Enjoy Your Offday

Attend the religious ceremony of your choice . . . *****

Actually, I only bring up the Black Mass thing because of some photographs that had been called to my attention: evidence, perhaps, of sinister affiliations among members of the Houston pitching staff.

I had this long cock and bull story I made up about how Taylor Buchholz was first introduced to voodoo, and then the dark arts, in the back alleys of New Orleans during his DL stint for the Zephyrs in the second half of 2004, but it was kind of spinning its wheels humorwise, so I'll skip it, and just present the photos.

First, in this picture--taken, I think, in May--Dan Wheeler certainly seems to have left the building, and a demon of some sort seems to have moved in:

Fig 1a. Our little Danley is possessed. Not sure whether it was the Dartmouth degree, or simply the Tools of Ignorance that protected Brad from evil influence as the demon laid Wheeler's hands upon him. . . .

Secondly, in this photo taken Friday night at Shea, an angry Buchholz facilitates a post-grand slam hex on John Valentin with arcane explosive powders, and a muttered incantation:

Fig 1b. Some evidence that the motion Taylor gets on his yacker may not be entirely natural.

*****

Now for something completely different, something you can take seriously:

Since I had the data, I went ahead and took a look at the Astros offense since June 1, hits and runs game by game with handy league averages to compare ourselves to. If I read this correctly (and even if I'm not), looks like we can expect a dropoff tomorrow after Sunday's mini-explosion: