This Day In Astros History: Sep. 1, 1982

This game is old. Old as the hills. Old as dirt. Old old old.

This game is older than 18 different members of the Astros roster. It's older than many of you, dear readers. If this game were a running back, it'd be over the hill. 

It's old.

On this day, 29 years ago, the Astros lost 5-1 to the New York Mets at Shea Stadium.

Houston sent Vern Ruhle to the hill and he quickly gave up four runs in four innings of work. He allowed eight hits and a walk while striking out two. This was probably his worst full season as a starter for Ruhle. His '79 season may have been a little worse, but Ruhle only started 10 games that year. In '82, he started 21 and appeared in 10 more with a 3.93 ERA. He also struck out just 56 in 149 innings.

At least the Houston bullpen performed pretty well, as Frank LaCorte and Bret Roberge pitched the final four innings of scoreless ball. Too bad Houston couldn't get anything done on offense until the ninth inning. 

That offense was provided by a solo home run by Alan Ashby, who went 1 for 4 in the game. His home run was his ninth of the season. Ashby would hit three more before the end of the '82 season, giving him 12, which was a career-high until '87 when he hit 14.

I've talked about this before, but this game had a bunch of future managers playing in it. Hoston alone had Ray Knight, Art Howe and Phil Garner in the starting lineup with a pretty good pitching coach in Ruhle to boot. On the Mets' side, there was a fairly good future manager in some kid named Gardenhire. Ron, maybe?

Here's a graphic replay of the game, thanks to Back to Baseball.