The Astros are coming home for a 10-game stand after a strange roadtrip. The Good Guys started the trip by dropping 27 runs on the Jakes in two games, but then they just sort of shit the bed the rest of the way.

But who cares, the main thing is that the Astros of the future are getting big-league experience, especially when it comes to pounding on Cardinals. The homestand will start with three games against the Braves, then three against the Pirates and four against the goddamn Mets. And since Bobby Cox is retiring, this is his last visit to Minute Maid; so if there’s something you’ve been wanting to yell at him, this is your last chance.

The Braves are 15 games over .500 and currently two games ahead of the Phillies (which coincidentally is the same number of games Roy hasn’t won for Philadelphia.) Chipper Jones mentioned retirement earlier in the season, and he has had a hitting surge since then.

But things haven’t gone as well lately for two of the Braves’ young hotshots – Martin Prado has a busted finger so he’s on the shelf, while Jason “VaJayHey” Heyward just flat fell off the shelf. He hasn’t hit a homer since June 17 and only has five RBI since June 22. Kind of a drop off after starting in the All-Star Game and getting all that Rookie of the Year talk.

Minute Maid Park

Monday, August 9, 7:05 p.m. CDT
Tuesday, August 10, 7:05 p.m. CDT
Wednesday, August 11, 1:05 p.m. CDT

You know what, I’m going to quit listing the TV broadcasts unless it’s a nationally televised game or something. Everyone knows it’s on Fox Sports – Houston, or whatever your local variant is. You know where to find it.

Notable giveaways

Not a fucking thing except deals for bargain seats and cheap food and shit. Plus it’s cheapo seat time anyway, because of all those runs the offense dropped on the Jakes. So go celebrate dropping a soupbone on the motherfucking Co-Ards, which is better than a shitty old bobblehead or a totebag anyday.

Projected Matchups from Astros.com

Monday

Mike Minor (0-0, -.–) v. Bud Norris (4-7, 5.65)

Minor is a lefty from Vanderbilt who’s making his MLB debut. He was the Braves’ top draft pick last year.

Norris has won his last two starts, but he got shelled by the Braves earlier in the season when he gave up seven earned runs in less than five innings. Troy Glaus, Melky Cabrera, and VaJayHey are all 2-for-2 against him. Cabrera and Heyward both have 3 RBI as well.

Tuesday

Jair Jurrjens (4-4, 4.48) v. J.A. Happ (1-1, 9.00)

J-J-J-Just look sat all those J’s; someone’s getting the fishhook today for sure. Jurrjens has only faced the Astros once, and that was last year in relief. Pedro Feliz is the only Astro with more than one AB against him; Feliz goes 4-for-17 with a homer. Lee, Blum, and Pence all have singles off him.

Happ is 2-0 against the Braves in five appearances. Current Braves only go 13-for-49 (.265) against Happ, but the guy to watch out for is Matt Diaz, who’s 5-for-7 with a double and a homer off Happ. Jumpin Jiminy!

Wednesday

Tommy Hanson (8-8, 3.69) v. Wandy Rodriguez (9-11, 4.34)

Hanson has two appearances against the Astros, including a win earlier this season when he went eight innings and gave up two earned runs. The Braves have lost Hanson’s last five starts and he doesn’t have a win since before the All-Star Break, but it’s not really his fault. He’s only given up a couple of earned runs per game during that time, but the Braves aren’t scoring for him. Maybe that’s why they didn’t get Oswalt; they already have a guy with no run support.

Blum and Lee have hit Hanson pretty well in limited AB’s, while Bourn and Pence are a combined 1-for-13 with 6 strikeouts. Pedro Feliz has a double off Hanson, which is the only extra-base hit by a current Astro.

Old Man Wandy has faced the Braves a whopping seven times for a 2-2 record. He took a loss against them on May 1 when he gave up two earned runs in five innings. Chipper Jones is only 4-for-17 against Wandy, but he has two homers and a triple. Glaus and Diaz have also hit Wandy pretty well, while Ankiel and McCan’t havent’ touched him at all.

