SEASONS IN HELL, VOL. II, NO. 4

June 22-June 24, 2010

Giants (38-30) vs. Astros (26-44)

Minute Maid Park
501 Crawford Street
Houston, TX 77002

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After sweeping the Nacionalés and winning 2 of 3 at home over the FTCubs to kick off June, our Astros went out on the road. “Uh-oh,” some of us may have been thinking, as the not-so- mighty ‘Stros rolled into Denver to play the Rockies, a team that has seemingly always given them trouble. But they took three-of-four at Coors. Wow. Then, just about the time my mental turntable plopped the stylus down on Buffalo Springfield’s excellent debut LP (“Something’s happening here. . .” ), our boys sashayed into Gotham City and got fucking stomped.

No great shame in that, really; the Yankees are loaded this year, as usual. Sometimes watching the games felt like a spring exhibition game where a college team plays the pros, though. The Astros got swept and run out of town by the Yank-mes, but this is a little bit different version of the Bayou Spacemen than what we saw earlier this season. OK, not all that different, but a team now infused with enough resolve, I thought, that they might pick themselves up after the dusting in the Bronx and keep on playing some half-ass respectable baseball. So they went to KC and split the first two games with the Royals; and were well on their way to winning the third match when the lowly Royals rose up and scored five runs in their last two at-bats to secure a come-from-behind victory. No huge surprise there; but one felt sure, watching the reaction of the Astros players as that game got away from them, that the disheartening loss might start the Houston team on another long tailspin.

So they came home and got swept by the fucking Rangers who, I’m sorry, looked infinitely better and more polished than the hometown nine this past weekend. That makes the Astros record 1-8 since they left Colorado; and now here come the Giants, who have been playing medium-well of late, and have had two off days sandwiched around their just previous series in Toronto. So they can do pretty much whatever they want with their rotation. It looks like they decided to load the 12-gauge up with goose shot, or whatever caliber it is one uses to shoot fish in a barrel, as the Astros will be facing this series, in order, Tim Lincecum, Barry Zito, and (probably) Matt Cain. I am tired of being negative about it all, but the truth is, it is hard to see how the woebegone ‘Stros have much of a chance in this series.

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PITCHING MATCHUPS

Tuesday June 22, 2010
Game Time: 7:05 p.m. CDT
Television: FSH
Promotion: Double Play Tuesday, sponsored by Powerade. Too complicated to explain, it is not worth your trouble, take my word for it.
Matchup: San Francisco – Tim Lincecum (7-2, 3.11) Lincecum has been terrific this season, but not super-terrific, which has some SF fans worried. It is fair to say he is walking more guys than usual, but that is about it. Anything beyond that is just nit-picking.
Houston – Roy Oswalt (5-8, 3.12) Oswalt keeps pitching great. It figures he’ll be up against possibly the best pitcher in the league for this one. He might well pitch another gem, and might earn himself another loss for his trouble, too.

Wednesday June 23, 2010
Game Time: 7:05 p.m. CDT
Television: FSH
Promotion: None.
Matchup: San Francisco – Barry Zito (7-3, 3.13) Wow. More good pitching. Zito has been right there with Lincecum this season, giving the Giants a righty-lefty 1-2 punch in the rotation most other teams only dream about. Or have nightmares about.
Houston – Brett Myers (4-5, 3.34) I like the way Meyers has just gone out and done his job this year, without much fanfare or hubbub. He hasn’t been much luckier than Oswalt with the run support, but if he has misgivings about it, he’s kept it to himself.

Thursday June 24, 2010
Game Time: 1:05 p.m. CDT
Television: FSH
Promotion: Nine Inning Lunch Break, sponsored by O’Reilly Auto Parts. For $40 you get a field box seat, and vouchers for $20 worth of MMPUS food; which translates roughly to a 3-4 soggy nachos, and a 10 oz. bottle of water.
Matchup: San Francisco – To Be Announced (0-0, 0.00) Thursday afternoon get-away game, I guess for the Giants benefit, ‘cause the Astros are just headed up the road to the Metrosexualplex after this one. Yep.
Houston – Wandy Rodriguez (3-10, 6.09) Wandy is well on his way to becoming Houston’s first ever 20-game loser. Whether he gets the chance to do so remains to be seen, but if he does. . . Ever heard the old baseball adage that a guy has to be a pretty good pitcher to lose 20 games? Well, not necessarily.

