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Bill Gilbert: Astros Complete Surprising Season

October 29, 2015

Baseball Analyst Bill Gilbert's Final Look at the 2015 Season of the Houston Astros.

Baseball Analyst Bill Gilbert’s Complete Look at the 2015 Season of the Houston Astros.

Astros Complete Surprising Season

By Bill Gilbert

The Houston Astros were expected to make a modest improvement in 2015 over their 70-92 record in 2014. Did anyone expect them to still be playing on October 14 and to be playing after the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Yankees had been eliminated and sent home? Would anyone have guessed that they would win more games than the Washington Nationals who were picked by some to win 100 or more games? The end wasn’t pretty but it didn’t seriously detract from a successful season.

Getting to the top in Major League baseball is tough, especially from the depths the Astros reached in the forgettable 2011-2013 seasons. It can be viewed as a seven step process and the Astros took several steps in 2015.

Step 1 – Field a competitive team. CHECK. 139 days on top of the American League West Division.

Step 2 – Turn in a winning record. CHECK. 86-76 record in 2015.

Step 3 – Claim a Wild Card berth in the playoffs. CHECK. One game ahead of Los Angeles Angels.

Step 4 – Win the Wild Card play-in game. CHECK. 3-0 vs. Yankees.

Step 5 – Win a Division Series. Wait till next year.

Step 6 – Win a League Championship Series. See Step 5.

Step 7 – Win the World Series. See Step 5.

The Astros improvement in 2015 was due to several factors. In 2014, the Astros performance was below average in virtually every significant category. However, in 2015, the Astros were above average in most categories due to:

The further development of young players like George Springer, Lance McCullers, Vince Velasquez and Preston Tucker and especially the arrival of potential superstar, Carlos Correa,
The off-season acquisition of veterans Evan Gattis, Colby Rasmus and Luis Valbuena (each reaching the 25 home run mark), and
Most significantly, a major improvement in the bullpen.

Here are the numbers:

ASTROS HITTING	2014	2015
Batting Average	.242	.250
OBP	.309	.315
SLG	.383	.437
OPS	.692	.752
Runs/Game	3.88	4.50
Home Runs	163	230
Stolen Bases	122	121
Strikeouts	1,442	1,392

Hitting Chart Comments by Bill Gilbert:

Batting Average: Better, but below MLB average of .254.

OBP: Better, but below MLB average of .317.

SLG: Big jump to #2 in MLB. MLB 2015 average was .405.

OPS: MLB average was .721. Houston #2 in 2015.

Runs/Game: Big improvement. Houston #6 in 2015.

Home Runs: In 2015, only Toronto hit more (232).

Stolen Bases: Houston #3 in BLB; #1 in AL in 2015.

Strikeouts: Better in 2015, but still too high.

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ASTROS PITCHING	2014	2015
ERA	4.11	3.57
WHIP	1.34	1.20
Runs/Game	4.46	3.81
Starters ERA	3.82	3.71
Relievers ERA	4.80	3.27

Pitching Chart Comments by Bill Gilbert:

ERA: 6^th in2015 MLB vs. 25^th in 2014.

WHIP: 5^th in 2015 MLB vs. 25^th in 2014.

Runs/Game: 6^th in MLB vs. 24^th in 2014.

Starters ERA: Ranked 8^th in 2015 MLB.

Relievers ERA: Big key to tam’s success.

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Gilbert Comment on Defense: The Defensive Runs Saved Above Average was much improved ascending from “-15” in 2004 to “+38”, and a MLB rank of #3 in 2005.

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General Conclusions

The Astros in 2015 ranked among the MLB leaders in power, speed, pitching and defense, suggesting that their rise was not a fluke and may be sustainable. Unfortunately, the strong performance was not continued in September when the pitching, especially the bullpen collapsed, allowing 4.88 runs per game compared to the full season average of 3.57. The offense in September was even stronger than the full season average with 4.78 runs per game vs. 4.50. The result was an 11-16 record for the month, the only losing month of the season. This, combined with the 18-10 record by the Texas Rangers in September resulted in the Astros finishing two games behind the Rangers after leading the AL West Division for the first five months. However, the Astros recovered to win six of their final eight games to claim the second wild card.

The Astros compiled some noteworthy individual accomplishments in 2015. Jose Altuve collected 200 hits for the second straight year and again led the AL in stolen bases with 38 while batting .313 with an on-base percentage (OBP) of .353. Springer led the team in OBP with .367 and Correa led in slugging average with .512 and in on-base plus slugging (OPS) with .857 and is a leading candidate for AL Rookie of the Year. Five players hit over 20 home runs, led by Evan Gattis with 27 who also led in RBIs with 88. Eleven players hit over 10 home runs, tying a major league record. Chris Carter struggled at the plate through the first five months before coming up with some key hits in September but still lost his season-long battle with the Mendoza Line (.199).

