Lovin’ Eleven; Summer Nights
Guys, we’ve won eleven in a row.
Can you even believe it? We’ve survived a tornado warning (my iPod told me about it but I still wasn’t prepared for the gross green sky I saw on BBTN later that night), evaded a sweep in Houston (thanks in part to the lucky Pants?), lived through a horrible family tragedy, and here we are, eleven in a row.
Here we are, making a bid for a .500 season. I don’t know where we started this streak as far as the standings go, but we’re 10.5 games back of a fiery Los Angeles team. I’m in LA right now and for the next two weeks and I’ve been cheering on the Padres and Rangers, much to the dismay of my Dodgertown family.
Here we are, 3.5 games back from the second-place Giants (happy birthday, Tim Lincecum!), and as such, 3.5 games back in the wild card, behind six other teams.
Here I am, in Los Angeles, without MLB.TV. I can Slingbox to my TV at home and watch the Astros, but I can’t do that to magically see my Rockies. If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen the disaster that is my hair. The disaster came yesterday afternoon while I dyed my hair and listened to the Rox on MLB At-Bat. Apparently, a tied game results in blue scalp. But my hair is now blue-black in the front (resulting in comparisons to Collette from Ratatouille, which is fine by me). But MLB Network somehow aired two games a few days ago, and I got to watch the first game of the series.
I’m not sure where all this is going. It’s too early to say. But I’ll keep on cheering and wearing my “meet me at the Rockpile” shirt and listening to games, win or lose.
Let’s go, Rockies.
and can you even believe how cute Tulo looks in that picture? ohmigod
In other news…
I planned my whole entire summer around baseball. I scheduled my LA trip so that I’d be home for the Astros/Rox series, and also so that I’d be here when the Rox come to Anaheim in a few weeks. But for future reference, here’s what’s going on:
Sometime this week: Dodger Stadium to see the A’s. And I might wear my Matt Holliday shirt.
20 June: I’ll probably go to PETCO Park. It’s against the A’s again.
27-28 June: I’ll be in Phoenix for this weekend and I’ll be at Chase Field to see the Diamondbacks take on the Angels. Go Angels, I guess.
Somewhere in there, I’m hoping to go to Lancaster to see the JetHawks, one of the Astros’ farm teams, but I don’t know if that’ll be possible.
I also spent a week touring a few minor league teams in Texas. There are five, I think (Round Rock Express, Corpus Christi Hooks, San Antonio Missions, Midland RockHounds, Frisco RoughRiders) but I only saw the first three of that list. It was so much fun–JR Towles tossed me a ball in Round Rock, for example. The Missions game was probably the best because it was only about two hundred people, and the stadium was really cool and the people were super nice.
Finally, move-in day at college is the 21st of August. I’m going to arrive a few days early, and sometime that week I’ll make my first trip to Coors Field to actually see a game. If you recall, I took a tour of Coors last summer, but I’ve never seen my Rox in action there. So if you happen to attend one of the games that weekend and see a girl running around screaming, chances are, it’s me.
Pointless Ramblings:
– Sorry it’s been three decades since I last posted. Twitter‘s so easy that I forget that I’ve got to blog too.
- The pink eye was gone for graduation. Speaking of which…
- I graduated. I got, among other things, an iPod Touch (which has a purple case), a pair of Bose QuietComfort 2 headphones, and Samsonite luggage. Best holiday ever.
- I just spent $3 on the Weather Channel Max app for my iPod. I love it. See? Pointless.
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first image courtesy of UPI Photo
second image courtesy… me
A House Divided; Countdowns Galore
To clear up confusion for the lazy ones who haven’t read about me, here it is in a nutshell. I was born and raised and still live in Houston. I love everything about Texas except the weather, but I’m headed to Colorado in August for college (more on that later) because it’s the best place to do what I want to do–stare at rocks until they speak to me. Natural resources, mining, energy, that sort of thing. I also want to work for NASA, but I digress.
In spring 2007, I fell in love with a young man named Hunter Pence, and consequently I started watching baseball again even though I’d been going to games since I was born. With this new obsession came a Craig-Biggio-3000th-hit chase, and the Rox were in town then. I was intrigued by this new team (they were 39-43 at this point) and followed them as best as I could the rest of the year.