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There have been times when I’ve thought of you
When an old letter or picture brought you back into view
And I’ll recall what has passed and the things I’ve missed
After that trip to the beach
On your front porch, our first kiss

We would get messed up with all the girls and boys
All in love with each other and our drugs of choice
And I remember all those fucked-up times
Just like the books we learned
And all the words that rhymed

And Bootzilla was my main, main man
Just a bad-ass bass player in a funkadelic band
And on nights that were steamy and hot
I would take you out dancing
‘Til we got our rocks off

And I knew
Just looking at you
I knew that our dreams would all come true
And on top of it all
I’ve got the blues for Bootzilla, too

I can remember those crazy nights
When I would pick you up and you’d look just right
We’d smoke a joint and go see our latest favorite band
All obsessed with each other
Couldn’t see it getting out of hand

In restaurants full of losers and cops
We would do cocaine right off the table tops
We were high and wild and without concern
‘Cos we knew where to score
While all the cops got burned

There are some ghosts out there that still haunt me
And there are still demons out there that taunt me
Just like a bass line thumping through the latest hit song
I could feel it in my bones
But my mind was all wrong

But I knew
Just looking at you
I knew that our dreams would all come true
And on top of it all
I’ve got the blues for Bootzilla, too

You know, funk music just died, I guess
Like rock and roll and all the rest
Maybe it was killed by something like rap
Or go-go or hip-hop
Or something like that

And then you just softly slipped away
I turned around and you were gone as fast as night turns to day
Into that sea of sorrows you took our life raft
While I drown in a puddle
And the fat man laughs

It’s on nights like tonight that I’m thinking that
I wish that the earth was really flat
I’d write all the notes I could send
Go out and buy a speedboat
And blast right off the end

Out into the blue
Just thinking of you
I knew that our dreams would all come true
And on top of it all
I’ve got the blues for Bootzilla, too

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INJURIES

San Francisco
•Emmanuel Burriss (2B) – His left foot is broke and he’s out indefinitely
•Mark DeRosa (Ivy League INF) – Left wrist injury, may opt for surgery; out indefinitely
•Todd Wellemeyer (RHP) – Strained quadriceps; out indefinitely (the Giants medical staff is not real big on offering predictions for the future)

Houston
• Alberto Arias (RHP) – Out for the season after right rotator cuff surgery
• Bud Norris (RHP) – Placed on the 15-day DL on May 28 with a bursitis and elbow tendinitis and a seriousy fucked-up ERA; since then he has been rehabbing in the minors – he makes his last rehab start on the first day of this series – but really, who cares? Is there anyone anxiously awaiting the return of another ho-hum starter with a 6+ ERA? It would be like waiting for the latest Journey or Foreigner LP to come out. The world is going to keep on spinning 1,000 miles per hour whether the album comes out or not, and most people won’t give a fuck, either way. It literally makes no difference.
• Jeff Fulchino (RHP) – Day-to-day. . . guess what? We’re all day-to-day. Fulchino has “elbow issues”, and “may get a cortisone shot.”
• Chris Sampson (RHP) – Placed on the 15-day DL biceps tendinitis, his return is imminent.

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“In the Bible Cain slew Abel
And east of Eden he was cast
You’re born into this life paying
For the sins of somebody else’s past”

 
With Father’s Day just past, there has been renewed emphasis on the subject of the special role baseball plays in the relationship between a boy and his dad. MLB’s recent ads have been slanted this way, for sure. They know a winning concept when they see it. For who can deny that baseball is often the secret formula that unlocks the doors existing between a man and his son, between a boy and his progenitor?

