Just kidding…
And I had tonight all planned out, too – Husband was so POSITIVE that the Rangers would make little leaguers out of the Cads tonight – I mean CaRds that he promised to deal with kidz/Dogz so I could go to Mama’s and watch the Last Game Of 2011.
But the school nurse called me at 11 telling me that #2 Son had a temp of 103 – kind of didn’t surprise me much because he didn’t throw his usual customary fuss about going to bed last night and he wasn’t real too particular hungry this morning, which isn’t like him. So by the time I got there, convinced them to get me #1 Son as well – you know twins, they share everything but blame – got them to the clinic, got the medicine for their strept throats, Mama had called me to say that the game was called due to possible rain. So it was good timing and yes I know that #3 Son is most likely to get the strept too, but I’m already prepared.
So actually, it is a good bit of luck for me, not just TLR, who has an extra day to find the brains he misplaced a couple days ago.
As for the Cards, Berkman is hitting, but hitting singles and he struck out to end Game 5 with 2 on (shades of Carlos The Jackal for the Mets in 06 – or was it 07 – who cares?). Uncle Albert did exactly nothing with his bat to help the team win in any game except for #4. AND he supposedly called that bizarre botched hitnrun. AND screwed up his fielding, partly causing the Game 3 loss. Not like Uncle at ALL. Only Cardinal player who has been acting like a WS caliber player is Chris Carpenter – and for a few games, David Freese.
Have I forgotten to include that the supposedly ace Saint Looey bullpen has looked bad? Or that Matt Holliday has been awful?
And TLR? The old goat is sounding senile. Really. As much as I dislike that guy, he’s had 2 games in which I swear he was flat out crazy. The bullpen phone thingy – sort of reminds me of the infamous Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” – is almost too stupid to be believed. THREE stupid ass sac bunts, all those leftyelfty rightyrighty thingys finally caught up to him..
The media hasn’t stopped laughing and for once, I agree with him. My favorite, courtesy of Joe Posnanski:
Here’s what we know happened. In the eighth inning, with the score tied, Tony La Russa picked up the phone and asked for Marc Rzepczynski to begin warming up. But here’s where it gets tricky. That’s all bullpen coach Derek Lilliquist heard. But La Russa would say afterward that what he actually SAID was that to get Rzepczynski AND Jason Motte working… he then noticed that only Rzepczynski was warming up. He then picked up the phone and called Lilliquist again to get Motte working. Fortunately, we have a recording of that conversation:
- La Russa: “Hey, I told you to warm up Motte.”
-Lilliquist: “You want me to buy you a yacht?”
- La Russa: “Yes, that’s right, warm up Motte.”
- Lilliquist: “Where am I going to come up with that kind of money?”
- La Russa: “I don’t think it’s funny at all. Warm up Motte.”
- Lilliquist: “You see a swam of dots?”
- La Russa: “Yes.”
- Lilliquist: “Guess what?”
- La Russa: “Hey, man, there’s a game going on here. Just do it, all right? We’ve got a game to win.
- Lilliquist (to Lance Lynn): “Hey, start warming up.”
However, TLR and his shenanigans outdrew NFL football on BOTH Sunday and Monday!!!! So THERE all yew media sportspersons always stating that football is so much more popular than baseball!!!!!!
I know I’m supposed to be rooting for the Rangers, but I just can’t – I just can NOT root for any DH containing team (which is NOT the same as rooting FOR any TLR containing team, mind), BUT I sure am rooting for Mike Napoli. The underdog.
I’ve been hearing about Napoli for a good several years from internet friends who root for the Angels – LOTS of screaming and yelling about how good he is and how the manager doesn’t like him for some reason and prefers to play a guy who hits like a NL pitcher. He should have been the full time starting catcher, yet only caught maybe 40% of the games – had a great bat, but Scoscia, a former catcher who was good defensively AND offensively, for some reason, didn’t like his defense. So he gets traded straight up for Vernon Wells, a grossly overpaid outfielder who, to be nice about it, was one of the worst hitters in the DH league this year. (Now, I most certainly DO remember all the screaming about how the Blue Jays HAD to sign their homegrown star to a mega contract in, like 08, and they did and he promptly proved it to be a stupid signing, but all non-Yankee/RedSox/Phils teams are now under pressure to sign their homegrown FA ready megastars to huge contracts – see Joe Mauer – which usually prove to be a BAD idea. Makes me wonder what is going to happen with Uncle, but I digress…)
Anyway, the minute the Blue Jays get Napoli, they trade him to Texas for a middle reliever, so THEY didn’t think real too much of him neither. Not sure why – he’s a CATCHER – he came up in 06 and had OPS+ of 110, 107, 147, 120, 115. Once more, he’s a CATCHER. He wasn’t Brian McCann with either bat or glove, but he was only slightly below league average in fielding and apparently, there weren’t pitchers who didn’t want to throw to him. The manager just didn’t like him. Odd thing s that the guy the manager DID like, Jeff Mathis, hits like Wandy and isn’t a better defensive catcher. Maybe it’s because Napoli was a 17th rounder in 2000 and Mathis was a first rounder in 01. Stuff like this doesn’t surprise me.