Here’s where it gets tricky. I’m so done with people calling me a bandwagon fan. Yes, I fell in love with them halfway through a really lucky season. But that was July. I am not psychic. No, I did not predict their World Series run. I honestly didn’t expect anything; I just observed that their shortstop was smokin’ and kind of based my later fanhood on that. Let’s be honest: do I sound like a bandwagon fan to you? Would a bandwagon fan still care two years later?
In any case, fanhood aside, this week and the first week of June are going to be tough weeks for me because I’ve got to watch my two teams fight it out against each other. I’m not cheering for this series, but when the Rox come here I’m cheering for them because I’m going to have plenty of other opportunities to cheer for the Astros in person. I’m going to try and get Tulo to sign my jersey shirt, if he doesn’t run away in fear because he recognizes me as “that girl who showed up three days in a row to get a picture and had a big poster.” Hopefully the short red/teal hair will throw him off the trail 
But I always hate cheering “against” the Astros, so I don’t. Cheering for one team is not the same thing as cheering against the other team–it’s the difference between hoping someone capitalizes on a mistake and hoping someone makes a mistake. No ill will here.
In other news…
One hundred and four days. Until what? College, my friend. The picture to the right is me on the campus wearing my 2007 NL champions sweatshirt that cost me sixty bucks. It was an unfortunately gray November day and the grass was nasty, but hey, at least it wasn’t twenty-eight degrees anymore like it was when the plane landed.
As far as other important things go, graduation is in five days and my birthday is in 109. Eighteen days until the Rockies get here. Twenty-nine until I see the Astros take on the D-Backs in Phoenix. Thirty-nine until I watch the Rockies battle the Angels. And I’m also going to some minor league games at some point but I’m not sure when.
Pointless Ramblings:
- I have pink eye. Isn’t that fun? Here’s hoping I get rid of it before graduation or all the pictures will have me looking drunk on the left side.
- I’m still coughing like there’s no tomorrow.
- It’s 100 degrees outside.
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photos courtesy of… me!
The College Bucket List; On Suckage
Graduation is next Tuesday, so last night I decided to do something I’ve never done but really should have–driving all the way around the Loop.
For those of you who haven’t lived in the Space City, “the Loop” is the smaller of our two beltways–Interstate 610 is the innermost (it’s a loop of I-10, “the 10″ for you Californians), the Sam Houston Tollway/Beltway 8 is the outermost. Both of them pass over the Houston Ship Channel, part of the Port of Houston, the second-largest port in the country (largest in terms of foreign tonnage). Anyway, this was my main motivation for this trip.
If you know anything about Houston aside from the fact that our baseball team is terrible (more on that later), it’s that we’re one of the biggest cities for the oil business. The city sits on a base of clays, silt, and sand deposited from rivers that eroded the Rocky Mountains–terrible for city-building, but great for oil deposits. The Port of Houston and the Ship Channel are lined with refineries. And guess what?
Every little refinery looks like a miniature city at night. The picture above is of a refinery on the Ship Channel as Ike rolled in, so it’s not quite the same, but similar. Each tower is lit up like a skyscraper. It’s so close but so small that it’s the same scale as a far-away skyline. It might be true that kids raised within a two-mile radius of the Port are twice as likely to develop leukemia, but you can’t deny that the Port’s got its upsides. Great economic benefits, and a really pretty picture (that I couldn’t take because I had no camera, stupid me) at night.
The rest of the trip was uneventful, except for a little part where the lanes got really narrow and I got really nervous. It was pretty empty out.
In other news…
I’m sure everyone’s already beaten the Manny horse to death, so I’ll leave him where he lies.
Um, the Astros suck. Hunter and Blum’s RallyHawks haven’t really done anything. Admittedly, they won last night, and Hunter scored the go-ahead run, but honestly? It’s looking like another season of fail courtesy of baseball’s stingiest owner, Drayton McLane. That’s our coping strategy–blame everything on the Grocer Man. Seriously, though, this team has some work to do. Lance Berkman is batting .184. Oh my God. What are we going to do? When Jeff Keppinger has the team’s highest average, you know you’ve got a problem.
I haven’t been to a game since April. I had tickets to last Thursday’s game against the Cubs but I had my US History AP on Friday, and I was sick as a dog running a 101.6 fever.
The Rockies aren’t doing too well either, but I’m glad to see Todd Helton batting a nice .337. Tulo’s kinda stinking it up with his .223, but at least the pitching has been on. Has it ever. Ubaldo Jimenez–I knew he was something special but wow, not even I saw this coming.