People tend to get overly sentimental about this. The movie Field Of Dreams – which was openly slanted toward sentiment, unlike the novel it is based on – is a good example of this. The novel, Shoeless Joe, was terrific; but almost entirely different in basic ways from the resulting movie, which I found pleasant, but not great. However, Field Of Dreams is useful in pointing out how some men feel about baseball, and their dads. Not me, but. . .

A son’s relationship with his father can be complicated, and sometimes not so pleasant, especially during adolescence and young adulthood. It doesn’t have to be, but that was my experience. My father was funny and easy-going on the surface, but was distant and hard to know when you got him up close. Also, he was the disciplinarian at home, even though he really wasn’t suited for the role. But he assumed it by necessity, and therefore represented repression to a son who was contrary by nature and at the time was trying to break free and establish his own identity. Further complications arose from big expectations projected onto me by him. But I am getting off the subject here. Simply put, a father-son relationship does not have to be overtly ambivalent, but sometimes it is.

The thing about baseball is, it can be a neutral ground in this conflict. A love for the game, passed on by a father to his son and nurtured by a mutual interest, can be a place of respite in an otherwise turbulent relationship at the time, and/or a way to resolve old conflicts later on, when both the son and his dad are presumably more mature and can look at their interactions with a greater sense of equanimity. Even if the father-son dynamic is not openly difficult, there is almost always some distance left between the two, I am not sure why. Baseball can be a way to bridge that distance, at least for a little while.

My relationship with my own sons is far from perfect, but not nearly as crazy as mine was with my dad, for many reasons. Our baseball relationship has been steady but not so intense, partly because our conflicts outside of baseball are not large, and also because I have consciously de-emphasized my own place in my kids’ baseball lives. We go to games and talk about baseball and I have tried to pass on to them the knowledge I have from playing from childhood through high school, but I have rarely formally coached them. This is again in reaction to personal experience, as my own father’s and my relationship, already tenuous in my teenage years, was almost destroyed forever by the two seasons he decided, against my tacit wishes, to be my Senior League coach.

For all the gauzy good feeling about baseball and paternal relationships, I have seen real ugliness in youth baseball. Even as kids, we used to make fun of the minority of the dads who would get all worked up about the games and yell and scream and stuff. Even if they were our own. We used to call them ‘railing dads’ because during games, instead of sitting in the stands with everyone else, they would group along the fence rails behind the first- and third-base lines, and mutter to each other and yell at the kids and coaches and umpires on the field. We thought they were fucking crazy; and we resolved to never be that way ourselves, when we grew up.

I have kept that resolution, though it has cost me. I think I have restrained my natural passion when it comes to my kids’ participation in youth sports, for fear of fucking up their childhoods and becoming a total dickhead, like those railing dads I remember so vividly.

But apparently, not everyone has kept the promises we made, as kids. I have seen a new generation of overbearing fathers at games, hovering over everything like a dark cloud at a picnic. And though I have managed to restrain myself, I have at times felt that ugly, creepy feeling that comes when you realize you are way too wrapped up in a kids game, probably because in some way you are trying to relive your own glory days vicariously through your children; or, even worse, you are depending on your child out there, standing in the outfield watching an airplane fly over instead of the action on the field. . . you are burdening your own sweet child with the task of redressing your failures in baseball, and making up for your own shortcomings at playing a game.

One other thing people tend to do when discussing baseball is over intellectualize it. Like I have been doing here, for practically the entire time. Because for all the heavy theorizing, the real pleasures of baseball are mostly simple and visceral and tactile. Father’s Day afternoon, my youngest son – who gave up organized baseball last season after completing his Little League eligibility, in order to concentrate on the electric guitar (with my blessing) – decided he and I should go to the schoolyard down the street and throw the baseball around. I still enjoy playing catch with him and/or his brother, even though I have a frayed rotator cuff now, and every time I throw the ball it feels like my arm is going along with it.

We gathered up some balls in the garage and our gloves and we walked to the schoolyard and stepped through the hole in the 8 ft. high chain-link fence surrounding the campus. My neighbor and I cut that entrance one night a few weeks ago. He wanted to try out an acetylene cutting torch he’d just bought.