Anyway, Scoscia, after FINALLY getting some serious shtt for trading him away (cmon, you don’t REALLY think it was Reagins’ idea, do you?) had to defend himself and he’s saying stuf like how catching dint come natcherill to Napoli, or some such garbage. Yes, Napoli had a career year, but it wasn’t like he wasn’t miles better than Mathis every other year.
Makes me wonder if Chris Wallace (17th round, 09) tears it up in AAA with bat and glove next year, if he’ll get any sort of chance against Jason cASTRO, first rounder, beloved of Ed Wade, who can’t hit ML pitching.
And speaking of Astros, still no final word on whether us fans have any chance of keeping our team – hope is getting fainter by the minute. And Bud Selig couldn’t care less if no one goes to the ballpark, it doesn’t matter to him or any other owner. They make money and LOTS of it anyway because of revenue sharing and MLBAM. Fans are not important.
sigh
So anyway, here’s hoping that Lance tears the over offn theball tomorrow night, the Cards win and force a Game 7. Just to have 1 more game, you know. Then I hope the last game goes 25 innings and we’ve got pitchers playing center field.
Just for fun….
This whole deal with Jim Crane and MLB gets more amazing by the day. After dragging Crane’s name through the mud and accusing him of everything except being a 9/11 co-conspirator, now all of a sudden MLB doesn’t care about any of that as long as Crane agrees to be MLB’s little b**** and move the Astros to the A.L.
Last year Crane lost to Nolan Ryan for the Rangers; this year Crane is agreeing to make the Astros second fiddle to Ryan’s Rangers both in the A.L. West and in the state of Texas. MLB wins, the Rangers win, Crane gets his first big MLB handout ($50 million!), and everyone else loses.
The scariest thing is that Crane doesn’t seem to care at all about any of the bad press or bad blood in Houston. Just imagine: If Crane doesn’t care about this, what WOULD he care about? In other words, what’s to stop him from pulling a Loria or Nutting and having a $50 million payroll for the next 10 years?
This whole deal is McCourt South. Crane and his 40 or 50 partners have made it clear that all they care about is the money. First they stripped the team (Pence, Bourn) and now they’re selling out, before owning the team for a single day.
Anonymous
Who cares?. The Astros are history and dead as an organization.
TLR is moving Berkman to the cleanup spot and dropping Holliday (and deservedly so..batting well below the Mendoza line..) to the 5 spot. He should be batting WAY lower than that.
I’m really ambivalent as to who I want to win the Series. I want the Rangers to win because of Tony Plush. Then I want the Cards to win because of Berkman and to a lesser degree, Dotel, after the way he treated that idiotic IBB (and he knew something TLR didn’t)
I’m with Lisa. I wanna see Game 6 go 25 innings and both teams run out of position players and Bud the Dud wrings his hands (again) and declares it a tie.
Then the nation can officially laugh at Selig AGAIN.
ann,
sceptor is right, unfortunately.
why on EARTH would crane care about the media in houston? you’ve already seen how it is. why on EARTH would crane care about any sort of bad blood? he’ll get his millions every year in MLBAM/revenue sharing money anyhow. bud is gifting him 50 mill against the debt he didn’t have to pay back anyhow because thats how things are for the very rich.
there would have been a lot of screaming and yelling if this was 06, because the team was still immensely popular and winning, but now? especially after dumping pence/bourn/oswalt for crap – there’s really nothing left to scream about. the timeing was good for buddy boy. the tv/radio guys couldn’t care less about the astros, justice is selig’s little bud (hahahhaa) and the 2 beat guys aren’t exactly famous/joe posnanski amd mctaggart is employed by MLB. who besides me is gonna scream? and i assure you bud/crane/mclane/owners don’t care one bit what i think
loria actually has a great GM and it certainly hasn’t bothered his business that his stadium is empty. nuttings have had an edless stream of suckage GMs and mostly empty stadiums and they’ve made out fine. in spite of the fact that the pittsburgh writers, unlike ours, actually had the guts to say plenty of negative stuff about ownership, who finally hired one of bud’s guys and are supposedly really re-building the team. un-hunh. they got mccutchen, who is obviously going to be a supastah and they didn’t bother to try to get him signed long term as they SHOULD have last year. same stuff different year.
and the pirates have over a 100 year tradition, too – and the fans poured back in the minute it looked as if the team was winning. this will NOT happen with the astros, especially with switching to the DH league
Gerrit Cole a nice draft pick by the Pirates. Would be nice for them to have McCutchen around when/if he arrives.
