Stars 2, Stripes 3

contributed by NeilT

You may not remember me, but I have a sausage stand on Miller Way, right outside the stadium. I sell bratwurst, liver sausage, Slovenian, kielbasa, kolbasch, mettwurst, even Serbian. I have this customer named Bud. I’m sure you remember me telling you about Bud. He’s tall and cadaverous, with joints and bones hung together all loose and jutting. He kind of jerks and writhes when he talks, and hunches over at the shoulders like he’s always bobbing and bowing. When he orders sausage he rubs his long bony hands like he’s washing them under a faucet.

Usually Bud buys my sausage to slip to his friend Houston, but sometimes, especially when the Astros used to be in town, Bud would watch the game from this little portable tv I keep at the stand. This year though he hasn’t watched that many games with me. I guess that’s because the Astros don’t play Milwaukee so much, and they haven’t had a home game in Milwaukee for a while. He still buys plenty of sausage to slip to his friend Houston, so he’s still a good customer.

Frankly, I’m just as glad he doesn’t hang out at the stand so often. He may buy lots of sausage, but he kinda creeps me out, y’know?

Anyway the end of the season here at Miller Way comes early, just like winter. By late September, I usually have a few regulars drop by, but it’s turning cold and mostly I’m thinking about the Packers, especially when the Brew Crew is on the road. But tonight Bud showed up beaming like a car salesman, and asks me if I’ll turn on the Yankees/Astros game.

“Bud, man, I got no interest in that game. Customers see me watching that game and they’ll never come back. Nobody cares about the Astros, and everybody hates the Yankees.”

“But Master David,” that’s what Bud always calls me. I get the David part, David’s my name, but the Master? Where does that come from? Like I said, he may be a good customer, but he’s creepy. “Master David, I have spent my life working towards this night! I tell you what, I’ll pay you $50.”

“Bud, it gets around I’m playing New York/Houston in the stand, I’ll lose more than $50 in tips in one day.”

“$500.”

Now five c-notes is some sausage, and I was tempted. That would buy a lot of ice-fishing schnapps. I hesitated.

“$5000.”

“All right, I’ll do it Bud.” That’s a week’s gross in the sausage trade, a good week, and it’s late in the season. “But anyone comes by we turn on the Brewers-Mets. And you stay in control, you got me? Any problems and you’re out of here, and I keep the $5000.” Of course control at a sausage stand in Milwaukee is all relative. Any other city and I might as well be tending bar at a biker joint, so I made him pay up front. He counted out the notes from a big wad he took from his jacket pocket. I should have asked for more. “And why do you hate the Astros so much anyway?”

“Master David,” Bud kind of whines when he talks, and now his voice sounded exactly like Peter Lorre in the Maltese Falcon, “Master David, I’ve never told this to anyone, but the Astros shot my father.”

I had heard all this before, and I wasn’t going there again. I plated him a big liver sausage on a paper plate with some grilled onions and mustard. He was smiling and drooling like he’d just ate the toad. He started rubbing his hands like crazy, and kind of ticked and jerked like he couldn’t quite bring himself to scratch where things needed scratching. I fiddled with the tv until I found the station and heard Bud humming something as he started to cut up his sausage. He was humming “New York, New York.”

“Sausage isn’t included in the $5000,” I tell him. I got his credit card and ran a tab.

Bud was talkative tonight. He’d never been much to talk, other than saying how he was going to give this sausage to Houston good. But tonight the game was kinda quiet, but Bud wasn’t. He got a little excited in the 4th when the Yankees scored 3. He took the mettwurst on his plate and sort of waved it suggestively, but then he caught himself and put it back on his plate. He looked embarrassed, like I’d caught him at a secret moment.

“You know Master David, I am a humble person. It’s like my mother always told me, ‘we’re humble people, Budiah, and it will never do us but to be anything but humble.’ My mother taught me to be humble, so I have always been the most humble man a man could be.” Bud finished off the mettwurst as Villar made a nice play to end the bottom of the 4th. I plated him a Serbian. Bud kept talking.

