But I Digress ...

"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Ohhhhhhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come." - "Terrence Mann", "Field of Dreams" (1989) "It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops." - A. Bartlett Giamatti, 1988 "The

I am very unhappy with George Takei. Takei, also known as Mr. Sulu from the original Star Trek TV series, announced on Thursday that he's gay. He has come out of the transporter room most flambuoyantly, citing the influence of the character he portrays in the play Equus as having inspired him to go public. In so doing, Takei has completely stolen the thunder from Sheryl Swoopes' announcement on Wednesday that she's gay. Doesn't seem particularly sporting of George to step on Sheryl's coattails, particularly since six-foot-tall Sheryl can beat the snot out of five-foot-eight George. (But she wouldn't, because he's 68 years old and, you know ... gay.) I was particularly taken aback by Ms. Swoopes' announcement. Swoopes, a WNBA star, is a lesbian? I am shocked -- shocked! -- to hear that there are lesbians in women's sports! Particularly since, 20-some years ago, I was a radio play-by-play man in the women's athletic department of a major un

Congratulations to the Chicago White Sox. If the Houston Astros can't get a base hit off of a tiring Sox pitcher Freddy Garcia, when Astros pitcher Brandon Backe turned in the best pitching performance of his life, then the 'Stros don't deserve to win. But hey, we got farther than the Dodgers, Angels and Red Sox did ... so, now that I've alienated all of my readers, I'm gonna go drown my embarrassment.

The Chicago White Sox have won 10 of their last 11 baseball games, all in the playoffs. They have come from behind to beat the Houston Astros in their last two games, and now lead the World Series 3 games to none. In the process, they have beaten our three best pitchers, who are arguably the three best pitchers in the National League. Now the Astros' World Series hopes are in the hands of ... Brandon Backe? Here's hoping we can at least keep from embarrassing ourselves tonight. Win one -- just ONE, for cryin' out loud ...

Our local radio station just announced that the retractable roof at Minute Maid Park will be open for tonight's Game 3 of the World Series. The retractable roof, last time I checked, is part of the Houston Astros' home field. That's where they'll be playing Game 3 tonight. The Astros wanted the roof closed. That would have been their home-field advantage, which they are supposed to enjoy for Games 3, 4 and (if necessary) 5 of the Series. Major League Baseball, however, doesn't want to pass up their aerial shots of the diamond as provided from the Met Life blimp or the Coca-Cola blimp or the "Family Guy Only On FOX" blimp. So, good-bye home field advantage. Hello, crass commercialism conspiring to once again send a tiny but significant streak of luck the way of the Chicago White Sox. For those of you who aren't baseball fans, you may be asking, "What difference does it make?" Well, when the roof is closed and the seats are full, Minute M

Last night, the Wife and I were at the local big-box warehouse club. The name of it is unimportant, but every time I shop there, the five billionaire Walton kids get to fight over another buck of my money. There was a man in there, dressed much nicer than the typical warehouse club employee. Shirt, tie, nice slacks. He was apparently selling video karaoke systems. I know this because he had a microphone in his hand, and was singing. And absolutely nobody was paying any attention to him. Had he been playing the autoharp and singing "Sureflow, Sureflow" at a medical supplies convention (there's a "Mighty Wind" reference for one or two of you), it wouldn't have been any less pathetic. Lord, do I hope that guy was on salary ...

Boy, do I hate to drag out that cliché, especially after ranting the other day about its overuse ... oh, but deal with it. The Astros are in trouble. BIG trouble. All season long, our closer Brad Lidge has been one of the most feared pitchers in baseball. But he has given up game-winning home runs to two of the last three batters he has faced -- after giving up only five homers in 70 appearances during the regular season. Let's put an even finer point on that stat: since June 1, Lidge had given up only two home runs in his last 47 regular-season appearances. And now in the past week, he's two-for-two. After Lidge gave up the home run to Albert Pujols, Jayson Stark of ESPN wrote : "This year, in the regular season, [Lidge] blew just four saves. In his next save opportunity after those four, his numbers looked like this: 4 IP, 1 hit, 0 runs, 7 whiffs." Well, Lidge's line after his NLCS blown save now reads: 1/3 IP, 1 hit, 1 run. So the big question has become: Does

You saw this one driving up the block, didn't you? Astros lead in the bottom of the 7th, 4-2. Dan Wheeler lets two Sox on base, and with two out, on what should have been a foul ball, the ump ruled that Wheeler had hit Jermaine Dye with a pitch (it actually hit his bat). The Sox cleanup hitter, Paul Konerko, is next to bat. If you're an Astros fan, you already knew how this would end. The new pitcher, Chad Qualls, must not give Konerko anything to hit . First pitch: Boom. I wish I could say I'm disappointed, but the truth is, in a situation like this, you come to expect things like this when you're an Astros fan ...

