Astros

I'd cry, but when you get punched in the stomach you don't have the breath to cry. This is about as hard as I've taken any loss, ever. That and I get to work and have a Yankee fan tell me he understands losing because when he was growing up in the 80's the Yankees were below .500. I tried to explain that rooting for a team with rainbow uniforms that have never made the World Series and a team with (at the time) 22 World Series Championships is a bit different. Plus the Yankees have won 4 since.

But we've got Roy O going on Wed. and if any team in the world can come back, it's this one. But that is about as close as you can get and not make it.

I just want them to make it to the World Series, if they win, that would just be gravy. I just want to see them play in the Series, once.

ASTROS!

So the Astros beat the Cubs today and won the National League Wild Card for the second straight year. They will play the Braves in the NLDS starting on Wednesday. It was a big win for the Bubba Household. Now that we can relax for a few days and breath, lets revisit the biggest transacation of the Astros offseason, i.e. Carlos Beltran signing with the NY Mets instead of the Houston Astros.

Beltran: Salary-$11.5 million, Avg-.266, HR-16, RBI-78, SB-17, SLG-.414, OBP-.330, OPS-.744

Now the Astros who played the outfield for the Astros this year, Jason Lane, RF and Willie Taveras, CF.

Lane: Salary-$345 thousand, Avg-.267, HR-26, RBI-78, SB-6, SLG-.499, OBP-.316, OPS-.805

Taveras: Salary-$316 thousand, Avg-.291, HR-3, RBI-29, SB-34, SLG-.341, OBP-.325, OPS-.665

You do the math.

Running From Rita (Bubba's Sister in Houston):

I do not have a Blog, however my brother was kind enough to let me do a "guest appearance" on his.....

Sunday morning, September 25

Our story is not a storm story - it is an evacuation story. I pondered just what to title this - several ideas came to mind: Running from Rita, How Rita Ruined My Week, Rita is a Bitch......but decided to just call it Reflections on Rita. Mine is certainly not the worst evacuation story by any means; it is only one story of millions. But I experienced and witnessed so much in the past few days and there are so many thoughts and images running around in my brain that I felt like I needed to somehow express them. So here is my story.

On Monday and Tuesday we did not know what to do; our theme song could have been "Should I Stay Or Should I Go?". We live about half-way between Houston and Galveston, so we were concerned with the weather forecasts. We went back and forth, but on Tuesday night decided (along with my parents) that we should go. We have family in Dallas who wanted to see us anyway, so we decided to load up and leave on Wednesday. The sooner the better, we thought. So we packed, we prepared our homes, we brought along our treasures and tried to secure the rest. We couldn't board up our windows because plywood was already sold out. Grocery stores were quickly selling out of water, batteries, the hurricane essentials. There was a sort of public frenzy - probably a combination of media hype and Katrina still fresh on our minds. Fortunately we did have the foresight to fill our cars up with gas on Tuesday night. We knew the traffic would be bad getting out of town, but what else could we do? By the time we left it was a Category 4 storm headed straight at Galveston. We had to leave. We had no idea what we were about to go through.

