Very difficult to write about the team right now. I had this idea for like, this excuse note written by Drayton to Bill White, where McLane asks for the Astros' absence lately to be excused, coz Lance misses his friend Chris, etc.
But I gave it up; instead of being funny as I'd hoped, it just seemed mean-spirited.
One thing I've tried never to forget is how goddamned hard it is to succeed at the major league level, and as I've written about the Astros on the web for six years or whatever it is now, I never wanted to get to a place where the point of it all is being mean, where the readers' value comes entirely from bad jokes that I make about how some 34-year old lefty can "only" throw 88 miles an hour anymore.
Much of the beauty of this game is in its difficulty, and the 40th man on any major league roster is so skilled at what he does that folks like us really have difficulty comprehending it.
Basically, I don't have balls big enough to criticize Lance Berkman's play.
As long as you as an Astro play hard, as long as you as a Houston Astro hustle, I'm gonna stay off my sneeringly ironical high horse.
I'd rather not go there anyway.
Of course, that makes it difficult now, when even your church's pastor would tell you Houston has kind of sucked lately.
I don't know what to write, I don't know what to say.
When I said in the preseason that I thought Adam could hit .265, it was both a logical and an emotional statement. By now I may regret the logical impulses that led me to write such a thing, but the emotional bonds are still there.
Christ, there's nothing I want more than to see Adam Everett hit. Seeing Morgan hit for power and average would fulfill me like nothing this side of Melanie. And I ache for Jason Lane to conquer his fears and simply play ball the way he was born to.
So it's not me, it's not cause I haven't expended the energy.
I want it to happen.
But the analytic side of me--without rancor or enmity or snark or anything like that at all-- simply wonders if it ever will.