Injury Report

I’m also going to quit linking to the Astros’ website injury report because it sucks balls, and I don’t mean in a tender, healing way. It currently says Geoff Blum could begin a rehab stint on July 30.

Atlanta – Martin Prado is still on the DL, along with relievers Kris Medlin and Eric O’Flaherty. Mike Minor is taking Medlin’s place on the roster.

Houston – Manzella is rehabbing in Corpus Christi and blatantly ignoring the Angel Sanchez thread. Moehler (detached boner tendon) and Paulino are still on the DL and don’t look to be back anytime soon.

Rattling Around in the Corner

* How’s this for muscle memory? I had an Astros game on recently but wasn’t really paying attention. That old Texaco commercial came on — the one with the goddamn “Tex message” chime I hadn’t heard in a year or more — and I immediately grabbed the remote and hit the Mute button without ever looking at the TV. This is why it’s so important to make a play on the Mute button every single time; you never know when a shitty old commercial is going to go back into the rotation.

* I’ve finally figured out a good analogy for watching Hunter Pence track a fly ball. I realize that not everyone will understand the comparison, but bear with me. Watching Spaz track a fly ball is like the first time you tried to play a video game with a hand-held controller (especially if you were used to the keyboard and mouse combo). Because the first time you use a controller and try to run your character around, you swoop around and make a huge-ass curve, and then run backward for a minute like a crazy moonwalk or something, and then you crouch and crash into a wall. And then you try to go through a door but you’re weaving like a snake, so you miss the door and hit the goddamn wall again, and then loop all the way around and hit the other side of the door. So then you just say fuck it and mash the joystick forward and run straight into the wall and slide slowly along it until you finally crash through the fucking door. Yeah, Pence is kind of like that. But with more diving, flailing, balls bouncing off his glove, and missing the cutoff man.

Discuss today’s game in the Gamezone.

SEASONS IN HELL, VOL. II, NO. 6

August 6- August 8, 2010

Astros (47-60) vs. Brewers (50-59)

Brewer Park of Broken Dreams
One Brewers Way
Milwaukee, WI 53214

**********

ROY AND LANCE. Like a lot Astros fans lately, I have been thinking about the sudden departure from the team of Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt, both lost to better, bigger spending organizations at the trade deadline just past. I have not been thinking of the losses so much in immediate terms – how much money was saved? What players were got in return? – but rather, I have been considering it from a longer view.

Berkman’s leaving seems almost benign, which surprises me a little. He was an icon in Houston. Not on the level of Biggio-Bagwell, but way up there. Due to the vagaries of his contract situation, Twinkie wasn’t likely to be retained by the Astros past the end of this season anyway, we are told. So it kind of made sense for them to trade away one of the best hitters the franchise has ever known, or ever will know, in exchange for some serviceable baseball talent. They did it while they could still get any return for Lance at all. Hell, apparently some fans are waving goodbye to him even as they are preparing to welcome him back. That seems crazy to me, but it might happen – if Berkman declines his option next year and goes on the market, Drayton McLane is enough of a sentimentalist to bring Berkman back, if he feels like it. No question.

On the other hand, the departure of Roy Oswalt has generated much more ambivalent feeling among the faithful. He has fallen into disfavor for ‘demanding’ a trade (Ed Wade’s words, not mine) recently, and for not stepping up to help fill the leadership void on the team left when Bagwell and Biggio (and, I would add, Ausmus) departed.

I cannot speak to the former – I don’t have any insiders close to the team . . . unless Junction Jack counts. Back in college J.J. and I and a few other wild-ass bastards friends of ours used to drive down into Mexico, to Lake Baccarac, which was still fairly new back then. We acted like we were the original Sinaloa cowboys and, once there, and high on mescal and something or other from that week’s local ganja selection, we would simultaneously try to catch a lot of fish and not get thrown into the district jail by the local policia.

Anyway, the latter accusation against Oswalt, that he failed to step up and become a team leader, that one I cannot quite get behind.

I don’t think it is in Oswalt’s nature to lead, at least not overtly. Some people – hell, most people – don’t have that in them; and getting paid a lot of money is not going to make any difference, for anyone preparing to make that argument. I think Roy O. would not be out of line if at some point in the last few weeks he allowed himself to wonder, ‘Jesus, what the hell do these people want? I was the best pitcher in my league (cumulatively) for ten years. Pitching only for the Astros. That isn’t good enough for them?’

I loved Oswalt from the day I first saw him. He was, to me, the epitome of a Gerry Hunsicker era draft pick, maybe an apt poster child for the whole Hunsicker regime. At a time when it seemed every team was drafting pitchers at least partly based on physical stature alone, when seemingly none of the draftee hurlers were under 6’ 4” and 230 lbs., the Astros picked the relatively diminutive 5’ 10”, 170 lb. Oswalt in the 23rd round of the 1996 draft, out of some no-name community college in Mississippi. He was the 684th player taken, overall.

Oswalt opened some eyes that summer pitching for the USA team in the Olympics, but I didn’t see him until he was called up a month or so into the 2001 season. He was not a big guy, okay; but like similarly-sized new teammate Billy Wagner, Oswalt had strong legs, as was readily apparent. And, like Wagner, he had the sense to make full use of his lower body in helping get the ball up to the plate in a hurry. After spending his first few weeks with the Astros in the bullpen, Oswalt was moved into the starting rotation. And the rest is history.

I loved just watching Roy O. pitch. He was a craftsman as much as a flamethrower. What really impressed me was his demeanor out on the mound. He never seemed overmatched out there, or tentative or afraid, even as a rookie. He stood straight up on the rubber, looking kind of skinny and not quite polished, got his sign, and then he just threw the fucking ball; with an idea of where it was going, and why. He was driven and determined and relentless, and admired by baseball people everywhere, not just in Houston. He wasn’t a leader in the classic sense. He was a nearly constant rotation anchor, though; in the time of Tim ‘Spongebob’ Redding and Jeriome ’15-game winner’ Robertson and the DQ & Alice show, and the rest. He was the bridge from the Larry Dierker-led division winning staffs of the Y2K era to the present time. By the time Oswalt made his Astros debut, Mike Hampton was long gone, Lima Time had maybe a month left, Scott Elarton maybe two, and Shane Reynolds would be gone in another year.

I think most people categorize the different incarnations of the Astros teams over the years in terms of who the best hitters were at the time. The Jose Cruz-Terry Puhl period, the Glenn Davis era, the Bagwell-Biggio epoch. And that is probably the best way to think about it. It surprised me a little when I realized the other day, upon hearing the news that Roy Oswalt had been traded to Philadelphia, that I tend to categorize the team historically by pitching staffs, rather than who was in the batting order. Maybe that’s from spending my formative years watching 3-2 and 2-1 nail-biters in the Astrodome, I don’t know. I first became truly MLB-aware in the late 1960s. Dierker was a player back then, and the staff ace. There were a lot of young guys on that staff, hard throwers like Tom Griffin and Don Wilson and Jack Billingham. Things didn’t exactly work out for some of them, at least in Houston. Four or five years later, J.R. Richard came to town, an exceedingly tall, raw-boned looking guy from the wilds of north central Louisiana, who could throw really, really hard; and soon thereafter some guy named Joe something was picked off the scrap heap, purchased from Atlanta for a pittance. Throw Joaquin Andujar right in there somewhere, too. Nolan Ryan was soon brought in, then Bob Knepper; and Mike Scott wasn’t far behind them. And so on. In the future I will likely collectively remember the immediate post-playoff years under Jimy, the resurgence in 2004-2005, and the dark ages that set in after that, as Oswalt’s era. Now that Roy is gone, someone else will have to step up, be acquired, or emerge, and fill his role.