On the pitching side, Dallas Keuchel had an outstanding year (20-8, 2.48 ERA with 216 strikeouts) and is a strong candidate to win the AL Cy Young Award. Collin McHugh followed up his strong 2014 season with 19 wins in 2015. Luke Gregerson recorded 31 saves in his first year as a closer and relievers, Will Harris (1.90) and Tony Sipp (1.99), compiled ERAs under 2.00.

Another factor that bodes well for the future is the strength of the minor league system. The Astros’ seven top minor league teams all had winning records and made the playoffs in their leagues. Triple-A Fresno won the Pacific Coast League championship and also won a one-game playoff against the champion from the Triple-A International League. Four minor leaguers were promoted to the majors during the 2015 season and made positive impacts and six others were traded to upgrade the major league team. The Astros had a strong draft in 2015, selecting three players considered by many to be among the top ten players available.

The Astros still have some holes to fill. They need a hard-throwing relief pitcher that can get strikeouts in key situations. They need a further upgrade in on-base skills and to cut down on rally-killing strikeouts. The back end of the starting rotation could also be improved.

The success achieved in 2015 is not guaranteed to continue in 2016. Many major league teams have enjoyed a surge like the Astros only to fall back the following year. After starting the 2015 season 17-8, the Astros were a mediocre 69-68 the rest of the way. However, with youth on their side, there should be room for improvement and the Astros should be positioned to be contenders for the foreseeable future.

Bill Gilbert

10/28/15

billcgilbert@sbcglobal.net

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10th Inside-The-Park HR in World Series History

October 28, 2015

Patsy Dougherty of the Boston AL club hit the 2nd inside-the-park HR in Game 2 of the first 1903 World Series. It also was the first one to lead off a World Series game until Alcides Escobar led off Game 1 of the 2015 World Series in the same way.

Patsy Dougherty of the Boston AL club hit the 2nd inside-the-park series HR in Game 2 of the first 1903 World Series. It also was the first one to lead off a World Series game until Alcides Escobar led off Game 1 of the 2015 World Series in the same way.

It had not happened since 1929, but Alcides Escobar of the Kansas City Royals took care of that little drought in the always changing style and history of baseball by hammering a carom shot off the left field that then took a pool table bounce off the left leg of New York Mets center fielder Yoenis Cespedes, leaving the area on a straight and fast roll into the abandoned left field corner due to the presence of left fielder Michael Contorto being now in the company of Cespedes as both pursued the ball in the area of left center from which the latter’s inadvertent kicking assistance effectively made the ball unplayable. The speedy Escobar rounded the bases swiftly and standing up as the list of men who have done this now very rare feat in the World series increases to only ten (10) in total numbers.

INSIDE-THE-PARK HR IN WORLD SERIES HISTORY (1903-2015)

Date	Gm #	Player	Team	Opponent
October 1, 1903	1	Jimmy Sebring	Pittsburgh Pirates	Boston Americans
October 2, 1903	2	Patsy Dougherty	Boston Americans	Pittsburgh Pirates
October 13, 1915	5	Duffy Lewis	Boston Red Sox	Philadelphia Phillies
October 9, 1916	2	Hy Myers	Brooklyn Robins	Boston Red Sox
October 11, 1916	4	Larry Gardner	Boston Red Sox	Brooklyn Robins
October 10, 1923	1	Casey Stengel	New York Giants	New York Yankees
October 3, 1926	2	Tommy Thevenow	St. Louis Cardinals	New York Yankees
October 7, 1928	3	Lou Gehrig	New York Yankees	St. Louis Cardinals
October 12, 1929	4	Mule Haas	Philadelphia Athletics	Chicago Cubs
October 27, 2015	1	Alcides Escobar	Kansas City Royals	New York Mets

Some things are easy and worthy of note:

50% of the 10 World Series inside-the-park homers happened in the dead ball era, between 1903 and 1916, when many of the few homers in general happened when ball got passed fielders in those parks that had fences some 500 feet from home. Not sure of the circumstances on these specific homers, but distant fences and balls that cleanly escaped for good rolls beyond the outfielders is the “usual suspect” in these cases.
Were these type homers unusual back in those days? Well, homers were unusual, but the fact that many of those that did happen were of the rolling too far away to be playable type, my best answer tonight is “probably not so much”. I don’t have the stats on hand to support that assumption.
The fact that two of these “insiders” occurred, one each, in the first two games of the first 1903 World Series speaks in support of their fairly more common occurrence in that early era and baseball culture.
Casey Stengel of the 1923 New York Giants and Lou Gehrig of the 1928 New York Yankees are undoubtedly the two most famous names on this record list. Stengel’s 1923 inside-the-park job against the Yankees at Yankee stadium is loaded with irony and venue coincidence. His running homer also was the first HR of any kind to be struck in a World Series at the new original Yankee stadium during its first year of operation.
90% of all the World Series inside-the-park homers were in the record can by 1929. Tonight’s 10%er by Escobar is 86 years late to the celebration group table.
In baseball, it’s wise to remember a couple of things beyond, but including Yogi’s “it ain’t over til it’s over”: (a) Never buy into the idea that’s you seen it all; and (b) Never say that anything rare you know about in baseball can never happen again. Patsy Dougherty got his inside-the-park World Series at lead off Game 2 of the very first 1903 Boston-Pittsburgh match. It only took Patsy Dougherty one day to follow Jimmy Sebring of Pittsburgh, who got the first “insider” during the first World series Game ever. It then took 112 years for Alcides Escobar to repeat that even rarer feat tonight of getting an inside-the-park homer to lead off a World Series game.

