HOUSTON — Damned Astros! I hadn’t intended to watch the Astros this year. When the team changed from the National League where they had been for, forever, to the American I said that is it. I will no longer watch them or like them. I like the Texas Rangers okay. They are American League with their designated hitters. That’s fine. But the Houston of Mike Scott and Nolan Ryan and Larry Dierker and the Killer Bs. They were born National League – the National League of the slugging pitchers and no DLs.
But alas, I fell into the bandwagon. The Astros were contenders for most of the year and they got into the playoffs the hard way, with a wild card berth.
As of this morning the Houston team was leading the series and could have finished off Kansas City this afternoon. And it looked as if that would happen with the Astros leading 6-to-2 at the bottom of the seventh inning. Oh, but the Royals came back in the final two innings to ensure no joy was to be seen in Mudville. The mighty Astros had struck out. KC lived to play another game as they whipped Houston like a rented mule 9-to-6.
It seems most Houston sports teams cannot finish the deal. Maybe some of the Rockets round ball teams are excepted. Maybe it’s this damned humidity that Houston gets from its sub-tropical geography. But it seems those teams always play like hell, only to have themselves passed up at the end and left bloody — in this case on the diamond of Minute Maid Park.
Game 5 starts after 7 p.m. Central Wednesday, Oct. 14, at Ewing M. Kauffman Stadium in KC. The temperatures will be mild with mostly clear skies says the Weather Bureau. Maybe the Astros will remember why they are there. It is for something called “winner take all.”
Let’s not even talk about the American League Championship Series, or, heaven forbid the World “Freakin'” Series. Not yet. But if the Astros get as far as either one, yes, I will be band-standing with the best of them.
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