Watch for this profile of Texas bench coach Jackie Moore during the World Series, but don't expect to see the eye glasses of the former Round Rock Manager and Astros bench coach.
We will see a lot of Texas Rangers President Nolan Ryan at the World Series over the next week or so, as we will Rangers bench coach Jackie Moore, Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux, and maybe, if help is needed, of Rangers reliever Darren Oliver. All are ex-Astros who now give their all to the American League champion Texas Rangers. There is another that you most likely won’t see. Former Astros vice president Rob Matwick also now works in the front office for the Rangers.
Over in the dugout of the San Francisco Giants, the shadow of Astros Past also stretches visibly. Giants manager Bruce Bochy is a “once upon a time” figure as a former Astros catcher (1978-80) and the Giants first baseman, Aubrey Huff, is a more recent Astros player from 2006.
As most of you know, the Astros shadow didn’t start with the two clubs that made it to the Series. When New York lost to Texas, we lost former Astro Lance Berkman of the Yankees. When Philadelphia fell to San Francisco, we gave up former Astro pitching aces Roy Oswalt and Brad Lidge of the Phillies, along with their first base coach, former Astro Davey Lopes.
Going back to the four teams eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, we find that every single one these clubs also had some kind of past Astro connection. I’ll give you the ones that occur to me off the top of my pointed head. There may be others I’m missing:
Cincinnati Reds: First Base Coach Billy Hatcher;
Atlanta Braves: Closer Billy Wagner;
Tampa Bay Rays: Pitching Coach Jim Hickey, Relievers Chad Qualls and Dan Wheeler, and former minor leaguer Ben Zobrist; and,
Minnesota Twins: None. The Twins are the only club I could think of that didn’t have a single obvious front office, coaching, or player connection to the history of the Houston Astros. If you can think of one, or any others I’ve forgotten, or overlooked, please post their names here as a comment on this article and we shall add them to the fold.
Baseball is life. Life is a circle. And player/personnel movement in baseball is a great big circle.
POST SCRIPT: A couple of readers e-mailed me that they had trouble accessing the “Instructions for Life” article the other day because of a WordPress insistence that they provide usernames and passwords. I checked into the problem and learned form WordPress Support that some kind of glitch had randomly caused some of our readers at “TPPE” to be treated as though they were entering a private blog area, where that kind of info is required.
That’s not our deal here. The Pecan Park Eagle is totally public, requiring no username or password from anyone to access the articles. If you have any trouble with this in the future, please let me know immediately. Thanks, Bill McCurdy.
Tags: Baseball
The Pecan Park Eagle 
October 27, 2010 at 3:53 pm |
Bill,
Just for the record – Tony Siegle, senior advisor for baseball operations for the Giants, is a former Astros employee. Tony has had a long and varied career in baseball. He worked for the Astros on two occasions. Initially, he served the club in the early years of the Astrodome in a variety of roles dealing with conventions and special events and stadium operations. He then joined the Phillies in a stadium ops role and later moved to Milwaukee in a baseball ops capacity. After John Mullen left the Astros to become GM of the Braves (the end of 1976, if I recall correctly), I hired Tony as AGM. I left after the 1980 season and Tony moved on a few years later, rejoining the Phillies again, this time as AGM. I thin he has served the Astros (twice), the Phillies (twice), Milwaukee, San Diego, the Angels. San Francisco (twice) and Colorado.
October 27, 2010 at 5:19 pm |
Bill-
October 27, 2010 at 5:20 pm |
Bill-
Who is Darren Parter? You must mean Darren Oliver.
October 27, 2010 at 7:12 pm |
Thanks, Bill!
I have corrected my brain-freeze in the article. I was thinking of Darren Oliver and wrote Darren Parter, probably thinking of the old Kansas City catcher, Darrell Porter.
October 27, 2010 at 8:19 pm |
You were probably thinking of Dolly Parton, which would cause anyone to think of two things at once!
October 27, 2010 at 10:32 pm |
That was a five-minute smiler, Mike. Thanks for the mammaries.
October 28, 2010 at 5:57 pm |
Andy Pettite of the New York Yankees also played for the Astros from 2004-2006.
October 28, 2010 at 6:23 pm |
Whoa!!!
How could I/we forget old Astro Andy???
October 28, 2010 at 7:40 pm
Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations Gerry Hunsicker of the Tampa Bay Rays, was the Astros General Manager from 1996-2004 .
October 29, 2010 at 1:10 am |
Jeremy – Thanks for remembering two names that should have been riding the top of our Astro-Shadow list, Andy Pettitte of the Yankees and Senior Veep Gerry Hunsicker of Tampa Bay.
I just came up with another “forgotten” Astro that takes the cake. Rangers Manager Ron Washington finished his playing career with 7 games as an Astro in 1989. I haven’t heard anyone talking about Washington’s Houston connection.