Patsy Dougherty (L) did it first in 1903. Alcides Escobar did it second in 2015. – Both are the only men to lead off a World Series game by hitting an inside-the-park home run. Eight others also have hit “insiders” in the World Series, but not as the lead off batter in their games.

How wonderful this game is, no matter who wins. Leave it to baseball to bring us the refreshment of the unexpected event.

Out of curiosity, one has to wonder. If someone had wanted to put $100 of “mad money” down in Vegas that the first batter in the 2015 World Series was going to hit an inside-the-park home run tonight, we wonder what the odds and payoff might have been?

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A Slo-Mo Look at an Ordinary Unearned Run

October 27, 2015

BUGS SAYS: “No games, innings, or plays are ever exactly the same. – Remember that top of the 8th the Royals had against our Astros in Game 4 of The 2015 ALDS?”

The following play has nothing to do with Game 4 of the 2015 ALDS played at Minute Maid Park between the Houston Astros and the Kansas City Royals. I just happen to get a little sentimental this time of the year over the ordinary stuff we begin to take for granted that we will be seeing everyday. It’s only when the doors of a season begin to close that we come to the realization that we will now have to get by with replays of the mind until spring and real baseball make their welcome return. It also makes me realize today that, when Rogers Hornsby once said that he spent the winters staring out the window and waiting for spring, that he probably was spending much of that “staring” time harboring thoughts like the following:

Images of an Exciting and Fairly Rare Play …

The runner on first got there with a 9th inning, visiting team, first-hitter-up opposite field dink single to right that landed like a skipping duck on the pond of waving too-tall grass. The score at the time was 2-2.

The next man up, a lefty, took a couple of low and outside fastballs as the speedy runner at first danced away and back to the bag like a feline on catnip – and one with little fear of overweight right-handed starting strikeout pitchers who rarely threw to first in these instances. An attempted theft of second was expected on the next pitch by the anxious, booing crowd of 30,000.

As the next pitch was being loaded for launch and the rules governing “balk” had kicked into place, the runner on first took off like a sprinter in a 100 meters track and field event.

Another low and outside speed ball was the next offering. It could have continued into the dirt for either ball three or a passed ball, but a bunt-poking bat intercepted its down and heading out path on a mobile trajectory that suddenly sent it hopping much more slowly on a bouncing trek down the third base line.

The runner was already rounding second as the third baseman raced in to bare-hand the dying movement of the no longer bouncing bunt no more than ten feet from home. The runner and the shortstop, who did have the benefit of a head start, now shared a mercurial race to the uncovered presence of third base – as the second baseman hustled to cover his own namesake bag – and the pitcher arched over to helplessly watch the play on the bunt and the left-handed first base guy raced to his bag in anticipation of a throw on the bunt attempt. The too thick-legged bunting, now running, batter hauled ass to first. The wise old catcher stayed home.

Frantic could have been the name for this moment.

The third base man wheeled on his right foot as he quickly grabbed the now inert ball and flung it back across his falling-to-the-right body on a new, more aerodynamic course in the general direction of first base. The not so speedy runner there was still quite “gettable,” but the thrown ball had taken a slicing course – and was moving in the general direction of the stands – to a spot that only an initial base man named “Plastic Man” could have converted into a routine force out at first.

The runner now at third and his coach see the flight of the throw and use less than a nanosecond on betting that the way home is now clear. The speedster makes the turn and heads for the plate and the lonely catcher who awaits him as probably little more than a close up witness to the last thing the homies want to see – a man scoring from first on a bunt to third. – The pitcher finally notes the low probability of what he sees little chance for happening – and he jogs behind the catcher for an improbable play at the plate on the front-runner.

To the surprise of no one, the slicing bunt throw bounces off the first base stands rail and bounds on down the right field line. The right fielder makes a perfunctory charge in it its direction, but it is of no use. The runner from first has waltzed home to give the visitors a 3-2 lead. The wide-legged bunter has reached first safely. The visitors will continue batting with a runner on first, no outs, and a one-run lead in the top of the sixth.

“E-5” is the official scorer’s ruling on the play. His rationale? A good 5-3 out play throw was possible and would have gotten the bunting runner – and prevented the run from scoring.

Oh well, starting tonight, the 2015 season still has the World Series to offer – and then we will only be able to see plays like the one just described in our memories, our imaginations, and our computer-simulated baseball hobby games.