I *HATE* Tony LaRussa………and I’m starting to hate Lance Berkman TOO!
GO RANGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Becky:)
Fortunately for Crane, he has bought a team in a city with an utterly non-existent news media. The Chronicle has always been a joke — a shill for local business and developers and the city government (naturally intertwined). The television news programs aren’t any different. Add on the fact that the national press doesn’t really pay the city any mind (despite its size and relative economic importance), and what you have is essentially a blind-spot in the public consciousness.
So should it be any surprise that, save for Maury Brown, the Houston Press, and a few bloggers (Mrs. Gray included), hardly any attention has been paid to Crane’s sketchy financial situation? The criminal activity is bad enough, but one would think that being $300 million in debt after the purchase would be a big deal. “Frank McCourt south” sounds just about right. But, again, this is Houston we’re talking about, so nothing is really said, and what is said is essentially a whitewash of Crane’s entire image (typical of the Chronicle).
The only thing that can/will keep him from going full Loria on us is that, in the end, there is actually money to be made by selling tickets. If the Astros suck and no one buys luxury suites and “diamond club” season tickets (and why would you? No one wants to take their prospective business partners to watch the Astros flail about on the field) then a significant portion of the team’s value is diminished. Loria had no incentive to put a good product on the field because seeing Dolphins Stadium (or whatever they call it these days) filled up didn’t benefit him any financially. The Astros will probably still be profitable, even if they suck (though there’s no telling with the Astros. The Marlins made money, but they’re smart), but more money could be made with a good product.
I think the effects of the switch to the AL are overstated. It’s something I hate, too, but peeps will return if the Astros get good again. In the end, they won’t be playing the teams they always played (and that really sucks), but they’re still the disastros.
But that’s only if they get good. It’s possible Crane turns out to be something other than terrible (he could come in, fire Wade, sign a good GM with some real analytical skills, and spend money on amateur players, and I might be convinced in the short term, at least), but I won’t get my hopes up.
It’s a bad, bad time to be an Astros fan.
Oh, and I would like to add that I agree 100% with your assessment of Napoli. I was watching the game tonight and wondered aloud to a friend, “Why in the hell did the Angels get rid of him?” We both couldn’t remember, and settled on it being because Sciosia is an idiot who just stumbles into wins after shooting himself and his team in the foot. That a guy like Napoli is traded for a guy like Vernon Wells *and then a pretty-good reliever) these days is a massive relief. See, it’s not just the Astros who are stupid.
The silence out of Houston is deafening. The Astros are on the verge of being sold to a high-debt group led by an allegedly racist, sexist war profiteer, and the team is apparently on the verge of being moved to the American League, and none of the local news outlets have even mentioned the Astros in four or five days. They’re all too busy trying to be funny on Twitter.
I can’t believe the Chronicle has turned into such garbage. I’m actually rooting for it to go out of business.
By the way, if anyone from Crawfish Boxes reads this, what is wrong with you people?
Over at Crawfish Boxes, they were outraged that the Astros were being moved to the A.L., but then, as soon as the news came out that Crane will be getting $50 million, they were suddenly okay with it. These guys don’t seem to understand that the $50 million is going into Crane’s pockets (or to pay off Crane’s debt) and is not going to be spent for 2012 or 2013. They’re over there talking about Yu Darvish and Jose Reyes and Prince Fielder like a bunch of crazies. With Crane’s $300 million in debt, the Astros will be lucky to afford CECIL Fielder.
From the fans’ standpoint, any blood money being paid to Crane is 100% irrelevant. The commentary over at Crawfish is like being happy that Warren Buffett got a free lunch. Crawfish often gets talked of as the flagship Astros fan blog, but they need to step it up over there. Very disappointing.
Anonymous-AND…….. Crane’s investors WANT THIER MONEY BACK ASAP.
Few people want to invest in ANY company, without a return quickly. No one
understands that it appears. Funny, how invisible Drayton McLane has been lately. He has sold this team to Satan himself, and is skipping town. We fans are going to have to find another team to stand behind, because in two years, this team will be history. Crane will sell it to some minor league organization for
scraps, and he can declare bankruptcy. Simple as that.
I’m happy and sad at the same time. Happy cause Berkman got a RING. So did Dotel. Sad because Old Sunglasses TLR won a fricking World Series.
I think I’ll go drink. Alot.
Eric-I’m right behind you. LORD, I *HATE*,HATE* HATE* the Cardinals.