Pointless Ramblings:
- I have been sick three times in as many weeks. Right now, my voice is pathetic and my ear hurts. My doctor moved to Bellaire and I don’t know if I want to find a new one because I’m leaving soon anyway.
- I have a Twitter. @starrphishe
- I’ve got one more academic activity between now and graduation: physics exam tomorrow. I suck at physics. It should be fun.
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photo courtesy of Reuters
In Memoriam: Nick Adenhart
I knew I needed to post a blog entry, but I really didn’t want it to be this one. I’m not going to lie, I had never heard of Nick Adenhart until this afternoon when my mom texted me during astronomy to tell me what happened. I’m sure I heard his name in passing on Baseball Tonight (sorry, MLB Network, I’m a loyalist), but I didn’t remember who he was when I surreptitiously read the story on my phone.
No matter if we know who it is or not, short-season A or major leagues, the loss of any member of our giant baseball family is a huge one. After all the stories about Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the leg and Pacman Jones being psycho, I can tell you that I would never feel the same about a random football player dying. I don’t know if it’s the whole Sabrina thing or if it’s the fact that one of the teachers at my school also passed away yesterday, but I felt this one bad. It was all I could do not to start crying in the middle of an explanation of active galactic nuclei. I feel like I’ve lost a friend, and I know I’m not the only one.
That’s what this game is about. Long “the American pastime,” a piece of wood and a leather ball have stitched our country together and kept it that way for centuries. It’s worked this way because that’s just how it works. Baseball brought me a great relationship with my dad, it got me talking to random people on Opening Day lamenting about how badly Roy Oswalt was doing, and it’s what made me spend 58 cents to mail an envelope to a guy across the country that I’ll never meet because he wanted a pocket schedule. I love all of you and it’s because of baseball.
May he rest in peace. We should all be praying for his family and friends and that the man who hit him receives justice.
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photo courtesy of Reuters
Game Log: 4 April 2009
The view from section 405 is probably my favorite view in the house. The seats are high up so that I can see downtown to my left if the roof’s open, but I can still see every play made below me. Plus the tickets are $7 up there, but I still spent $4 on a bottle of water (gross Dasani, not even Ozarka, which is so much better).
FanFest was today. Autograph sessions were sold out by 5 AM, apparently, and I didn’t really want to go to any of them. I arrived around 11, and I wanted to go to one of the “Talkin’ Baseball” seminars but had NO idea where they were. For future reference, Astros peoples, please gimme a map or a schedule or something. The only thing I ended up buying was a baseball cube for the ball a UCLA coach tossed me at the Houston College Classic. I spent most of my time on the first baseline.
Dewey Robinson signed, then Tim Byrdak made it over after him. A guy behind me remarked that he hardly recognized TIm without his trademark glasses. Apparently, Tim got LASIK. And by the way, Tim is pretty. I like him now. Then Doug Brocail came over and got a ball to give to a little girl. I almost cried, it was that cute. But then when he gave up three runs to give up a 4-3 loss in the ninth inning, I lost a little bit of the smile.
Chris Sampson was signing, I already had his autograph, so I went out on a limb and asked him if he would take a picture with me. He did. It was awesome. He is just far too adorable.
As usual, met some cool people down on the first baseline. Then I had to head upstairs, but not before I bought some Papa John’s pizza (so much better than DiGiorno–that stuff was never cooked all the way through). Spent the rest of the game in my seat, drinking water fountain water that was so gross I still feel somewhat ill.
We had three errors, all throwing errors. We gave up a game in the ninth. But there were some good plays. I’m not convinced about this 2009 team yet–Pudge will bring a veteran presence to the clubhouse, but I thought we already had that. Russ Ortiz did a very nice job pitching. Michael Bourn got a hit (WOW).
All in all… I’m going to Opening Day on Monday. That’s all I can commit to thus far.
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Spring Training in Pictures #9
Thanks for making me featured blog, Mark 
I kept getting comments from names I had never recognized but I hadn’t actually checked the homepage. Then I figured it out. Took a while, didn’t it?
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The Importance of Spring; Movin’ On Up
First of all, the Astros have won some games. I am shocked beyond belief. Once again, the importance of spring training in the grand scheme of things is easily debatable, but it’s significantly more reassuring to see the boys winning than to see the boys losing.
The Rockies are also doing quite well. Aaron Cook and Ubaldo Jimenez are doing solidly. I’m unhappy that the Rox let Joe Koshansky go, but the Rangers picked him up, so I’ll see him again in May.