Thanks for your indulgence today, everybody. I’m just getting the hot stove ready for the off-season in the most basic of ways – by recreating one of thousands in the scenarios that have filled our minds as actual plays we’ve seen many times over in the course of our rich lifetimes as baseball fans.

Question of the Day: Can your mind come out to play? If so, we’ll be here. In the sandlot of the mind. Just waiting for you to show up.

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Who Cares Who Wins The World Series?

October 26, 2015

George Brett (with the same expression he expressed during Game 6 of the ALCS)

George Brett
(with the same expression we saw in Game 6 of the ALCS)

Who Cares Who Wins The World Series?

1.) Players, Fans, and Employees of the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets.

2.) Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred. (He’s paid to care, as long as he remains impartial.)

3.) George Brett.

4.) Some fans of the eventual winner, if that team is the same one that knocked their own club from the playoffs because it gives them the satisfaction of feeling that their boys, at least, lost to the one team that won it all. (Had the Cubs advanced to the World Series, however, it is most improbable that any Cardinals fans would have been pulling for the baby bears to win it all.)

5.) George Brett.

6.) Revenge fans of those clubs who were eliminated by one of the two World Series teams. Unlike their polar opposites who wish to take consolation in knowing that their team lost to the eventual World Series winner, these fans want somebody to vicariously revenge their own suffering by beating up on the club that knocked their favorites from the hunt.

7.) George Brett.

8.) Hotels and relevant service and product industries do not really care who wins. They are just hoping that a lot of people show up and that the World Series runs a full seven games.

9.) NOT – The Pecan Park Eagle!

Editorial Note: Yes, George Brett did receive three mentions in our list of those who care about this year’s World Series. We gave him one listing for each of the three times the TV cameras in Game Six spotted him in his private suite, checking either his pulse or holding his heart during certain tense times in Game Six of the ALCS battle. . Regardless of our current personal dearth of interest, we will be sure to watch, anyway. After all, it is the World Series – and it will be our last lingering taste of professional baseball until next April.

Stay dry, everybody!

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Please Note Too: Important Vintage Base Ball News! The weekend rains wiped out plans for Opening Day of the new Texas Vintage Base Ball Union at George Ranch State Park last Saturday, but, weather permitting, we will make another attempt at the same site on Saturday, November 7, 2015, with for games, two each at 10:00 AM and 12:00 PM. Please put us on your schedule and come see how “base ball” was played without gloves and a few different rules back in 1860.

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Bill Gilbert: 2015 Playoff Observations, Part 2

October 26, 2015

Baseball Analyst Bill Gilbert’s Second Comments on the 2015 MLB Playoffs.

Playoff Observations – 2015, Part 2.

~ All four of the LCS teams have blue as the dominant color.

~ Is Daniel Murphy really this good?

~ Why isn’t Mark Buehrle on Toronto’s playoff roster?

~ Ben Zobrist has had an excellent major league career, none of it with the team that originally drafted and signed him – the Houston Astros.

Haircut # 1
Josh Donaldson
Toronto Blue Jays

~ Josh Donaldson has a strong case for AL MVP. He would also have a strong case if there were an award for “worst haircut in the post season playoffs.” *

~ The Mets collection of young power pitchers is scary.

~ Whatever happened to close games?

Bill Gilbert

10/24/15

billcgilbert@sbcglobal.net

Haircut (?) # 2
Colby Rasmus
Houston Astros

* TPPE Editor’s Note: We do have to ask, Bill. Did you forget about the haircut of our Astros own Colby Rasmus in your arrival at this particular observation? – If you ruled out Colby’s coif on the basis that his hair style has nothing to do with haircuts, we will understand.

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Saturday Night Fever – An Elder Version

October 25, 2015

“WE’LL BE BACK!”

The Pecan Park Eagle is a little “stove-up” this Saturday night, but it’s mostly mental. we were all in gear to start the first league play season of our new Texas Vintage Base Ball Union at George Ranch State Park today, but we had to escape the fate of all the strangling toads by putting an early cancellation of our plans due to heavy rain and common sense. We will try again in two weeks to crank up 0ur 1860s base ball loop with four game at 10:00 AM and 12:00 PM – also at GRSP. So, stay tuned and please come join us.

The other contributing funk factor is the failure of the Toronto Blue Jays last night to force the home boy Kansas City Royals into a Game 7 tonight when speedster Lorenzo Cain scored from first (ala Enos Slaughter) on single to right by Eric Hosmer in the bottom of the 8th that would hold up as the difference-maker in a 4-3 Royals game and ALCS pennant victory. It would have been fun to watch a Game 7 tonight and a nice alternative to the prattle sound of rain against the windows and the deluge of college football on TV.

