The Pecan Park Eagle

Jack Webb
aka, Joe Friday

This was the city … St. Louis. … It was Tuesday, September 18, 2012, 8:13 AM. … I was in St. Louis that day, … working the baseball beat for The Houston Comical. … My name’s Friday. … and … like most Houston newsprint sports writers … I’m a clown.

DUM-DA-DUM-DUM! … DUM-DA-DUM-DUM-DUM!

I had just left my Hilton Hotel room … and walked into the dining area on the lobby floor … looking for a cup of java and some ham and eggs. … I looked around for a place to sit. …. There wasn’t a friendly face in sight. … The tables were filled with Houston Astros.

DUM-DA-DUM-DUM! … DUM-DA-DUM-DUM-DUM!

Left with no choice … I accepted a waving invitation from Bill Brown and the television media guys. … Brownie, Jimmy Deshaies, and Greg Lucas were playing “three on a match” at a four-chair table. … They needed a joker like me to fill the hand and waive off bad luck, but still, I wondered …. how are they going to spring from bad luck in here? …. they are having breakfast in the same place as the Houston Astros?

DUM-DA-DUM-DUM! … DUM-DA-DUM-DUM-DUM!

The boys greeted me warmly. …. JD was his usual funny self … but I still wished he had held back until I downed my first cup of joe … but holding back is not his style …. he’s the funniest second banana in baseball. … If Tonto had owned JD’S wit … no one would have remembered The Lone Ranger today. … So, how did Bill Brown manage to survive the JD joke stream all these years of working with the great one and still forge to the front as a star baseball broadcaster himself? … That’s easy … a modest Brownie says … I just give the viewers who can still see me under the current cable conflict what they need … I give them in words what they can’t see with their own eyes.

Joe Friday: “Just the facts, ma’am?”

Bill Brown: “No, Joe, just the facts, man!”

DUM-DA-DUM-DUM! … DUM-DA-DUM-DUM-DUM!

Greg Lucas was there with a fantastic rep of his own as both a broadcaster and media field guy and interview champ of the first order. … to say nothing of all the on-screen work he does in other sports. … Leave it to Mr. Lucas for giving voice to a disturbing reminder. … The Astros have a chance this day to lose their 100th game of the season. … If they do, they will have managed to cross the century mark in losses for the second consecutive season.

Later that day … we all got the answer we hated to see land at Busch Stadium. … The Cards had beaten the Astros, 4-1 … the Astros were 100 plus game losers for the second straight year. … No way this could happen years in a row. … Right? After the   2012 season … Jimmy Deshaies jumped ship … lefts the ‘Stros talking heads booth for the Cubs. …. Maybe JD knew something he wasn’t telling the rest of us. … All I know is … whatever it was … he was keeping it to himself. … The rest of us figured we’d seen the of worst of what the Astros could become  in 2012. … Now we know … in March 2014 … how wrong we were.

It’s a good thing I work for the Houston Comical. … Otherwise, this job wouldn’t be very funny.

DUM-DA-DUM-DUM! … DUM-DA-DUM-DUM-DUM!