The thing about Oswalt, he was deceptively strong. He maybe did not look so durable, though; and one of the fun things to do in the years Roy was here was read various ‘experts’ like that tool from BP, Wil Carroll (usually echoed a few days later by Pinwheel or JdJO, or both), predicting Oswalt would succumb to arm injury woes anytime now. And he never did, really. He had an in-season ‘dead arm’ a few times along the way, and he famously dealt with a tricky groin for awhile; but his arm never actually went bad on him, or gave out. Some attribute this durability of his to the myth-like, almost surely apocryphal story in which Roy received a heavy-duty shock in that golden right arm of his one day several years ago, while fooling around with the battery in his truck.

Maybe. But some of the deceptive part of his sturdiness was due to the fact Roy O. was one of those people possessed of a physiology that used to be referred to as ‘wiry.’ Not big and bulky, but not weak, either. As tough as wire. Other than his legs and butt, which of course were the key, the rest of Oswalt made him appear as a sort of skinny, country-ass fuck, like someone you’d see pumping gas at a rural filling station. Laconic and hard to read, the guy gives you the directions you asked for. But was he really helping you out? Or giving you the bum steer? It was counterintuitive for some people, including me at first, to see the smallish-for-a-starting-pitcher but actually normal-sized Oswalt out there, firing 95 mph fastballs knee high on the corners. Something had to give, right?

Nope. I have in my mind a mental picture from a dream I once had about Roy Oswalt, set sometime after his playing days end. In my dream, Roy was living at his place in Mississippi, out in the country. It was late fall/early winter, and the leaves were on the ground, and it was kind of wet out. The air was steely cold under a grayish-white sky, with a stiff wind backing. Roy was inside his house, but realized he needed some more wood for the fireplace wood-burning stove. So he walked through the front doorway and around to the side of his house, where he had neatly stacked a couple of cords of split hardwood. He had harvested the wood by knocking down some trees with his bulldozer, and dragged them over to the side of the house with his tractor. He trimmed and cut logs into lengths with his Husqvarna 24” logging chainsaw, and he spilt the lengths with his hydraulic log-splitter. Roy grabbed up a couple of armloads of firewood off of the stack, almost effortlessly, and slowly carried it back into his house.

Outside, just beyond this tableau, a car had passed by on the road out front, and a young kid in the back seat witnessed this scene. Or, better yet, a barn owl was sitting up in a tree in the yard, wise and solitary, its huge black eyes taking in everything. No, I’ve got it. A red wolf was moving across Oswalt’s property, unhurriedly on his way to wherever it is wolves go. He suddenly sensed movement in the periphery of his vision, and glanced up in time to see Oswalt carrying a seemingly disproportionate amount of wood across the deck in front of his house and back inside. The wolf’s glance only lasted a second or two, just long enough to discern there was no immediate danger. No prospective meal, either. But in that few seconds of time, our wolf formed the wolf-equivalent of a coherent thought, in the front part of his lupine brain. And he voiced that thought, to himself, in whatever the language is that wolves speak to themselves in. He said, “Damn, that little guy is bad-ass.” And then, imperceptibly, he nodded. It was a nod only wolves can see. It was really just a minute motion of the wolf’s head, from straight ahead to slightly upward, back, and to the left. In the wolf world, this type of nod is a sign of grudging respect for an individual from a non-wolf species. The wolf nodded in Oswalt’s direction, but Roy was already gone. The wolf seemed to consider this for a second – probably me projecting a little here – and then he moved on, as well.

For a man, if he even knew the wolf was there, which Roy didn’t – red wolves are famously stealthy . . . for a man, a nod of respect from a wolf would be a great honor, I would think. I certainly would be honored. Either way, I am with the wolves on this one. Roy Oswalt was bad-ass. And for an extraordinary length of time in the baseball world, he was our bad-ass. Despite the bouts of whining and the demanding of a trade and accusations that he was not always the best teammate, I am sorry to see him go.

Like the red wolf in his yard, I give Oswalt my imperceptible nod of respect. He was bad-ass, and I will miss watching him.