The vintage base ball rain out did allow me to watch my UH Cougars paste Central Florida, 59-10, at 11:00 AM today, but I had set that one to DVR the one-sided slaughter it turned out be, anyway. So, I could have lived to have watched it in that form as planned. You may have to be another long-suffering Cougar alum or fan to get this one, but I almost regretted that UH had not been forced to rally for a one-point win. Had that been the reality, it might be easier for the fat cat schools to see that our great new head coach, Tom Herman, is not really enough like “God” to be worthy of their imminent coach-poaching efforts. Herman just needs to understand that awakening the sleeping giant of UH support is going to take more than a 7-0-0 start against almost all lesser light names and a history of good coaches leaving to earn back the interest and trust of the thousands who fell away with the shaft ride UH took from the “Big 12” after the death of the SWC. Returning to campus for home games did help, but the successive losses of head coaches Art Briles and Kevin Sumlin simply set the table for people to distrust our UH future and to make it easy for many to stay away from the “George Southern” level teams that began to appear on our UH home game schedule like back yard toad stool mushrooms. As a realist, I will concede this much: UH needs to use its political support to get into a major conference and also to develop a financial plan for becoming competitive with any of the big name schools who come after our winning coaches like hungry wolves.

UH is moving boldly forward as a Tier One academic university, one that is only now in the earlier stages of its growth as a research university. It also is only a short while away from having its own medical school. And its forays into the creative and performing arts already are widely regarded. UH is no longer the “Cougar High” that simple minds and rivals have perceived it to be in derision forever. – We are – The University of Houston – a force to be reckoned with in all the positive ways that are possible as one of the State of Texas and City of Houston’s great contributions to the world – and we have no intention of leaving our future as a top level intercollegiate athletic program in the hands of UH haters and naysayers.

It’s up to us UH people. We know that. Just do us the favor of not trying to bury us while we are working to dig our way out of the cultural hole (everything we just spoke about above) that has created a level of correctable distrust and lack of support among some UH alums that has been fomenting for almost two decades and the collapse of the Southwest Conference. Remember too – the future belongs to our young people – and UH is now involving and graduating thousands of domestic and international students who follow their Cougars as zealously as any of the other state school groups do during their own teams during undergraduate days. – Those young people are our future too! – And thanks for allowing me to rant about them. It may not be mutual, but I love their company at UH home games. Just being around them renews a wildfire of UH hope!

Eat ‘Em Up, Cougars!

And way back to baseball for a final thought that simply went frittering out of a memory closet that just opened of its own accord. Many of you will remember a great power hitting first baseman for the Boston Red Sox named Dick Stuart. His high HR totals and low batting marks might have made him a natural for the 2015 Astros, except for one major failing that might not have slipped past the club brass. Stuart was a terrible fielder. – Now hold that last thought because it is essential as the set up to this actual story:

As I recall it, Dick Stuart was being honored at a post-1963 season dinner in Boston for the 42 homers he blasted that season. It was an event attended by many of his teammates. – While he was at the podium, Stuart wanted to extend some “stood by her man” credit and appreciation to his wife.

“You know the story, folks,” Stuart began. “Behind every good man there’s a good woman.”

“Yours better have a glove,” one of his Red Sox teammates shouted.

It was the best line of the evening after the laughter finally subsided.

And it is the last line of this much quieter evening too.

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Tags:Saturday Night Rambles
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Expansion Clubs in the World Series

October 24, 2015

The 1962 expansion club New York Mets lost 120 games. - Who could have dreamed back then that 7 years later they reach and win the 1969 World Series?

The 1962 expansion club New York Mets lost 120 games. – Who could have dreamed back then that seven years later they (with different players, for sure) would reach and win the 1969 World Series?

The following chart displays the record of modern era expansion clubs in the World Series through 2014. Interesting to note too, no matter who wins the ALCS (which is now early in Game Six at this writing), is the fact that no matter who wins between two the battling AL former expansion teams, that 2015 will mark the first time in modern World Series history that two contemporary expansion clubs shall meet in World Series play. As you know the NL Mets are already there – and awaiting either the Royals or Blue Jays. – Up until now, it’s always been one of the “since 1961” clubs versus one of the original turn of the century 16 clubs that were the MLB for slightly better than the first fifty years of the 20th century.

The Modern Era Expansion Club Record in the World Series, 1969-2014:

YEAR	CLUB	FOE	RESULT	SCORE
1969	METS	ORIOLES	WON	4-1
1973	METS	ATHLETICS	LOST	3-4
1980	ROYALS	PHILLIES	LOST	2-4
1982	BREWERS	CARDINALS	LOST	3-4
1984	PADRES	TIGERS	LOST	1-4
1985	ROYALS	CARDINALS	WON	4-3
1986	METS	RED SOX	WON	4-3
1992	BLUE JAYS	BRAVES	WON	4-2
1993	BLUE JAYS	PHILLIES	WON	4-2
1997	MARLINS	INDIANS	WON	4-3
1998	PADRES	YANKEES	LOST	0-4
2000	METS	YANKEES	LOST	1-4
2001	D’BACKS	YANKEES	WON	4-3
2002	ANGELS	GIANTS	WON	4-3
2003	MARLINS	YANKEES	WON	4-2
2005	ASTROS	WHITE SOX	LOST	0-4
2007	ROCKIES	RED SOX	LOST	0-4
2008	RAYS	PHILLIES	LOST	1-4
2010	RANGERS	GIANTS	LOST	1-4
2011	RANGERS	CARDINALS	LOST	3-4
2014	ROYALS	GIANTS	LOST	3-4