Just finished playing in the PokerStars Blogger Championship. 1473 of us started the tournament. With 191 of us left, I was doing fairly well, on the button with KK. Doofus across the table, who has been trying to put the entire table on tilt for an hour, calls me all in with QQ. Only two cards in the deck can save him. Figures, a queen hits the flop. Bye-bye, Gary. I don't mind losing poker hands -- it's part of the game. But somehow, it's particularly galling to get outdrawn by the most obnoxious (and arguably worst) player at the table. And it seems that "obnoxious" and "worst" go hand-in-hand oh, so often. It also chaps me when I'm raised all-in by a player who has a worse hand than I do, and he's the one who catches to beat me. It seems only fair that, if he's the one who's going to raise me all-in, that I should be the one to suck out on him . That would be fair. (And if pigs could fly ... well, I sure wouldn't want to be stan

Did they have to go and do it? Last night, the Houston Astros won their first National League pennant in 44 years of existence. Astros skipper Phil Garner looked right into the TV cameras and beamed, "Houston, we have a Series!" This morning, the Houston Chronicle 's banner headline read, "HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PENNANT". Oh, sweet fancy Moses. I'm particularly disappointed in the Chronicle . Think of all the potential headlines that would have made for fantastic round-the-globe repetition: "AT LAST!" "ASTROS FINALLY REACH ORBIT" "GET DRUNK AND SCREW" Instead, we get a re-hash of a 35-year-old panicked understatement from Apollo astronaut Jack Swigert. You may remember it from the movie Apollo 13 , when they gave the line to Tom Hanks because, hey, he's a bigger star than Kevin Bacon: "Houston, we have a problem." Boy, if I had a dime for every time I had heard that line, or a variation thereof, in one medium or an

"Who am I? Why am I here?" - James Stockdale Or, more specifically, "Where the hell have I been?" Glad you asked. I just returned from two weeks of work in Los Angeles. Because I'm self-employed and have to shell out my own overhead (what the rest of the world calls "travel expenses"), I load my days up with so much work that there's very little time for more mundane, but much more fun, tasks. Like blogging. Or breathing. I do take quick time-outs to enjoy the simple things, though. Sunday night was my last evening in L.A. I stood on the balcony of my hotel and watched the beams of the full moon, rising in the east, wash the city with its gentle light, leaving a delicate glow in its wake. Until, that is, I realized that my balcony didn't face east -- it faced west , towards Santa Monica. Then I noticed the complete cloud cover and absence of anything resembling a moon, and I realized that the "delicate glow" was emanating from the ra

Today was a good day to be a Houston sports fan. The Astros smoked, embarrassed, and totally destroyed the Atlanta Braves to win the NL Division Series. (Okay, so 7-6 hardly counts as a shellacking, and having taken 18 innings to finish the game, the Braves may not be the only team destroyed. Good thing the Astros don't have to play again until Wednesday -- Lance Berkman may be sound asleep until then.) Now comes the piece of resistance: getting even with those girly-men from St. Louis who have the bird on their uniform blouse. Last year, the Astros were within one game of going to their first-ever World Series. It would have been the first time in their 42 seasons. Roger Clemens was starting that Game 7. He had been brought out of retirement by the 'Stros for precisely this reason: to pitch the home team into the Big Dance. And ... he blew it. This year, the Astros are only four wins away from going to their first-ever World Series. If they make it, it will be their firs

I've been working in Los Angeles for the past five days. I'm out here for two weeks. During this trip, I was supposed to meet up separately with no fewer than three people, for dinner, drinks or coffee (respectively). Yet once I got here, not one of those three people have responded to my phone messages or e-mails. And of those three people, two of them were established friendships (or so I had thought), and one was a person whose mutual acquaintance we were looking forward to making (or so I had thought). But all three of them have blown me off. I know the problem can't be my breath, since none of these people have been around me recently to be olfactorily offended. I doubt it's my personal hygiene, since I do bathe with reasonable frequency. And unless they heard about my highly-contagious tuberculosis (which I've done my best to keep secret), concern for their health around me shouldn't be a factor. (Okay, I was kidding about the TB. My lungs are actu