**********

PITCHING MATCHUPS

Friday August 6, 2010
Game Time: 7:10 p.m. CDT
Television: FSH
Promotion: Sports Authority Special Coupon, sponsored by Sports Authority. The first 10,000 fans will get a ‘special coupon’ from the ‘Sports Authority’, whatever that is. This sort of non-promotion promotion is typical, and apparently a big deal to Brewers fans.
Matchup: Houston – Wandy Rodriguez (9-11, 4.49) Wandy had a rocky first half. Since the All-Star break, he is 3-0, 2.14, allowing 14 hits and 18/4 K/BB in 21 IP (3 starts.) He seems to have settled into the groove he was in for most of the last two seasons. That’s a good thing.
Milwaukee – David Bush (5-9, 4.55) [Beavis&Butthead]Bush, heh-heh-heh. His name is Bush, heh-heh. [/Beavis&Butthead]

Saturday August 7, 2010
Game Time: 6:10 p.m. CDT
Television: FSH
Promotion: None. Nada. Kiene.
Matchup: Houston –Brett Myers (8-6, 3.10) Mr. Reliable for the Astros this season; and with Oswalt gone, the de facto ace of the staff. But Myers has earned the designation, by being remarkably consistent, and consistently good.
Milwaukee – Randy Wolf (7-9, 4.91) Wolf is part of the long and continuing tradition of ballplayers with surnames from the animal kingdom. The Astros had Lamb; some Bass, Bream and Ray; Fox and Wolf, of course; before slaughtering a Bullock for the main course. I figured Wolf would have annihilated a guy like Mike Lamb in their head-to-head meetings over the years, because Lamb never could hit lefties, but also because, you know. . . but it appears they never faced each other, darn it. One of the Pittsburgh pitching staffs in the early 1970s featured Lamb, Moose, and Veale. Mmmm. . . tasty.

Sunday August 8, 2010
Game Time: 1:10 p.m. CDT
Television: FSH
Promotion: DQ Family Day; and Klement’s Sausage Italian Racing Sausage Bobblehead; sponsored by Dairy Queen and Klement’s Sausage, respectively. The DQ promotion is actually pretty sweet. Fans buy a ticket in the “terrace” (i.e., upper deck), and get a coupon for a free hot dog and drink (‘soda’, in Milwaukee parlance), and a coupon for a buy one-get one free Blizzard. I presume there are DQ outlets in or near the stadium. The sausage promotion is a bobblehead of the Italian Sausage entry in the sausage races run between innings in Milwaukee. I guess once you have collected all your favorite players’ bobbleheads, in Milwaukee it is a natural to start collecting your favorite sausages.
Houston – Wesley Wright (1-1, 4.44) We want Wesley. Wesley wins. Wesley’s wild? Wrong! Wesley’s wonderful! Woohoo!
Milwaukee – Yovanni Gallardo (10-5, 2.71) Gallardo. Dollar, goal, roll, dog, rag, drag . . .

**********

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

I knew this girl once, back in school, and she was really pretty. I don’t mean “hot” or anything like that. Neither did she have the classical good looks – high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and a delicate facial bone structure. She was just pretty. Fresh and wholesome looking. For lack of a better descriptive example, she was Mary Ann to everyone else’s Ginger. She had long-ish dark brown hair, and even darker eyes. She was never a girlfriend of mine or anything, or even really a friend, I just kind of knew her. On the odd occasions when we met, walking across campus, or at a party . . . just seeing her always kind of made my day.

This girl’s whole face lit up when she smiled, which was pretty often. She literally beamed. But from the beginning I thought I detected something else there, too. When she smiled at you, all her facial inflections and body language signaled that she was wholly sincere, and I never doubted that she was. But just beyond the borders of her face, from just behind her, emitted something that seemed like a physical incarnation of something else, something approaching deep sadness. At least, that is what I thought at the time. The thinnest ribbon of darkness outlined her beautiful, beaming face, and for a brief moment a shaft of dark light would glint over her shoulder and onto me. What was that? I would think about it awhile, and eventually convince myself I didn’t really see anything. But by now I am pretty sure I did. I cannot adequately describe it in physical/spatial terms, but it almost appeared as if she had a second shadow following her around, a darker, heavier version of the original.