Obviously, no true expansion club ever had the talent to reach a World Series in their first year of existence. The “Amazin’ Mets” of 1962 needed seven additional seasons to evolve into the first of their kind to reach a World Series – and then to become the first to win the 1969 reiteration of our big moment in every baseball season with a collection of incredible plays and “amazin” good fortune that were straight out of a classic early 1950s baseball movie starring Paul Douglas. – Remember “Angels in the Outfield”?

Here’s a link that will allow you to play with the data to your individual heart’s delight:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Series_champions

There are still a handful of clubs awaiting their first turn at the big wheel – and you may also wish to use the linkage data to chart how long it took each of the clubs who did get there to reach baseball’s Valhalla the first or only time.

Allow me to make an amendment to that Valhalla metaphor from an Astros fan perspective. It’s not “Valhalla” if your club lost its only time there – and didn’t so much as win a single game in the process.

Have fun!

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The Texas Vintage Base Ball Union is Here

October 23, 2015

Manager Bob Copus of the Barker Red Sox models his club's nifty looking 19th century uniforms. All four of our clubs dress for the games as though they just stepped out of a time machine.

Manager Bob Copus of the Barker Red Sox models his club’s nifty looking 19th century uniform. All four of our clubs dress for the vintage games as though they just stepped out of a time machine.

Nothing lives for long until its time comes, but it now looks as though the time has come for vintage base ball, an ancient 1860 rules version of baseball played without gloves or protective gear, is about to get its run-in-the-sun as a fall and spring league activity at the George Ranch State Park, near Sugar Land, starting this weekend.

… If the the creek “don’t” rise from all the convergence of rain in the forecast for this weekend.

Since our “Texas Vintage Base Ball Union” Opening Day first four games for scheduled for 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM, we may get lucky with the latest Channel 2 prediction. Meteorologist Frank Billingsley is now saying that worst of three-day, 20 inches possible flood will not get started until about 3:00 PM this Saturday, Oct. 24th. If that materializes, and there is no significant earlier mist, we should be OK for our part in the George Ranch State Park’s annual fall “Texian Days” festival – a big show that will go on anyway, rain or shine. We should have a better take on those chances by Friday afternoon.

For now, we are on and looking forward to finally getting our Houston area vintage base ball play into league action for the first time. There has been a level of barnstorming play in our area since the now defunct Montgomery County Saw Dogs got things started in about 2007. Our Houston Babies, the reincarnation of Houston’s first 1888 professional base ball club started in 2008 – and the Katy Combine has been around since about 2011. Another club, the Richmond Giants, and the original Saw Dogs club are both now in states of ossified hibernation, or else, eternal rest, but two other new clubs, the Barker Red Sox and the Mo Town Strikers have arisen to make a four-team, round robin league schedule of 6 games to be played on three Saturdays on the two fields at George Ranch Park possible this fall.

The Clubs & Managers:

The Houston Babies are managed by Bob Dorrill;

The Barker Red Sox are managed by Bob Copus;

The Mo Town Strikers are managed by Bob Blair;

The Katy Combine is managed by Dave (Bob) and Tom (Bob) Flores.

Managerial Note. The Flores Brothers of vintage base ball are the spirited equivalents of the movie industry’s Coen Brothers. They bring that special touch of Coen Brothers fire and excitement over the unexpected into every game they play. Neither is really named “Bob”, of course, but we didn’t want to leave them out of the count that every other league manager is named “Bob” by either coincidence, destiny, or fate.

Come share the joy. If you’ve never played vintage base ball, all we can tell you is that it is the closest thing you could do today to recreate the excitement that so many of us grew up with playing on the sandlots – before Little League and all the adults took over our private “field of dreams” as kids and turned the game into a place in which parents could force their children into living out their own adult dreams of becoming big leaguers.

If we get to play this Saturday, come out to George Ranch and watch the action. We welcome visitors and people who may be interested in organizing teams to participate in our second league championship season in the spring of 2016.

The 1860 Vintage Base Ball Rules. Here is one of several links from Google that shows the rules for the 1860 game:

http://www.dirigobaseball.org/about-us/1860s-rules-and-customs-base-ball

The Fall Season Schedule ~ All Games at George Ranch Park:

All Games @ George Ranch Park Fields 1 and 2.

