Cuck the Fubs

Before Hurricane Ike, the Houston Astros were 2.5 games out of the Wild Card. They had won 30 out of the last 40 games and had the best record in the Majors after the All Star break.

With the impending impact of Ike apparent MLB cancelled the scheduled series between the Astros and Cubs and rescheduled them to be played in.....Milwaukee....90 minutes from Chicago. So what was supposed to be a home game for Houston became essentially a home game for the Cubs, and Houston players who had spent the two days prior dealing with a hurricane, no electrical power and having to leave their families behind still in this mess promptly got one hit in two games and proceeded to drop five games in row...essentially eliminating them from the playoffs.

Why couldn't the games have been re-scheduled to the end of the season, much like was done after 9/11?

According to this story...

It was pretty obvious that the Astros were not happy to be playing a home game against the Cubs in Milwaukee last night. They wore their road grays and looked rather listless in getting no-hit by Carlos Zambrano in front of a crowd of mostly Cubs' fans. Many have wondered why the games weren't rescheduled for closer to Houston. Owner Drayton McLane gave a bit of an explanation after the game:

"There was just no other choice," McLane said. "We wanted Phoenix, Tampa Bay, Arlington, Atlanta, you name it. There was nothing else."

He said the games couldn't be played after the season because there wasn't enough time to play all three and still start the playoffs in time to satisfy Fox television.


I have this theory that the root of all evil in baseball can be traced back to Fox. I understand the desire to make these games up as quickly as possible, but to make the Astros play two road games in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane while they're locked in a pennant race is pretty unfair.

One NLDS matchup starts on Wednesday, October 1st while the second starts on Thursday the second. The season ends on Sunday, September 28th. Three games could be played as necessary Monday and Tuesday and the Cubs could draw the series that starts on Thursday the second. It's certainly possible that all three games won't even be needed. The Cubs might not be happy, but they'd probably get over it.

TV and money that's of course what it is always about.

And of course count on some Chicago fans to keep it classy...

Maybe if they spent more time in the batting cage instead of whining about the venue situation they could have gotten a hit before the 16th inning of the series.

Yeah right, maybe if Cub fans and players had spent less time complaining about goats, Bartman and all other assorted excuses for not succeeding they might have won something in under a hundred years. Heaven forbid someone might be distracted because their home is underwater or without power and you left your wife and kids there to go play baseball in Wisconsin. Frecking tool.

The Astros players have had something to say about this as well...

They're upset with Bud Selig, but until now they've done a good job keeping mostly silent. Now, though, the Houston Chronicle has spotted players wearing protest t-shirts.

"We survived Ike," the back of the shirt read in red lettering atop a drawing of the radar impression of the eye of the storm.

On the front, it read: "Bud killed us," over a red drawing of the commissioner's bust.


It's impossible to know what would've happened if the Cubs/Astros series had been moved somewhere closer to Houston or postponed until later in the year, but it's certainly understandable for the 'Stros' players to be upset. The storm was vicious, there are still stories like this one coming out of the Houston area, and the league did very little to accommodate the Astros. I realize that there's not much the league can do, but it seems like they didn't even do that.

The Astros, on the other hand, are doing their best to help out even in the face of the collapse of their playoff hopes. FanHouser and Houstonian Stephanie Stradley just e-mailed me today to tell me that the Astros have donated $1 miillion to the Gulf Coast Ike Relief Fund (a cause that could certainly use as much help as possible ... just sayin'). Because really, missing the playoffs isn't the end of the world and if anyone knows it, it's the Astros.

It's A Post About Baseball!

Yeah, you get to hear my thoughts about the grand game, our "National Pastime", although I don't have the inside poop like Peter Gammons (he said poop!)and I don't have the vocabulary of George Will, I will attempt to explain why THIS would not be a good idea.

COMMENTARY
Astros should consider bringing in Bonds
By RICHARD JUSTICE Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 11, 2008, 12:50AM

Hello, Barry, this is Drayton. Are you ready to be a champion?

The Astros need a left fielder. I know the name of a good one. He’s rested and ready. He’ll bring a buzz to the ballpark, too. He would suddenly make the Astros baseball’s most interesting team.

What’s wrong with having a little buzz? Why should the Dallas Cowboys have all the fun?

Barry Lamar Bonds would be a perfect fit for the Astros. Is there one good reason not to sign him?

No, there’s not. Oh sure, some people don’t like him. These are people that don’t know him, but still.

To say such a thing presumes you know the players on the team now. You don’t know them. You can pretend to know them, but you don’t.

Baseball is a bottom-line business. Bonds would make the Astros better. If Drayton McLane really and truly wants to be a champion, he’d bring in the best offensive player on earth.

Our local nine has been winning. Just as the team is closing in on .500, one of its two best players, Carlos Lee, goes down with a broken finger.

Odd that a guy who has the name of Justice would have no sense of that very thing. He proposes the very thing that makes me not want to root for the Dallas Cowboys. The win at all cost, we'd hire Hitler if he would run over the middle routes and catch the damn ball. To believe him, Barry's not a bad guy...you just don't know him, you don't know any of them so what's the dif?

Yeah, we're supposed to ignore everything we "know" about this guy and hire someone "known" to be a cancer in the clubhouse, hoping that he would magically propel the team into the play-offs when the problem all along has been pitching...but since I don't know Barry, he's probably in possession of a split finger fastball that he's been hiding all these years just waiting to pull it out when the 'Stros sign him to a multi-game contract for Lord knows how much.

I guess when you are a baseball writer and you are required to come up with a certain amount of product over the span of a season, you sometimes scrape the bottom of the barrel looking for something to write about...but give me a freaking break you boob. It's a good thing you aren't the GM, since you're obviously into hiring the aged (at least in Baseball terms) you'd probably give me a shot, I mean I had a 90 MPH fastball at one point and a pretty good curve ball...who cares that I haven't played competitively in a few years, at least I'm not a lying ill tempered cheat...and I'm a war vet, I'd bet that'd get butt in the seats, that and the 15 runs I'd give up in the first inning I pitched. But that makes as much sense as hiring Barry Bonds.

Biggio Gets His 3000th Hit

As a kid every summer we went to see my relatives in Houston and always at least once a year we went to see the Astros. I was going to Astros games before there were Astros...there's a picture somewhere of me as a toddler, in the parking lot of Colt .45 stadium with the Astrodome being built in the background. I was an Astro buddy in later years...the awful melting Popsicle jersey days...the disco years. My summers were spent with my mom most evenings sitting in a lawn chair watching the sun go down listening to the Astros on the radio. Even though they never made the playoffs until I was in college and never made it to the World Series until a few years ago, I have always followed and loved the 'Stros.

For the last twenty years Craig Biggio has been a Houston Astro. While I don't know the man personally, he seems to be a great guy who loves his family and supports the community of Houston. Last night he got his 3000th hit. He's now 26th on the list of major league ballplayers in hits. He should be a shoe-in to the hall of fame. But even though I didn't see it on ESPN over here in Iraq, I'm sure the cynical, hate everything that isn't East/West coast goons had "something" to say about it. They always do...and that's too bad because we could use a few more Craig Biggio's in baseball. Maybe he is past his prime and shouldn't be playing every day, but loyalty is really worth something to some people, and I'm glad the Astros gave him some in return for his. For those of you who might wonder why I blog about this while I'm stuck in Iraq, sweating my butt off...you haven't been listening. Stuff like this is why we fight, but besides that, anything that takes me back to a better time and place can't be all bad.

Congratulations Mr. Biggio. And thanks for the last 20 years.

For the story go HERE
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