“When an humble man like me has an opportunity to speak to a great man like you, someone with so much to be proud of, so many accomplishments and natural gifts, I wonder, ‘what can I, an humble man like myself, ever hope to do?’ But now if you will forgive me Master David, I will be just a little bit, just a very little bit, proud.”

You know what? Even when the Astros were in the Central, I never hated them that much. The weren’t the Cubs or the Cardinals, and in some ways they reminded me of my Brewers, only better. Maybe I liked them more because Bud hated them so much. And most of this game wasn’t bad for the Astros. Except for the 4th, their pitching wasn’t bad. Zeid did an inning and two outs with three strikeouts. Chapman got a strikeout in the 8th. Fields shut it down in the 9th. I think they’ve almost got a trustworthy bullpen. I’ll probably watch them some next year.

But Bud kept talking. “I, along with my friend Grocer McLane—oh no, I could have never done it myself alone, I am far too humble to ever think that—have brought the Astros to this end. Look at them, losing their thirteenth game in a row, alone and friendless in the American League, humiliated, without a comfort in the world. It could only have been better if the game had been played here in Milwaukee, immediately after a hurricane, against the Cubs.” He did quiet down a bit in the 7th, when the Stros scored two runs, but then Dominguez flied out with the bases loaded and Bud calmly put his bratwurst back on the plate. Nothing had happened. “Oh yes, Master David, tonight I am just a little bit proud.” There was a pause. Bud brought a kielbasa to his lips and sucked it down in one wet, noisy slurp. He patted his lips with a paper napkin.

“I am a humble man, Master David, most days I am the humblest man of the world, but tonight I must say I am proud, yes I am, I say it in all humility, I am proud.”

Bud’s gets this dreamy, far-away look in his eyes and he’s not even looking at me now. He doesn’t know I’m there. He pulls this long hard salami out of his jacket pocket and lays it on his plate. “Bud, you can’t do that here. You know I’m not licensed for the hard stuff.” But he doesn’t hear me. He’s a thousand miles away, dreaming about the Yankees and what he’s accomplished. “I’m done now,” he said, but it wasn’t really to me, it was to the cosmos, “I’ve done everything I set out to do. Now I can go home to momma.” He starts sliding his fingers up and down that salami and laughing this quiet wheezing laugh.

***

This is the first season I’ve done a full season of recaps. Last year I did a half-season, maybe 12. This season I think I did 26.

For that you gotta pardon one more moment of personal indulgence. I didn’t know if I could actually write a full season of recaps, and nobody told me they were only supposed to be four paragraphs, so I wrote a bunch more. I did try to make them have something to do with the game that was nominally the subject of the recap, or at least the teams that were nominally the subject of the recap, or at least about me. What more can you ask?

Thanks to the other recappers, BudGirl, Reuben, Ron Brand, Mr. Happy, Sphinx Drummond, for what they did this season. It was hard to look at some of those games even as box scores, much less write about what happened.

Anyway it’s been another long hard season. By next week I’ll be missing Astros baseball. By next spring I’ll be imagining .500. Ok, maybe not. .400.

Early this season I came up with an idea for a recap for the first Friday Anaheim game. It was an extended riff on our penchant for quoting song lyrics, using the worst song lyrics I could think of. For weeks before the game I thought about Disney song lyrics, read Disney song lyrics, collected Disney song lyrics. It all fit because it was Anaheim. The problem was that while it amused me greatly, the recap wasn’t funny. The song lyrics actually worked with the game description. I’m not sure that anyone got the joke I intended, and anyone who read it probably just thought I liked Disney songs. Worst of all was the closing lyric, which actually looked like it had something to do with the Astros and was sappy to boot:

When you wish upon a star

Makes no difference who you are

Anything your heart desires

Will come to you.