My parents left their house at about 1:00 p.m. Wednesday afternoon; we were not able to leave until a couple of hours later. It was 103 degrees outside when we left home. We kept in touch as best as we could by cell phone - but the circuits were so busy that many times we were unable to connect. Mom and Dad ran into heavy traffic, but assured us that once we got past The Woodlands we'd be OK. The traffic was literally bumper-to-bumper from the minute we pulled out of our League City neighborhood with our 2 kids, our 2 dogs, and our van packed to the gills with all that we could get in there. And thus began the creep northward. From home to Centerville we averaged about 5-10 mph. I have never seen so many people and cars trying to go the same direction. Cars were overheating; people were running out of gas; some people pushed their cars along in the traffic to save what gas they had. The gas stations ran out of gas. They ran out of food. The restrooms were disgusting. No stores or restaurants were open. Large groups of people would pull over to the shoulder together and sleep in/on their cars. Ambulances frequently passed us on the shoulder; I assume they were transporting hospital patients to safer ground. At midnight we were just getting to the Woodlands, and there was no relief in sight. Rita was now a Category 5 - the 3rd strongest storm in recorded history. I finally got thru to Mom on her cell phone and they were already at our Dallas destination. Thinking we were not far behind, Mom asked how close we were - when I told her we were only at The Woodlands she couldn't believe it. It had taken us 9 hours to get only to the other side of Houston, and they were already there! What a difference leaving a couple of hours later made! Friends of ours that left after we did took 12 hours to get that far - they ended up turning around and going back home for fear of running out of gas and being stranded. I wish we had done the same, but the reports on the radio told of a "mammoth storm" headed straight at us! I began to worry we would ride out the storm in our van on I-45. My husband got tired (imagine that!) so I took over the driving for a while and let him sleep - neither of us wanted to stop moving - but I could only drive for about an hour before my eyes wouldn't stay focused and I had to pull over. That was at Centerville. After a short rest in the van, my husband took back over and we forged on, still seeing so many people by the side of the road either out of gas or sleeping, so many ambulances, so many tail lights ahead of us! We kept hearing on the radio that they were going to open the southbound lanes of I-45 to head north as well, but we never saw it. We drove (inched along) all night. At dawn on Thursday we were in Buffalo; we again had to pull over to a gas station parking lot (no gas there) and sleep for about 45 minutes. Finally at Ennis we decided we HAD to get off of 45 so we cut over to 35 and got into Dallas that way. We arrived at our final destination at 10:00 Thursday morning - a 19 hour drive. We were worn out, hungry, grungy - hadn't eaten anything decent or gotten any real sleep in over 24 hours - hadn't brushed our teeth, showered.....you get the picture. But we made it. And I have to say that I have THE BEST kids in the world - never a complaint, never a problem - they either played with their Gameboys or watched a movie or slept - real troopers! The dogs were good, too - they slept a lot - but I think that was the Benadryl I gave them......the puppy (6 months old) pooped in van at about Waxahatchie - at that point we were up to 55 mph so I just tossed it out the window. We were physically and emotionally exhausted.

Of course, the "mammoth storm" did NOT come to our homes - it instead weakened and went inland well northeast of where we live. My mother-in-law lives in Orange and we know she evacuated but we don't know where she is or if she has a home to come back to. Our hearts are with all the residents of the Beaumont/Port Arthur area. We decided as soon as we knew it was safe, we were headed home to check on our own houses. Perhaps we could beat the crowds back into town.....

Other people thought that, too; it still took us 8 hours to get home. That is much better than the 19 hours it took to get there, but still a long day - a long hot day with no place to stop for gas, food, drinks, restrooms; we had brought some things to snack on and drink in the car and we had water for the dogs; we found one rest stop that had a rather clean bathroom (thank goodness!); my son had to tinkle by the side of the road at one point. But we made it home. We have power and phones and water, but our cable is still out. We haven't had mail or newspaper delivery since last Wednesday. Now the clean-up begins - mainly we have limbs and branches in the yard to pick up, and from looking at the size of some of them I think we are lucky they didn't break out the front windows of the house (they were certainly slamming into them). We found a couple of shingles, too - not sure if they are from our roof or if they blew over from someone else's. There are ants everywhere - outside and inside. But we are VERY lucky. We have limited food in the house - we stocked up on non-perishables and water before the storm, but we have no bread or milk or meat - no stores are open. It is like a ghost town around here. I guess we'll be eating a lot of canned ravioli and ramen noodles for a few days. The kids don't go back to school until Thursday. We don't know when my husband will need to be back at work (probably Monday). We have learned a lot of lessons for "next time" - Rita Lessons as the press is calling them. For one thing we will buy plywood as soon as it becomes available next week and have it pre-cut and ready. We now have a plan for packing/protecting our things. We know that if we ever have to evacuate again we will leave earlier and not try to go as far. I don't like to ever say "never", but at this point I am saying "never again" - it'll have to be pretty darn bad for us to evacuate again. Next time this family will most likely hunker down and ride it out.....