I don’t know what happened to that girl after school. For all I know she went on to a great career, a storybook marriage with wonderful kids, and a life of true happiness, mostly unmarred by the darkness out there everywhere. I certainly hope she did. Maybe the menacing darkness that seemed to stalk her in our college days decided she was too bright and good for even an extra shadow to fuck with, and so this extra shadow moved on, to dog the footfalls of some other poor soul.

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

The red wolf that happened by Roy Oswalt’s house several winters from now, just as Roy was coming outside for more firewood, had intruded briefly into our dreamy little vignette set at Roy’s place, and then just as quickly had left. But he didn’t exactly leave. He moved outside the frame of the picture, and out of our direct vision, as wolves will do. But something – I have no idea what and neither did he – something made that wolf want to linger there on the periphery of the scene for another moment, just beyond the lines of our collective sight and awareness. He hunched down silently behind some brush, and a small, fallen tree at the edge of Oswalt’s property, and he stared back at Roy’s house.

When Roy had been outside earlier, the wolf had noticed the interior of his house, through the slightly open front door. The wolf did not see much detail, but somehow processed the idea that the home emitted warmth and light and a certain level of comfort no wolf in this world will ever likely experience for very long, if ever. And deep down in his emotionless natural soul this wolf felt a tiny, brief tinge of something he’d never known, something like regret. This cold-blooded predator and howler at the midnight moon experienced, for just a second, a sort of longing.

He longed for something he did not know, and never would know, from a time so far back in history this fuzzy fellow, as apparently bright as he was for his kind, could not begin to comprehend it, or know how far back in time the object of his longing really was. Actually, we are talking mega-time here, hundreds of thousands of years (times seven for a canine, remember), too many years to be sensibly comprehended even by the bi-peds the wolf occasionally saw in his roamings around; like the little guy he saw earlier, carrying all the wood. In truth, the time frame this wolf was attempting to contemplate went all the way back to the time when his genetic branch had suddenly and dramatically split, back in the mists of pre-history. A time when some of his ancient ancestors left their brethren and made one of the biggest leaps of faith ever made by anyone (or thing) in biological history. They did this despite all their instincts and accumulated common wolf sense that compelled them not to. These ancient wolf ancestors had hunched down in the cold outside the mouth of a cave, just like their modern counterpart did at Oswalt’s house, and they saw the glowing light coming out of the cave opening, and they could smell cooking meat, and could hear the sounds of grunting camaraderie coming from inside, and they could sense the warmth there; and they could almost feel the comfort present in that bright, warm and safe place.

This is what they did next. One of the wolves, because it had to be just one very brave one at first, before more would see this action and follow, or not. . . one of the wolves befriended a caveman one day, while both were out hunting for their respective dinners. They had both stopped to rest, and warily, silently, they sat next to one another on a log. The dirty, hairy bi-pedal human dragged his paw-like hand across his protruding brow and then, following a built-in instinct he had no clue about then and his descendents still don’t understand, he tentatively reached out and lightly stroked the back of his new canine acquaintance’s neck, on the scruff. Right at the spot where the wolf’s mother used to pick him up with her teeth and cart him around while running her errands, back when he was just a pup. And the wolf experienced something like appreciation for maybe the first time, certainly towards a human. He opened his terrible, tooth-filled mouth, extended his rough sandpaper tongue, and lightly licked the back of the caveman’s hand.

After that, of course, it was all over. Man had got himself a best friend, St. Bernard had someone to bring him his brandy, and I was bestowed upon a lemon beagle with a mind of his own, who is barking like a harbor seal out in my backyard just now; who from time-to-time deigns to communicate with me. Telepathically, he insists.

What our crouching wolf’s ancestors did, some of them, against all reason and good wolf sense, was form an alliance with this often stupid and mindlessly destructive race of mammals, who slaughtered wolves among other things with abandon and would continue to, forever. Those early wolves crossed the gulf between them and the two-legged cave dwellers anyway, because somehow they knew they had to do it; they had to befriend the humans, and allow themselves to be mutated and dumbed down to accommodate the human’s needs, to become companions and even servants to these humans. And to gain their trust and affection. All so that the rest of them, the wolves who did not cross over and all the descendants for the rest of time of the wolves who did not cross over, would have a chance, at least, to dodge extinction. A chance to survive.