Becky,
It’s 100 proof Captain Morgan Spiced Rum for me tonight.
ann,
the 50 mill crane is getting will not be going into the payroll and whoever is writing that is crazy. yu darvish??? hte POSTING fee is gonna be 50 mill. crane said FLAT OUT – someone should go back and listen to his press conference – that he was not gonna spend money on the ML team. the payroll is already down to 60 mill. i’m not gonna run down someone else’s blog, but if they are thinking that prince fielder/jose reyes would even GO to the astros, they are crazy. there are clubs that the top FA refuse to go to, even when those clubs are the top bidder – see pirates, A’s. the only “top” FAs who ever came here were clank – and that was because drayton grossly overpaid him and he WANTED to come top this club to be close to his ranch, and pettitte, who wanted to go home when the yankees didn’t make him any sort of decent offer. clemens, of course, was a different story….
the silence is deafening because nobody with any money or power here in houston cares. the chron is not gonna say anything about a guy who buys a lot of advertizing.
becky,
it’s sort of like the obsession over baby lisa and caley anthony – cute, sweet little White girls. you don’t see little latin/black BOYS. you don’t hear nothin about all the beaten/abused ghetto kids. nobody cares.
the astros will stay because every owner makes plenty oif money because of the large income from MLBAM and revenue sharing. as long as they keep the payroll/expenses very low, they can just pocket the profits. they have NO incentive to spend any money. they also won’t go anywhere because they have the stadium lease and bud doesn’t want trouble and his successor won’t neither. it doesn’t bother bud that there won’t be any fans because bud and the national media consider houston a minor backwater little town. that simple. we’re the 4th largest city in the country and are still considered, at best, a “middle” market team
and IF i was a drinking person, which i am not, i would drink to the memory of the baseball team the city used to have – which we won’t have again, most likely in what’s left of my life.
I’m glad Lance got his ring.
I’m sad I’m losing my team after next year.
I’ve really enjoyed the 50 years and I’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Sorry Becky, I guess we’ll be wearing different colors.
As soon as the Astros make their way into the Irrelevant League, I will get off the fence and become a full-fledged Cards fan. I appreciate that the Houston Buffs were a Cardinals affiliate for most of their life, which began in the 1920′s. I have admired the Cardinals from afar for the duration of my Astros years (which have been all the Astros years, plus a few of the Colts years as well).
The Cards seem to have the most devoted fans this side of the Yankees and Red Sox, and have the reputation as the classiest team around. The Astros once traversed into that territory, during the heyday of Bagwell, Biggio, and Dierker (even as those guys were at odds), and Drayton hadn’t yet made any major blunders.
I have no problem at all with Puma going to and thriving with the Cardinals. Who wouldn’t if they had the chance? And his presence only adds to their classiness.
I’m not trying to convince anyone to join me. Heck, I hope I’m the lone Cards fan in this sea of Rangers people. (I’m in Austin, and as soon as the RR Express changed affiliation, the Astros lost their standing on the local sports pages and TV sportscasts in favor of “All Rangers, All the Time.” Didn’t hurt them that they were headed toward a pennant. I just can’t drum up any emotion, favorable or unfavorable, for an AL team. My most memorable Ranger moment was when the fan fell to his death in front of his son, all because of a ball thrown by ex-druggie, new Christian Josh Hamilton.)
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And Lisa, “what’s left of your life” can be awesome. You can write that book that’s waiting to be written about the beautiful memories of a 50-year run in the National League. You can make people wistful about the past and wish they’d paid more attention while the Astros were relevant (yes, even in a 106-loss season). You can make new fans restless about what they have missed. You could rally the troops and rouse the rabble so much that the powers-that-be will realize what a stupid mistake they have made and be forced FIX IT!
Did anyone else cringe at the Google commercial that showed a guy win a million bucks by striking out (“worst hitting team”) Astro Bill “Crawford” Hall on a computer game?
Gee, I think I could have probably struck out Bill “Crawford” Hall this year.
wags- I’ll NEVER cheer for the Cards. PERIOD. However, the Phillies are starting to look pretty good to me! I have family in Dallas (i used to live there as well), and
I wanted the team from Texas to win last night. I wish the Astros had a manager like Ron Washington, I *LOVE* his energy, and enthusiasm! I’m still grieving the
“death” of my beloved Astros. I think you can relate. Becky:)
I got a kick out of RW successfully employing several techniques that were very much non-Moneyball.
Bruce,
The article on the million dollar guy said it took him three tries to get that no hitter against the Astros. And he rated Bill Hall the “biggest obstacle” in the batting order. I mean..BILL HALL ?!!. He chose the Astros because he thought they were the “worst batting team in MLB”
Becky, Lisa,
If the Astros go to the AL…I’m seriously considering the Philadelphia Phillies as my MLB team especially with Pence and Oswalt on that team so I’m with Becky on this.
I’ll miss the Astros..as an NL team though.
Eric,
Come to think of it, that computer game was played in April and used statistics from previous years. Who (besides Lisa) knew that Hall was done by the time he got here.
…and be forced to FIX IT!
Man…isn’t there a grammar check on this thing?
wags-As usual, you make me laugh! B:)