Give to Hurricane Funds

Red Cross

Go to Instapudnit for other charities.

Hurricane News

From the Houston Chronicle...

People donate money for disasters half a world away, but when it happens so close to home, the reaction is more intimate. Houston shares more than geography with New Orleans and Mississippi — family and religious ties, a love of Cajun cuisine and music and, for many people, personal memories.
"So many people here have been on Bourbon Street, so many people have been to the casinos on the Mississippi coast," said Ryan. "People can relate, because they've been there." And because we could be next.

Growing up in Houston on the Texas Gulf Coast, (only a couple of miles from Galveston Bay) this has hit home for me. If you've riden one of these things out and if you live or have family along the Gulf Coast, you really feel for these people. I think the yankees up here are rather blase about the whole affair, if it doesn't happen in NY it doesn't happen. But let me encourage everyone to give to the Red Cross, or another organization giving aid.

6 Man Football

Saw this in the NY Times:

Jack Pardee, a former N.F.L. linebacker and Washington Redskins coach, was a member of the Christoval, Tex., six-man team in the early 1950's, once scoring nine touchdowns in a game that was played in the town's rodeo arena. "Six-man football is what small-town life in Texas is all about," he told me. "It provides kids with the wonderful experience of being part of a team and an important part of the community."

Of course Jack Pardee is also a Fightin' Texas Aggie, a Junction boy who played for the Bear. I have two friends that played 6 man football in the Texas Panhandle, the famous Tim Smith and Jody Copp.

Reporters in the Locker Room

From ESPN's Jason Whitlock...

Going into the men's bathroom following a practice or a game, and conducting interviews while athletes undress and shower, is not a gender rights issue. It is not a sign of equality. It's a stupid, disrespectful, antiquated tradition started by men, and it really needs to stop -- especially now with the explosion of new media and the full-blown gender integration of sports reporting.

When did they say anything worthwhile anyway?

Shakespeare in the Park

From my daily Playbill email, more info here...

When you become a Summer Sponsor of Shakespeare in the Park, you'll do much more than receive one reserved seat to TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. You'll help keep a New York tradition - FREE Shakespeare in the Park - alive! Your $100 donation reserves ONE seat to ONE production and is 100% tax-deductible.

Only in NY does buying a $100 seat to a play keep it free. That doesn't make sense to me. The more people buy seats, the less free it is, and the more it forces the general public out. Free Shakespeare is going corporate, just like everything else.

NCAA is a Monopoly

Of course the NCAA is a monopoly anyway. They can do whatever they want.

"I have felt as long as I have been in coaching that the NCAA has wanted to eliminate the NIT," Knight said in a deposition played in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Thursday. As for the NCAA, he added, "it's a monopoly."

Indian nicknames

Can't say I agree with this. What about the Fightin' Irish? Or the Aggies (demeans farmers)?

The NCAA banned the use of American Indian mascots by sports teams during its postseason tournaments, but will not prohibit them otherwise.

Baseball

Which would you want?

Outfield A: Avg: .256 HR: 16 RBI: 46 SB: 6 OBP: .302 SLG: .488
Outfield B: Avg: .263 HR: 12 RBI: 56 SB: 7 OBP: .313 SLB: .429


Outfielder A is Jason Lane for the Astros, Outfielder B is Carlos Beltran for the Mets.

Roid Rage

Well, seems that steroids has it's first big time victim in Rafael Palmerio. The sad part is that he testified before Congress where he, in a rather Bill Clinton moment, shook his finger at the camera and declared he had never taken steroids, never. Now it seems he has, but not willingly, as he says. I don't understand the way he is spinning this. If he took something that had a banned substance in it and was unaware, as he claims, why would he not just come out and tell everyone what he took and how he didn't know. But instead he is losing because everyone is assuming the worst. ESPN is reporting he did in fact test positive for steroids.