I’m still wishing. See you real soon.

Franchise achieves record 108 losses, more to come.

contributed by Sphinx Drummond

What can be said about how shitty this team is that hasn’t already been said? Probably nothing. I just don’t feel like complaining about Crane and company anymore. I can’t muster the energy to bitch about lack of television coverage. I kind of thought that this year would be better than last. Now one can only hope the trend of losing is reversed next year.

It’s hard as a fan to follow a team that has a plan to lose for an undetermined amount of time. As last year wound down, there was the sentiment of the last NL campaign. This year there is nothing but futility and losing.

On the positive side of things the Astros did have a lead for half an inning. Chris Carter got 2 hits and only struck out once in four at bats. Mark Reynolds’ record is probably safe. The Astros also outhit the Rangers 8 to 7. And the Rangers could only keep pace with the competition for the AL Wild Card, as the teams they’re chasing also won their games. Woo hoo!

Thursday is a travel day. Friday the Yankees come to town and Andy Pettitte, in his last career start, faces off against Brett Oberholtzer.

Attendance – 43207
Game Time – 2:42
Temperature – 89

Astros lose final Tuesday game of season, 3-2

Contributed by Reuben

Well, they gave it a good try, but the Astros lost another close one, bringing their record on Tuesdays to 8-16, by my unofficial count. If only we could all just recap the Wednesday games. Perhaps just as importantly, it dropped their overall record for the year to a ridiculous 51-107. Only a 4-game winning streak can save them from setting a new club record for losses.

Peacock pitched a pretty nice game; along with Cosart and Oberholtzer he has certainly been one of the bright spots of the 2nd half, and he looks poised to firm up a rotation spot next year. A couple of dinks and a HR by Beltre were the only blemishes on his night.

Matty D hit another homer, which at the time tied the game at 2. Dominguez seems to homer often on Tuesdays, but I can’t confirm that at this time.

The Astros had some chances to at least tie the game up at 3, getting men to 2nd or 3rd in the 6th, 7th, and 8th innings, but that elusive big hit never came.

Let’s Go Wodan! Fuck the Rangers.

Astrals 1
Subcontinentals 2

contributed by NeilT

People ask me, what was it like? Growing up in Cleveland? Cleveland, land of mystery, exotic, extravagant, elegant, eclectic, it is the city of a billion faces and experiences, Cleveland! And of course there are the Subcontinentals, the baseball representatives of our City, with the stylized picture of the Father of our City, Gandhi, on their caps.

It is also a City of great spirituality, home to all the major religions of the world, a place where individual and community harmony with the great mysteries is intrinsic. And now as a guru I have been sought out by my Houston sishya and asked a very different question: how does your season die in Cleveland?

“Is your season Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, or Christian?” I asked.

“None, I think,” my student from Houston replied. “I don’t think it was religious at all. I think it was just bad. Really bad.”

“Ah then, I will tell you: death of a season is a release, but also a continuation. Death and life are all one, all one. And for both the newly dead and its reincarnation you must use the proper rituals to speed your season into the great cycle. Unless of course your season was Parsi…Is it possible that your season was Parsi?”

“I don’t think it was Parsi. What happens if it was Parsi?”

“Ah then I will tell you. If it was Parsi, then the body is unclean, nasu, and a potential pollutant for future seasons. As quickly as possible you must lay it out on the great Dakhma, the Cheel Ghar–the tower of silence I think you call it–on the Western wall. It is an act of charity for the vultures which roost in the Crawford Boxes. The vultures will devour the corpse in five or six minutes. Nothing will be left but the bones.

My sishya was troubled but answered wisely for one so young. “Most Parsis seem like nice people to me. Like I said, I don’t think this season was religious, and I’m pretty sure it was too bad to have been Parsi.”

So I told my sishya of our secular rituals, the antyeshti, for a Subcontinental season, whether the season was a very good season or a very bad season.