Sat., Oct. 24, 2015

10:00 AM: Babies @ Red Sox / Field #1

Combine @ Strikers / Field # 2

(light lunch – free to players, courtesy of GRP Texian Days)

1:00 PM: Strikers @ Babies / Field #1

Red Sox @ Combine / Field #2

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Sat., Nov. 7, 2015

10:00 AM: Red Sox @ Strikers / Field #1

Combine @ Babies / Field # 2

12:00 PM: Strikers @ Combine / Field #1

Red Sox @ Babies / Field #2

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Sat., Nov. 21, 2015

10:00 AM: Combine @ Red Sox / Field #1

Babies @ Strikers / Field #2

12:00 PM: Babies @ Combine / Field #1

Strikers @ Red Sox / Field #2

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From the Parking Area, Field #1 is further away, across the creek by Foot Bridge. ~ Field # 2 is nearer, close to the main complex.

_____________________

Our Hopes. Over the past seven years, our free range play schedule has carried our Houston area clubs to games in Galveston and Sealy – and we have been especially grateful to a couple visiting clubs from Boerne, Texas who often have joined us or games here. Thank you, Boerne White Sox and Tusculum Freethinkers! Please consider this to be an open invitation to join us for league play next spring, if that is possible. We didn’t adopt the name “Texas Vintage Base Ball Union” for window dressing. We really hope to see the game expand into the other existing pockets of state interest and become a unifying force for spreading the joy of this game across the Lone Star State.

For Further Info. Please contact me anytime for further information on vintage base ball – or how you may easily start you own team and join us for the spring 2016 season.

10/24/15: Rain Out Report. Unfortunately, the flood of rains started drizzling their way into George Ranch Park prior to 8 o’clock this morning and there is a dark blue line of heavy rain coming right behind them on the radar. Opening Day is now officially rained out. Weather permitting, we will resume the league schedule of our games for Nov. 7th in two weeks.

Regards,

Bill McCurdy, Commissioner

The Texas Vintage Base Ball Union

houston.buff37@gmail.com

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Tags:Texas Vintage Base Ball Union
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Back To The Future Missed on Cubs

October 22, 2015

Cubs Fan at MMP in 2009
~ Make that 107 years (and counting)!

In what may have been “Back to The Future III,” (I no longer exactly recall the number in this three-movie theme sequence) the classic Michael J. Fox time travel movie predicted by their own exploration that they would time-land on October 21, 2015 – on the very day that the Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series, ending their cursed attachment to 1908, the last time they emerged as baseball’s World Champions.

As it turns out, Marty McFly and Doc Brown must have slipped through a wormhole and landed them in an alternative universe. What we now know today from getting to October 21, 2015 by the old-fashioned one-tick-of-the-clock-at-a-time route and no detours is that this date simply turns out to be the day that the New York Mets swept the Chicago Cubs in the NLCS, sending the woe begone North Siders and their loyal fans out into the bars of Wrigleyville to bend a few elbows before going home to sleep it off and wait another year under the weight of their long and rightfully owned umbrage as baseball’s “lovable losers.”

For the record, make that 107 years – and still counting.

Looking back to 1985, the year the original “Back To The Future” was released, it still amazes me how much we missed in our guesses on the look and feel of the everyday life that awaited us, thirty years hence, in 2015. As a past member of a research group back then known as “The World Future Society,” I have to say this – nobody but nobody I can remember really saw the whole landscape of immediacy that would take over our whole lives in what we now call the digital age. Like a lot of people, I had an Apple IIe computer and a dot-matrix printer that allowed me to write without using error correctable “white-out” liquid – and that seemed pretty amazing to me at the time. Of course, my Apple IIe had no hard drive. You had to save any material you wanted to keep on hundreds of floppy disks. – Man! How great was that over typewriters. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

In 1985, we were still waltzing along under the spell of Alvin Toffler’s 1970 best-seller book on the danger of changes that were occurring in the culture at an accelerating rate that could soon possibly exceed or abilities for adaptation. Now that we are still surviving in 2015, we may even be able to reach for the assumption that Toffler may have been using a manual crank-handled adding machine to figure out his taxes at the 1970 time he dove into the future forecasting waters with such an ominously dire prediction.

Toffler did not see the digital technological exponential growth that would unfold as our vehicle for change in a faster changing world, nor could he have seen in 1970 how much it would change all of us and the immediate ways we get our news, communicate with others, or, in many instances, distract people into only “talking” with people who are not physically present with them at the time the “conversation” takes place.

Back in 1970, people who walked down the street talking to someone who wasn’t there were assumed to be psychotic. In 2015, maybe half the people you see on the street are talking to someone who isn’t there. But that observation sort of feeds the counter theory to everything I have been not too heavily expressing here today.

Maybe Alvin Toffler was correct in “Future Shock.” Maybe our change through digital technology is not so much a healthy adaptation to accelerating change in the culture. Maybe it is our mutation into a species of intelligent life that has no attention span tolerance for anything that cannot be expressed in five seconds or less by someone who is not present in the real time exchange – and by a message that is best said in code – or preferably by emoticon.