I also don't understand how he people like Jason Stark and say they will still vote for him for the Hall because it was baseball's fault for not enforcing no steroids. When are people responsible for their own decisions? When is it the players themselves and the players association which fought steroid testing on all fronts fault for not protecting themselves (players) against suspicion of steroid use?

Astros

They're back.... 22-7 in July and back in first place for the wild card. The buzz is back. I would say I'm back to reading the Astros report in the Houston Chronicle every morning, but I never stopped. With Clemens, Oswalt, Pettitte on the mound I think they are the favorites for the last playoff spot.

I'm back as well, a little blog nap.

Aggies Make Mistake

Texas A&M fired Mark Johnson this week. He won more games at the baseball coach at A&M than any other man. He averaged 41 wins over 21 years, before he was coach they won 40 games in a season twice. I think you can judge a coach by what his former players and peers say about him, and in Mark Johnson's case, it is only good. From the Bryan College Station Eagle:

“ That’s my only explanation as to why this happened to Mark,” Garrido said. “It isn’t about coaching ability. It isn’t about him being a good teacher or his ethics. It isn’t about his baseball knowledge. My guess is that it’s about the evolution of the game and the expecations for coaches. You’ve got to win, and you’ve got to win every year.”

“ He’s an important figure in my life,” Rupe said. “I feel sorry for him, and I also feel sorry for the other coaches. It’s a sad day for A&M baseball. It really is. As much as everyone is going to look to the future, for his past players, it’s a very sad day.”

A&M has made a claim with this move, win our your out. Of course as Larry Dierker said in the Houston Chronicle about the Astros,

There are two types of fans: baseball fans and fans of winning.

It seems to me that A&M's new administration is a fan of winning.

Listen to My Wife...

This is interesting in our house, as we think about starting a family in a two career household. Granted, we are both civil engineers so our hours are not quite lawyer or investment banker hours, but it is still something we think about. Read the whole article here.

Maybe you know a woman (or a few million) like her. It's hardly news that the issue vexing talented people is the struggle to balance their professional lives with time for fulfilling lives outside of work. The shock is that after decades of wrestling with these tradeoffs, the obvious answer is the one everyone has been too skeptical or afraid to explore: changing the way top jobs are structured.

In a world where most people are struggling, the search for "balance" in high-powered jobs has to be counted a luxury. Still, there is something telling (if not downright dysfunctional) when a society's most talented people feel they have to sacrifice the meaningful relationships every human craves as the price of exercising their talent.

Of course my opinion is the situation is driven by greed, corporate greed and individual greed. If no one would work the hours or put up with the bs, then corporate America would be forced to change. As far as women, business is going to have to change the way they handle mom's or they are going to lose some of their best employees.

Why can't we be sucessful and have a life? I like my job, I think I'm pretty good at it - I don't want to brag, and I work with a top firm in my field. But my job is a job, and I want to have my weekends to spend some of the money I'm making, and I like to go home and have dinner with my wife. So far I've been lucky, but as I see where my career might go it is not pretty.

More on Muslim Views in the Middle East

From today's Wall Street Journal. Read it here. (Register to read, easy, painless, worth it.)

As a Muslim, I am able to purchase copies of the Quran in any bookstore in any American city, and study its contents in countless American universities. American museums spend millions to exhibit and celebrate Muslim arts and heritage. On the other hand, my Christian and other non-Muslim brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia--where I come from--are not even allowed to own a copy of their holy books. Indeed, the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately.

The Saudi Embassy and other Saudi organizations in Washington have distributed hundreds of thousands of Qurans and many more Muslim books, some that have libeled Christians, Jews and others as pigs and monkeys. In Saudi school curricula, Jews and Christians are considered deviants and eternal enemies. By contrast, Muslim communities in the West are the first to admit that Western countries--especially the U.S.--provide Muslims the strongest freedoms and protections that allow Islam to thrive in the West. Meanwhile Christianity and Judaism, both indigenous to the Middle East, are maligned through systematic hostility by Middle Eastern governments and their religious apparatuses.