The end of a season is not a sad occasion, for the life of a season ends in death, and the death of a season begins new life, and all is governed by karma linking life to death to life. Only in the very best seasons, the seasons when the World Series is won, will the season escape desire and samsāra and attain moksha becoming all one forever. You do not need to worry about this thing.

As death approaches, you must look to the season’s friends and fans, who must prepare for death by joining with the dying season by chanting the mantras, the win-loss record and team OPS and ERAs. After death, the Astrals corpse must be washed in very expensive beer and wrapped in an orange shroud–I believe it is orange that your Astrals should use? Do not under any circumstances use pinstripes. Pinstripes lead to sorrow.

To further prepare the body the shroud is rubbed with melted cheese product, chopped onions, chili, and fritos. This will help it burn. In Cleveland the corpse is carried in a procession of fans to the banks of the holy Cuyahoga and placed on its back on a great pyre, or just thrown in the river if the river is burning. Do not use mesquite, for the wood is bitter, but hickory and oak are popular, and fruitwood will add sweetness. I believe your holy river is the Buffalo Bayou? The fans and friends must carry the body of the season to the ghat on the River Buffalo.

The oldest fan must bring fire from the Minute Maid temple down to the river. He must chant the wāfakinwā. He must wear only an orange loincloth, and an Astrals cap. You have someone of great antiquity to do this thing? It should be the eldest among you, who has seen this ritual many times and can add perspective, or if he has no perspective he can impose certainty. This elder lights the pyre beneath the corpse, and keeps the flame stoked with unsold tickets. The fire will frighten away evil spirits, and will release the soul of the season to be reborn. If the skull fails to crack, someone must use a bat to break the skull and release the spirit. Do not let Chris Carter do this, for he will surely whiff.

It will take many hours to burn the corpse, and during these many hours the fans chant the holy words, “let’s go Astrals” and “when is the winter meeting?” and “when do pitchers and catchers report?” In the end, there should be nothing left but ash and bones. These are placed into the holy bayou to be carried to the sea. Life will begin anew, and soon the fans will be discussing the 2014 draft and the fifth starter.

There is always hope with the death of a season that the reincarnated season will have a better life, but remember, as written in the Vedas, it is all good pitching, just enough hitting, proper execution of the fundamentals, and good karma.

Namaste.

Namaste.

***

With apologies to Mr. Happy, the Laird giveth, and the Laird taketh away. Laird homered in the top of the 2nd to give the Astrals an early lead, then gave up a boneheaded error in the bottom of the 2nd that ultimately allowed the Subcontinentals to tie the game. This was a game of errors, the error by Laird, then Carter and Krauss with the amazing double error, which allowed Raburn to score. Carter tripled in the 4th but nothing happened. Altuve was caught stealing in the 6th.

Then the rain came. Oberholtzer had pitched 6 innings with no earned runs and the Astrals were down 2-1. The game was called for rain, and the Subcontinentals, thanks to poor Astrals karma, were the winners.

contributed by Mr. Happy

It doesn’t get much better here in Toledo during baseball season, with the Happys here and the Good Guys squaring off against the Tribe down the Ohio Turnpike. What looked early like a Cleveland waltz quickly tightened up as Dallas Keuchel pitched one helluva ball game. He deserved a better fate tonight.

Unfortunately, Ubaldo Jimenez, who has enjoyed a resurgent season under Tito Francona, matched him pitch for pitch. Both starters departed after seven frames with the game knotted at 1. We would get free baseball tonight, as neither team could do anything against the respective bullpens. Unfortunately, one team had to lose, and it was the good guys, courtesy of some Rhiner Cruz generosity in the bottom of the 11th inning. Cleveland took game one of the Happy Series.

However, there’s always tonight’s game, which pits surprising young portsider Brett Oberholtzer against Zach McAllister. I hear that good seats (lots of them) are still available. The Tribe fans should be packing that joint for this overachieving team. It’s a crying, fucking shame.