The Pecan Park Eagle

“What kind of ball do you want to talk about? The regular kind? Or the deflated ones?”

Late this morning, I left the house to run some errands when the 11:00 AM “Matt Thomas Show” started up on 790 AM radio. I would not have heard even the start of it, but Matt started talking before I could hit the button and go to the 1940s and 1950s music stations on Sirius satellite radio. Does anyone really listen to sports talk radio other than those habitual pattern times they are in their cars, driving alone? I do the “long time listener” thing once in a while, when the host is Charlie Pallilo, but most of the time, I much prefer listening to Tex Beneke singing  “I Gotta Gal in Kalamazoo”, et cetera on satellite.

Today I got a quick reminder from marketing genius Matt Thomas as to why my own preferences away from the general genre are only now stronger than ever. Before I punched out 790 in favor of Sirius today, Matt Thomas had the floor just long enough to get my attention.

Thomas led off with a little book-ends statement about the distance in time that now exists between the end of the Rockets basketball season and the start of the Texans football season. I’m paraphrasing here because I was driving alone when Matt first spoke – and I had not prepared myself in advance with pen, paper or electronic transcriber to record what probably a large number of other disinterested-in-baseball people feel, but we baseball people are out here too. Maybe big stars like Matt Thomas don’t need us.

What the man said was something along these lines:

“The Astros are doing a little better this year. The question here is – now that the Rockets season is finally over – are the Astros going to be good enough to hold our attention until the Texans begin their training camp for the next NFL season?”

Good enough, Mr. Baseball-Not-So-Much Thomas? – Good enough … you have to ask? C’mon, Matt! Even the sports jocks who don’t like baseball, or simply tolerate it as a time-compensatory air space filler, should be expected to already know what we are about to tell you.

Going into the games of May 28th, and approaching the traditional June 1st contender status date verifier,  the Houston Astros now lead the American League West by six games, the largest divisional lead in all of baseball. Their 30 wins is the highest total for any American League club and ranks only one win behind the National League St. Louis Cardinals for the Major League Baseball lead. The club possesses commanding ability in their starting pitcher rotation, effective and durable relief pitching, great team speed, good defensive ability, hitting that, so far, makes up in power and timeliness what it lacks in overall percentage work, a cool managerial hand, plus talent on the farm that seems ready to hatch at the big league level.

And those are the things that excite us baseball fans, even if our sport is only talking-time-filler for radio hosts like yourself.

You have helped me with one thing today. When I go out in the late morning for my next drive time run, I will remember to have my radio already set to pick up my Sirius stations – even if I had been listening to my guy Charlie Pallilo the previous night come home.

“Pardon me. Matt, let’s have a chat and choose my station!

Forties are fine! – You help me get there on time!