The lesson here is simple: If Muslims wish other religions to respect their beliefs and their Holy book, they should lead by example.

Too bad they have all that oil. It seems to me that what we are dealing with in the Middle East are facist and Islam is the medium to convert the masses. I always wondered how the Nazi's could get everyone to buy into their terror, but now I'm witnessing it first hand. Of course liberal America will not face up to this fact and want to make us out to be ugly Americans intruding where we don't belong. Of course our relations with places like Saudi Arabia are ridiculous because they have all that oil.

Middle East Hypocrisy

Great atricle in today's New York Times, imagine that. Thomas Friedman writes:

It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side during the past week. One is the story about the violent protests in the Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay desecrated a Koran by throwing it into a toilet. In Afghanistan alone, at least 16 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in anti-American rioting that has been linked to that report. I certainly hope that Newsweek story is incorrect, because it would be outrageous if U.S. interrogators behaved that way.

That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.

Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia.

The Muslim world's silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we are up against in trying to stabilize Iraq - as well as the only workable strategy going forward.

Read it for yourself.

I would add that Americans attitude about this story is outrage, as it should be if it had in fact been true, too bad for liberal America it isn't, but what if someone had flushed a Bible down the toilet and Christians had rioted? I imagine the Christians would be called hypocrits. What if someone had written a novel about a Islam where they made something up about the prophet Muhammed that went against Isalm teachings?

Cheerleading

Letter to the editor in the NY Times.

To the Editor:
The Texas House of Representatives has it all wrong when it comes to elite cheerleading and sex ("Texas Legislation Adds a Bah! to Sis and Boom," news article, May 5).

The squads that engage in the "provocative" routines they seek to ban are elite squads - focused on competition, athletic skills and leadership.

These young women are athletes. Studies show that young women involved in sports - and make no mistake about it, in the South cheerleading is a sport - are less likely to engage in sex than their nonathletic counterparts.

As a former elite cheerleader, I saw more than one girl "kept out of trouble" by her participation on an elite squad.

These squads build leaders with self-confidence, lead to college scholarships and give young women the chance to value their bodies for their athletic abilities instead of their sexual appeal.

The routines may look sexy, but that does not mean the girls are having sex. Instead of banning routines and becoming the "dance police," the Texas Legislature should see the value in these squads for young women's futures and say, "Bring it on!"

Mary Alice CarrNew York, May 5,
2005

First of all, when did cheerleading become a sport? Second, call it sport, call it dance, whatever, but when will people face up to the fact that the reason there are girls in tight clothes rolling around on the ground at basketball games is so the men in attendance can see them as sex objects. Who wants this for their daughter?

NE "Fans"

After attending the Astros vs. Mets game at Shea last night in an Astros cap, and watching the Yankees vs. Red Sox tonight I can say on thing, fans up here are terrible. At the Mets it seems yelling obscenities at you for wearing the other teams hat is an o.k. A guy in right field just took a swipe at Gary Sheffield in Fenway as he fielded a ball. The most intelligent thing that Yankee fans, Met fans, and Red Sox fans can say is that whoever they are playing "sucks." So, don't buy the warm fuzzy Red Sox feel, or the Yankees win with class, the people in the stadium are terrible drunk immature people. It has nothing to do with baseball tradition in those towns, it has everything to do with alcohol consumption and trashy people.

Tired of the Red Sox

Who else is tired of the Red Sox? They are the only team in sports history that have come close to winning and then lost so we should all feel sorry for them. Now we should all rejoice because they won and they all got to call their dads after the game, blah blah blah.

I root for a team that has never played in a World Series and has been close several times. How about being up 3-2 last year in the NLCS and losing the last two games, one with Roger Clemens on the mound. Where is the national outcry for the Astros?