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Thursday, June 17, 2004

Astros-Cubs 6/16 

I watched about three innings of the game last night before I left to go play softball (more on that later). Houston was ahead, 1-0, when I turned off the TV, but I wasn't shocked to later find out that they lost, 4-1.

Since I saw relatively nothing, I'll say relatively nothing, except that it looks like Tim Redding had a good start.

Astro in Exile, who is obviously less squeamish than myself, has poured through the Houston Chronicle's doomsday coverage, and has some commentary worth checking out. Oh, and like Tina Turner, Throws Like a Girl's breakup with the Astros was short-lived.

Anyway...

While most Astros fans endured more disappointment last night, my softball team, TD Sanchez, doled it out. We began the second round of Summer I play with a 3-1 record, facing the Regulators, whom we defeated 24-8 last time out.

Sanchez started slow, and we found ourselves trailing 5-4 after three innings. Where were our bats? What was going on? We weren't playing like the team that averaged 19 runs a game in the first half of the season.

Then we clicked. The bats woke up and we put an 11-spot on the board in the top of the 4th. The Regulators went down 1-2-3 in the bottom half of the inning, and we responded with six more runs in the 5th. Because of the run rule, we just needed to hold them to fewer than two runs in the 5th to end the game. But, those Regulators are wily. They scored five runs, prolonging the game by one more inning.

That brings us to the top of the 6th. Yours truly leads off, with a 22-10 lead. Now, I've been slumping lately -- maybe it's because I always wear my Stros hat during games. But dating to last game, I'm 0-for-my-last-6, and in softball, that's a Dalgy-esque slump. So you could say that I was due, and even to get the mojo going, I switched to a thicker-barrell bat.

I stepped to the plate, dug in, and took my to practice cuts. Then I settled into my stance -- a modified Craig Biggio hands-up, bat-high, with a little bit of a Gary Sheffield waggle. And the pitcher put one right in my wheelhouse. I smacked that thing about five feet short of the fence, and by the time the LF got there, I was standing on third with my first softball triple.

Now I have no power and no speed, but the stars obviously aligned and God, sympathetic to my plight as a disgruntled Astros fan, showered his grace upon me. I felt like Ozzie Smith in the 85 NLCS. We ended up winning 26-12, and my recent hitting woes seemed like forever ago.

Now if the Astros could just figure out how to hit.

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