The Pecan Park Eagle

“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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