Anyway, once my boy and I got to the schoolyard, we stood maybe ten yards apart and started throwing the ball to each other, in a smooth, easy motion. Once we got warm, and started throwing with some velocity, we heard the familiar sound of the ball popping the leather of our gloves. I imagined that, from a distance, it appeared we were engaging in a sort of reciprocal dance, a basic instinct to throw, and then catch. . . catch, and then throw. Just like it has been done for so many summers, and probably will be for many more.

My boy, who I love with all my heart, probably doesn’t understand me any more than I understood my old man, at least in some ways. But I think he understands how much I enjoy playing catch with him, and he at least gets a sense of the silent information that ball carries back and forth as we lob it to each other. And the best part about it is that by understanding the weight of meaning involved in the simple act of tossing a baseball back and forth, mostly tacitly, with the man who started the whole process that brought him into this world, he has taught me what it means. I didn’t know, beforehand. The son is the father to the man, as they say. I am so grateful to know it now; I only wish I had 35 years ago. I just assumed my dad didn’t want anything to do with me that required effort on his part, physical or emotional, so I never fucking asked him if he wanted to go play catch in the schoolyard, on Father’s Day or any other fucking day. If I had, maybe he would have said, “Okay.” And the world would have been changed in some fundamental way.

But that did not happen, and it is much too late for regrets. I prefer to dwell on the tableu now in front of us. Just a boy and his dad, standing out in the late afternoon sun on the yellow-green grass of a schoolyard, tossing a ball back and forth and occasionally talking, and laughing. There is an easiness between them that cannot be faked, and cannot be denied. They are sharing the simple joy of throw-and-catch, of mindless banter, and of spending some time together, however brief, out in the sweet sunshine.

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Astros get swept by the Giants, 0-3.

THE WEATHER

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So Dennis Green was right.  They are who we thought they were.  Despite hot streaks and hopeful signs, this just ain’t a good baseball team.  Getting beat on the road is to be expected, to a certain extent; being made the Royals’ new ugly girlfriends, well, that’s just low.  What’s the salve that cures a hurt like that?  May I interest you in some 107-proof Hate?

Half of the fun of being a sports fan is hating other teams.  Cubs, Cards, Yanks, Mets, Braves, Giants: I have hate on both coasts and several places in between.  But in those cases, the geography is pretty much incidental.  I’ve been to all of those cities, and had no worse than a “pretty good” time at each.  Hell, Chicago is near the top of the very small list of cities I’d consider relocating to if necessary.  I hate the teams and fanbases, not the cities.

And then there’s Dallas.

HULK SMASH!

Asa lifelong Houstonian, Dallas has always been the city I hated.  Hated the nonsensical highways that don’t follow any particular point of the compass, just meander off into the prairie like a damned elephant going off to die.  The women.  Oh lord the women.  I can’t imagine why they haven’t all collapsed in a heap, crippled by the vertigo from looking so far down their noses at everyone else.  I like that my wife doesn’t wear pearls to the H-E-B, you harpies.  My family who lived in “Dallas” actually lived so far north that they were in a different area code, but they were claiming Big D at every fucking chance. Moreover,  you’re so close to Oklahoma that you smell like cattle shit and unemployment.  Your underachieving bullshit baseball franchise is exactly what you deserve.  Tom Hicks isn’t just the owner of the Metroplex’s baseball team: he IS the Metroplex.  Overpriced, leveraged to Hell and back, and just interesting in shiny things, like A-Rod’s butthole.

And I’m quite aware that the Ballpark is in Arlington, and that some of our fine posters hail from Dallas, but I wouldn’t want anything small like facts to get in the way of the hate that I’ve treasured since I was a tyke.  And seriously, get the hell out of there before everything becomes one big RA Sushi.

Probable Pitchers

Friday, June 18

7:05 CT, MMPUS

Scott Feldman (4-6, 5.28) v. Wandy “2007” Rodriguez (3-9, 5.60)

The probables page mentions that Feldman has never faces the Marlins.  Which is just dandy.  Hooray journalism!  He’s from Hawaii, just like our president and chocolate-covered macadamia nuts.  The Good Guys are .294 combined against him, with Hunter, Bourn and Berkman leading the charge.

