rationally in the light of day, which means that I will begin watching game 6 at no earlier than the seventh inning. I've simply got to cut back.
I watch Astros games with one finger on the previous channel button. I started doing this a few years after throwing a former remote against a wall when the Walt Weiss moment occurred. What I learned is that when I destroyed my remote, I was stuck with John Rocker doing his primate jig and screaming back at the voices in his head while I was trying to get out of the recliner and lunge at the TV, while covering my eyes and cursing a blue streak.
So now I just hold on to the remote and flip the channel. It's much less of a circus. I did this as soon as Pujols made contact last night, but it may have been an instant before. Nothing left to see there. Thankfully the Colts and Rams were not at commercial, and I welcomed additional evidence that my fantasy team was stomping the bejeezus out of the competition. The NFL, it seems, never lets me down.
Unbelievable is another one of those words that has lost a lot of its power. As I stared unseeing at an Edgerrin James replay, the concept of "unbelievability" rang true. It packed quite a wallop. A debilitating wallop. It was also a hell of a rush, which briefly reminded me of Tom Hanks' jellyhead podnuh in
Bachelor Party slamming his head into the bottom of an empty bathtub and declaring that "pain is such a rush." I did not have a bathtub handy, so I sat calmly with my remote. Was kind of proud of that.
After unbelief, the next reaction is attempting to make sense of what you just saw (or didn't see). It took maybe a second or two longer than usual, but then there was the realization that this wasn't unbelievable at all. It wasn't an acute sensation. Much more chronic and familiar. Houston Astros playoff baseball.
Yeah, there's two more games. So let's see - history teaches that the Astros go to the brink and drop away.
Recent history teaches that Clemens and Pettitte, two of the three biggest reasons that the Astros have arrived at the brink the past two years, are not meant to be the ones to actually deliver the pennant, if it is to be delivered. That is how it has to be, and it makes perfect sense.
I don't have a point, really, except maybe "fuck October baseball" and "go Astros."
No prediction, other than to say that Joe Niekro is not available, so Roy Oswalt will have to do.
Will have to do. A damn sight better than Pete Munro to be sure. Astros in six, or bust.