Some of us are guilty of using far too many words to be heard in 2015, but I make no apologies. I haven’t figured out how to enjoy the use of symbols as replacements for the writing dance that is only available with beautiful words and an earnest attempt to order them together in some kind of whole thought pattern.

This much is clear. – The more things change, the more they remain the same. – The Chicago Cubs are still waiting for their first World Series title since 1908. The New York Mets just swept the Cubbies, 4 games to none, by a Game Four final score at Wrigley of 8-3.

KEEP THINKING ORANGE! GO ASTROS!

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Tags:Cubs Lose. Toffler not-so-much!
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Corruption or Business-As-Usual?

October 21, 2015

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about.”

Some mornings are filled with the kinds of “sports” news that are equivalently depressing, unsurprising, and deflating to the passions of why so many of us bonded our hearts away to their various attractions on the sandlots of childhood. Today, Wednesday, October 21, 2015, is one of those days for me here at The Pecan Park Eagle.

It started with Page One in the Houston Chronicle and the story of the debate Texas A&M last night between Oliver Luck, a Vice-President of the NCAA for Regulatory Affairs and Jay Silas, an ESPN basketball analyst who favors competitive pay for college athletes that would allow university based athletes to be paid as much as their coaches. Luck spoke for the position that free market pay that converted college athletes into wealthy minors that mirrored the NFL would totally destroy the possibility that most student athletes will remember that they are in college to get an education and earn a degree. Luck favors a more earth-bound stipend increase, one that does not distract from the stated purpose of why these young people on amateur athletic scholarship are in place – and that is, to get an education while they apply their talents in behalf of the school they supposedly represent. Both lawyers, it is reported that both men articulately argued their points for more than an hour in the Rudder Theatre on the Texas A&M campus.

The second non-caffeinated wake up call came from a report we then watched on the Today TV Show which alleges that the University of Louisville basketball program extensively used prostitutes to recruit highly sought players from 2010 to 2014. Coach Rick Pitino’s public statement was that he knew nothing of this kind of thing going on – and that, if it were, the university was prepared to take responsibility for any wrongdoing. Who knows for sure what Pitino knew, and when he knew it. All I know was totally visceral. Pitino was about as convincing as Captain Renaud in “Casablanca” when he announced under political pressure from the Nazis that he was closing down Rick’s American Cafe because he was “shocked to find that gambling was going on.” At about the same time Renaud finishes his closure statement, a casino employee rushes over to hand him a payment check. “Your winnings, Captain!” – “Oh, thank you very much,” Renaud answers, as he quickly puts the money voucher in his pocket.

Corruption or Business-As-Usual? Is that the question – or the heart of the matter in both issues? Of course, one might argue that “corruption or business-as-usual” in sports is not a dichotomy – and that they both are truly one and the same – and that anything we human beings put together as an exercise, an institution, a religion, a club, a charity, a sport, a cause, or a you-name-it – on some level – inevitably finds its own level of corruption because of human egos – and they plays these parts of us write together – in play with each other – once things become political – or exercises in the pursuit of power and money.

All I know for sure is that none of this crap in the news today, no matter how real it is, has anything to do with my love for Astros baseball, UH major sports, and my lesser fondness for certain other athletic activities. Those bonds were born during my childhood sandlot days and the coming-of-age years I spent in undergraduate school. If I think about stories of greed and corruption in sports too much, it is never surprising to hear about the worst breaches of faith, but it does lessen my enjoyment of all the games. It does so because it brings home the reality that these great athletes are not here to play just to win for us fans, or the city, or the university but, understandably, to better their own lives and futures. Sometimes, that’s hard to do. And sometimes, it’s hard for both the individuals who play and coach the sports – and the institution or company that hires them, to stay honest in the way they do things.

And sometimes too, people make promises that they cannot honestly keep over time. It’s no excuse, but it is a fact of human nature.

Example. UH is now soaring again in college football with Tom Herman on board as the new head coach. The Cougars are 6-0-0 and ranked #21 in the country by AP under the former Ohio State Assistant Coach and Offensive Coordinator for the 2014 National Champions, but we also remember what happened to former head coaches Art Briles and Kevin Sumlin the last two times we were ranked and off to great success on the gridiron. – Briles left UH for more money at Baylor and he now has the Bears ranked #2 in the nation. Sumlin dropped UH for Texas A&M where he now has the Aggies ranked #17, if memory serves.

Herman is making more money now than any previous head coach at UH and he has vowed with great passion that he wants to be here to put the Cougars back on the map of big time college football as a winning team and, implicitly, through the time it takes for UH to again find membership in a top level conference.

Will that happen? Who knows? All we know at UH for sure is that some big hurting-for-wins, but money-heeled schools will have their runs at stealing Tom Herman away too – and that hunting season may already have begun with the mid-season retirement of Steve Spurrier as head coach at South Carolina.

As for the Louisville story, I’ll put my take in these words:

Hookers and bling,

They ain’t the real thing,

You ain’t got nothing,

If that’s what they bring.

____________________

Tags:business-as-usual in sports
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