Speaking of May, I get to stop going to class in five weeks. After that I’ve got a few AP exams, and then I’m free of high school forever. I don’t know how you guys felt about high school, but I’ve hated it. Private school is a good thing academically, but sometimes the social aspect of it is difficult, especially if you don’t fit in the mold that everyone keeps trying to squish you into, which I most certainly don’t. So I’m looking forward to moving on and moving west.
In other news… (not like I was really going anywhere with that anyway)
I chopped all my hair off. Well, not all of it. About twelve inches. It was getting tangled and taking too much shampoo to wash it and two bottles to color it, so I decided to chop. I’m mailing the ponytail to Locks of Love.
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photo courtesy of the Associated Press
What the Pudge?; Rox 2009 Commercials; For the Record
Well, kiddos, it looks like Ivan Rodriguez is playing for the Houston Astros this season. Aside from the natural fear I have given his somewhat demonic appearance (as evidenced by this AP photo), I’m not sure how I feel about this.
Yeah, it’s good to have a veteran to teach our young catchers what to do. He’s definitely a defensive and offensive standout, though his numbers will decline with age (but we’ve only got him for one year, so that’s not so much an issue). But I’m not sure how helpful he’ll be.
J.R. Towles validated all skepticism that his eight-RBI game in 2007 against the Devil Birds was a fluke. He’s defensively sound but his offense leaves a lot to be desired. On the other hand, Humberto Quintero is average offensively and a very good defensive catcher. Have you ever seen him throw to second or try to pick a guy off first? It’s beautiful. Anyway, we already have Q, and it wouldn’t have cost us $1.5 million.
As usual, I’m up in the air about this. I am reluctant to decide what I think of a signing until I see it play out–basically, I’m too afraid of being wrong. But I’m already leaning towards the not-a-good-idea side.
2009 Rockies campaign:
As most of you already know, the Rockies have produced award-winning commercials in the 2007 and 2008 seasons. Well, this year’s commercials are no less entertaining. Here I’ve got them from least-favorite to favorite:
5. “Staring Contest.” This commercial didn’t do much for me. The end is cute, and I love Spil to death, but really? Bo-ring. Let’s hope the Rox games are more action-filled than this commercial.
4. “Dinger’s Other Job.” Please don’t think I hate Dinger. In fact, he’s the coolest mascot ever (except Orbit, who was the Astros’ mascot back when their uniforms were blue and they were in the Dome). He’s a friggin dinosaur–what could be better? But this is kind of cheesetastic. I can’t help but ask if there really wasn’t a better idea they could have executed.
3. “Athletic Endorsements.” I have always thought endorsement ads were funny. I saw one for a Colorado car dealership featuring Tulo and it was so cheesy that I cracked up and had to watch it a few more times to properly appreciate it. This parody was refreshingly self-deprecatory. I liked it a lot.
2. “Wedding Mound Visit.” The only commercial to have Tulo actually visible–but he didn’t say anything, which is weird, because we all know that he’s the one who initiates the mound conferences half the time anyway. But the whole honeymoon reference really got me. Great concept, awesome execution. Todd Helton is the king of commercials (the Toddfather? I mean, really? Tulo was in that one too, though).
1. “Players Adjust to Home.” I LOVE AARON COOK IN THIS ONE. I’ve always thought pitchers shaking their heads looked a little like a toddler throwing a fit, and in this commercial that’s definitely the vibe I got. Plus, anything with Chris Iannetta in it is AWESOME in my book. Five stars.
In other news…
Wow. The Astros have won a total of one spring training game this year. Should I be worried? Everyone keeps telling me it’s not important–which is legit, because the Astros were first in the Grapefruit league a few years ago and crashed in the REAL season. I guess if our good guys are doing well in the small amount of playing time they get, then that’s good.
The Rox, by the way, are doing pretty damn well for their whole losing streak thing. Way to bounce back, boys.
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Spring Training in Pictures #8
I swear to GOD I have a blog entry about the Rox’ 2009 commercials in the works. I’ve also been doing a lot of flipping out about THE Bones spoiler. Ordinarily I don’t do spoilers, but a friend of mine thought I did and told me anyway. Growlllll.
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Spring Training in Pictures #7
) getting pictures from their heroes, about millionaires being reminded of what they’re playing for–the fans and the joy of the game.
It’s much too cute.
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starrphishe
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