Wandy’s reminding all of us of Bad Wandy from years gone by, which is actually not Redding Horrible, just regular old Mark Portugal Bad.  Ian Kinsler loves feasting on some rare Eny to the tune of a ricockulous .750/1.500/2.269.  Good Lord.  This don’t look good.  Luckily, he gets everyone else out.  Or has in the past.

Saturday, June 19

6:05 CT, MMPUS

Colby Lewis (6-4, 3.30) v. Brian Moehler (0-3, 6.32)

Mister Lewis is in his second go-round with the Rangers, which is basically like getting back together with the girl who cheated on you, ran up your credit cards, and then gained 150 lbs while you were apart.  Just plain dumb.  Only Carlos has seen him more than one AB, and he’s hitting .286.  Faaaaaaantastic!

Moe’s really putting the “work” in “workman” lately, in the sense that he’s getting worked over by opposing hitters.  I love the guy for all he’s done for the past few years, but there comes a point where you gotta cut bait.  David “Stop Calling Me Dale” Murphy and Elvis Andrus both hit him pretty well.

Sunday, June 20th

FATHER’S DAY (just a gentle reminder from a man with no kids)

1:05 CT, MMPUS

C.J. Wilson (5-3, 3.48) v. Felipe Paulino (1-8, 4.50)

Wilson is a tough, no-nonsense cop who doesn’t play by the rules.  When the Cuban Mafia took out the woman he loved in a voodoo ritual murder cult, they thought it was over.  They were wrong…dead wrong.  She’s a zombie.  He’s a cop.  They fight crime!  Also, Hunter Pence bats .800 against him.

Hard Luck Phil is back, looking for his second win of the season.  The Rangers straight up light him up and smoke him, though.  Ian Kinsler hasn’t ever gotten a hit against him, at least.  Everyone else is north of .333.  With Moe ahead of him in the rotation, you gotta hope he’ll at least go deep into this game to give the bullpen a rest.

Injuries

Astros:

Alberto Arias – at home, watching Copa Munidal in his Underoos.

Bud Norris – about to un-DL himself, cutting off Brian Moehler’s head to gain his powers as…The High (ERA) Lander!

Chris Sampson – regrowing his hair, rehabbing his whatchamacallit.

Rangers:

(deep breath)

Endy Chavez:  Post-Yankees Obscurity Syndrome (P.O.S.)

Nelson Cruz: Torn hamstring while converting to Judiasm.

Toby Hall: And I quote “Still having trouble with stamina”.  S’ok, Toby.  Happens to plenty of guys.

Rich Harden: Strained glut.  Is that like a glute?  Kids these days.

Derek Holland:  Throwing off a mound in Arizona.  Sounds like a euphemism to me.

Tommy Hunter:  Training as sniper for Cuban Mafia; the only man who can stop C.J. Wilson

Eric Hurley:  Torn rotator cuff.  Must’ve been throwing off Derek Holland’s mound.

Promotions

Friday: Kiolbassa-sponsored Lone Star Series t-shirt.  And fireworks, dammit.

Saturday: Nolan Ryan bobblehead.  The bobblehead depicts him loading the Dell Diamond on the back of an F-350 while giving the bird to Houston.

Sunday: A TIE!  On Father’s Day!  How original!  Wait, are we actually getting ironic promotional items at games now?  I think I need to lie down.  Also, fathers can run the bases.  They won’t do this promotion next year after all the torn hammies and that one fat guy who has a stroke in front of third.

Happy Father’s Day, everybody!  It was my dad who introduced me to baseball and the Astros, and though we don’t go to as many games together as we should, it’s always a blast when we do.  I almost feel like I should be carrying my glove to the game when I go with him, just for old times sake.   Maybe we can stop and eat at Jojo’s on 290 and 34th after the game.  Can we, Dad?

Talk about it in the Game Zone!