Both the Astros and Liam's little league team met with final elimination last night. And I am relieved. I don't know what the deal is, but this year's baseball season just seemed longer and more grueling than any I can remember. Maybe it's because Liam is such a nut about it now, so even on weeks when I wanted to just take a break from it, I had to hear about it constantly.
I have a love/hate relationship with the Astros. I lived in Houston for six years, including the heartbreaking 1986 season when the Mets beat the Astros in a nailbiter playoff series and then went on to steal it all from the Red Sox in the World Series.
1986 was the best baseball season ever, until the end, when it was the worst.
But the problem with the Astros is that as great a ballclub as they can be, they're from a classless suck-ass undeserving-of-good-baseball town. The Astrodome as a baseball venue sucked, everybody knows that. But when they built Minute Maid, I was thrilled. "Finally, real baseball, outdoor baseball, comes to Houston". Except that Houstonians prefer to keep the roof closed year round. They can't really comprehend baseball if it doesn't echo around inside a big aircraft hangar. Frankly, they want their baseball to sound like basketball.
"But Ray, you have to understand the realities of baseball in the Texas heat. Nobody wants to sit outside in July." Well, I call bullshit, and as exhibit A I give you Ameriquest Field in Arlington. Beautiful outdoor park. In Texas. Wasted on the Rangers, of course, who are as sorry as every other venture that George W. ever got involved in, but still, it's a fantastic and comfortable outdoor ballpark. We like to go up there when the Red Sox are in town.
But Houstonians just don't fucking get it. They are undeserving. They aren't baseball people.
Yes, I am a Fenway snob.
In Little League news, the Rangers came from behind in the last inning to beat the A's 8-7, handing them their second post-season loss and sending them home til spring. Yes, there were tears. The 8-10 year old league is where winning starts to become important to the kids, but some of them aren't yet old enough to be able to walk it off easily when they lose. Fortunately Liam seems to be able to shrug it off pretty easily. Either that or he's inherited Dad's ability to keep things bottled up inside and will need to self-medicate in later years.
So baseball season slogs to an end, and what season starts now?
Football? No. Hockey? No. Food.
Food season begins with Halloween, runs through Thanksgiving and Christmas and Mardi Gras and winds up with a big crawfish boil sometime in April.
Right around the time baseball gets started.