What those early wolves did was mull over what they perceived as their their options at the time. Then they decided it was time, for the first time ever, for some of them to come in from the cold.

Wolves are not our brothers;
They are not our subordinates, either.
They are another nation, caught up just like us
In the complex web of time and life.

**********

INJURIES

Houston
•Alberto Arias (RHP) – An eleven-year-old, all-American boy, who lost his mother to death at an early age. Though unenthusiastic in his schooling, he is intelligent, adventurous, and generally athletic, with a proficiency in judo, scuba diving, and the handling of firearms.

•Geoff Blum (3B-SS, ex-Mgr.) – A US government scientist, considered to be “one of the three top scientists in the world,” with interests and technical know-how spanning many fields of science. Raising Alberto Arias and Tommy Manzella as a single father, he is exceedingly conscientious with a charitable sense of decency, combined with the willingness and ability to take violent decisive action when necessary, for survival or defense.

•Brian Moehler (RHP) – A special agent/bodyguard/pilot from Intelligence One. Governmental fears that Arias could “fall into the wrong hands” resulted in the assignment of Moehler to guard and tutor him. Brian was born in Wilmette, Illinois. He is stated to be an expert in judo, having a third-degree black belt; as well as the ability to defeat noted experts in various martial arts, including sumo wrestling.

•Tommy Manzella (SS) – A street-wise Calcutta orphan, who becomes the eleven-year old adopted son of Dr. Geoff Blum. Rarely depicted without his bejeweled turban and Nehru jacket, he is proficient in judo, having learned it from an American Marine. The seventh son of a seventh son, Tommy seems to possess mystical powers (including snake charming, levitation, magic, and hypnotism) which may or may not be attributed to parlor trickery. The Blums met Manzella while Dr. Blum is lecturing at Calcutta University. Though slightly more circumspect than Alberto, Tommy can reliably be talked into participating in most any adventure by his adoptive brother

•Felipe Paulino (RHP) – A small white dog, a Pekingese. Felipe often provides comic relief, but he is occasionally instrumental in foiling the bad guys. Though unable to speak, unlike his heroes Astro and Scooby Doo, Paulino seems uncannily able to understand human speech (especially that of his master, Alberto) and is capable of complex facial expressions.

Milwaukee
•Doug Davis (LHP) – Left elbow tendinitis.

•Jody Gerut (OF) – Bruised left heel.

•Carlos Gomez (OF) – Busted coconut.

•Gregg Zaun (C, man about town, bon vivant) – Some kind of problem with his labia???

**********

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us – if at all – not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men

Oswalt’s wolf had the germ of an idea and presence of mind to tap into whatever it was inside him that allowed him to peer back into time, all the way back to his earliest ancestors. Which is a remarkable thing, and reminds me of something from way back.

We were visiting my mother’s family in western Pennsylvania, and one day several of us kids, my brothers and cousins and some neighborhood boys, were playing in my grandfather’s pasture, firing crabapples at one another. My grandparents had stubby-looking crabapple trees nearly everywhere on their land, so ammunition was readily available, on the vine (unripened and hard) and on the ground (beginning to rot, all nice and squishy.) Then one of my cousins spotted a rather large hornet nest hanging from the bottom limb of one of the crabapple trees, maybe six feet off of the ground. We stood and looked at it for awhile, transfixed. Then we walked off a distance and began throwing crabapples at the nest.

I was 10 years old at most, but even I knew what we were doing, while entertaining, probably wasn’t such a great idea. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before one of my older cousins delivered those hornets a message pitch; some chin music, high and tight. The next thing we knew, hundreds of really pissed-off hornets were swarming all around the pasture, looking for someone to fuck with.

I did not know at the time I was mildly allergic to some varieties of the Pennsylvania hornet, but I was. I got stung on the cheek, about an inch-and-a-half below my right eyeball. Almost instantly, that side of my face began swelling, a welt that eventually grew to softball size. My grandfather slapped some pre-chewed (by him) Red Man on my face, which was fucking nasty. But the tobacco juice drew out a lot of the poison, apparently. It wasn’t long before I was back out in that pasture again, squinting out of my bum eye, and firing crabapples around with abandon.

