The Pecan Park Eagle

Justin Verlander
Carpe Diem Personified

The Obvious Astros Challenge

For the Astros, Game 2 is a must-win proposition. We cannot afford to go home for the next possible three, down two games to none. That would mean we had to then win all three of our home games for the chance to go back to LA for a 50-50 shot at winning one of those games, almost surely again against Mr. Clayton Kershaw – either in Game 5 at Houston or Game 6 at LA. – The uphill math and the upgrade momentum challenge in all cases would be the same river in which Cubs drowned in their NLCS with the Dodgers. – And, to have no part of it, our Astros Strong guys must win Game Two in LA tonight.

The Obvious Astros Requirements for Avoiding an 0-2 start in LA

1. See the lead photo and save us the words. Our beloved Justin Verlander must again do his Marvel Comics act and stop the Dodgers tonight as he did the Red Sox and Yankees.
2. The explosive Astro bats of Jose Altuve and Company must come to life on the road and stay hot upon their return to Houston Friday night.
3. The defense needs to keep making those iconic plays on the level of Alex Bregman’s “The Throw” and George Springer’s “The Catch” from the ALCS Yankees match.
4. And all “Stranger in Paradise” lyrics from Astro players along the lines of “I’m just happy to be here” should totally disappear. If striking out two or three times against Dr. Kerplunk in Game One last night didn’t cure that disease for everybody then we must hope that Manager A.J. Hinch already has insisted that every other Astros batter also share the breakfast choice of Alex Bregman on this and every other Game Day the club shall have.

We Didn’t Come This Far to Settle for “Wait’ll Next Year!”

“Wait’ll Next Year!” is the most wisdom-vacant loser-compensation post-loss growl in all of sports. If you ask people who’ve been around Houston baseball over the entire course of our 55-year-old MLB experience, they will tell you that every small and giant hill we had to climb to get this far in 2017 is not guaranteed to be there in 2018, even if we seem to have most of the same players ready to go over a road to the World Series that looks pretty much as it did this time.

It’s not. There is no next year. There is only now.

And, if our words are not enough testimony for you, and you still want to hang with “wait until next year,” ask some of the multi-generational survivors of the Chicago Cubs resurgence as World Champions in 2016. It only took 108 years for the Cubs to repeat the journey they previously last made successfully in 1908.

Those who win often seem to be those who understand best that their power to do so only exists now. These are the clubs that “get” that their power to win a championship exists now and that it is never guaranteed to anyone because of who they are. It will go to the club that best uses its ability to seize the day over those things they can control beyond the ability of the other team to resist, and the random appearance of chance events, like a rainstorm,  that sometimes appear as intervening factors in a game’s outcome.

The Latin phrase for this decisive action is “carpe deim” and its literal translation into English is “seize the day”.

Our Obvious Wish

Come on, Astros, seize the day – while this moment of World Series harvest is available to the club that best possesses and uses their abilities to that end.

*********************

Tags: World Series Game 2: Stating the Obvious

This entry was posted on October 25, 2017 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.