The odd thing was that just before my cousin’s toss found its mark, sending hornets swarming, I happened to be looking at the nest, and saw a soldier hornet crawling down the side of it. Then the crabapple hit, and I literally watched that particular hornet take off from the side of the hive, spot me, then make a direct line across the pasture for my face and plant his stinger into my cheek. The whole sequence lasted probably two seconds, but to me it unfolded in slow motion, almost.

I won’t forget that day. In a twist on the old WWI adage that you always heard the bullet that would kill you coming, I can say you sometimes see the hornet that’s going to sting you heading your way.

And, I would add, you can always see a certain kind of trouble coming, from way, way off, just like that hornet . . . you can always see coming the darkness that is going to do you in. I indentify so much with that wolf crouching outside Roy O.’s door in my dream, the one with the savant-like ability too see into the distant past; to see, from somewhere like here, straight back down the time tunnel to his million year old great-great-grandfather. I think part of the reason is because I, too, have stared down that tunnel. Not back a million years, maybe; but at least as far back as 1899 or so, to the hardscrabble coal mines and oil fields and company towns of extreme north-central West Virginia. In the front room of a damp, cold company house in late January, 60+ years before I was born, my fate was essentially sealed.

My paternal grandfather, my father’s father, was born on that day in that place, and from the moment of his first breath he had the hellhounds on his trail. I could see the shadow lurking over my infant grandfather, through the time tunnel, from my vantage point here and now. I could see it attaching itself to him, knowing that what it was really doing was setting out to get me in the end, three generations before I was even born.

The demons which hounded my grandfather drove him to an early death. He had started a career and family, but his wife abandoned them all a few years later, I never learned exactly why. The shadow had clearly descended upon him by then. The night he died, two years later in a house fire he started by passing out in bed with a cigarette, his oldest son ran into the bedroom to try and get his father out. But he could not, and had to flee to save his own skin. He watched his father burned to a crisp in the subsequent conflagration, all because he (the boy) was not strong enough to save the day. A few years prior, he had come home from elementary school one day, to find his mother in flagrante delicto, you might say, with a neighbor from down the street. He hadn’t been able to do anything to fix that, either. She left forever two days later.

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

That boy grew up to be a father himself. As a child, in a hot, smoky bedroom with the flames closing in on him . . . in a suburban living room on a bright spring afternoon, he had seen that already he was doomed. He eventually passed on some of the existential blackness in his soul, onto someone he dearly loved, who was too young and naïve to know what was happening, to see whose instructions were being carried out, to defend himself from it. This recipient tried to deal with the darkness he inherited the best way he knew how. He tried to kill the demons outright for awhile, with various killing agents, but that did not work. He tried to think his way around them, to ignore them, to sic Jesus on them. None of that ultimately worked, either. I think he finally realized it was best just to go the way of his friend and mentor, a man called Jim Duncan. Duncan, you’ll remember, was the wraith-like apparition/former U.S. Marshal who materialized out of the heat and dust of some coastal plain one day and rode into the town of Lago, and then systematically exacted from it the most brutal, soul-cleansing revenge imaginable. At one point during the biblical mayhem he induced, Duncan and a midget sat in a tavern, drinking whiskey shots and contemplating plans to ambush and slaughter some people they wanted dead. The midget turned to Duncan and said, “What happens after?”
“Hmmm?”
“What do we do, once it is over?”
“You live with it.”

The demon-haunted boy who had turned into a demon-haunted man looked down a dark tunnel like the one the wolf looked through. Like the one he had seen his grandfather through . . . the innocent baby’s beginning and the drunk man’s end. But this time, instead of looking backward in time, he looked forward. He wanted to see if there was a light at the end of that tunnel for him; which of course would mean he was about to be run over by a train.

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Astros sweep the Brewers, 3-0, vaulting themselves into third place.

THE WEATHER

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