Three Days in June

Last weekend, I decided to attend an entire series for the first time in my life. I was partially inspired by the book Three Nights in August, which chronicles a series between the Cardinals and the Cubs. The series I went to was between the Cardinals and the Astros.

Game 1:
This is the one I was looking forward to the most. It was Chris Carpenter vs. Andy Pettitte, but more importantly it was an opportunity for my boys to get a little redemption and for me to be there to watch it. Last year in the NLCS, the Cardinals went 0-3 in Houston. Though the Cardinals have already won at the Enron Dome, er, Minute Maid Park this year, there’s a big difference between being there in person and watching on TV. I hadn’t seen any of the Cardinals’ previous victories this year, but I was there for a particularly gut-wrenching loss in game 4 of the NLCS last year.

It was my first playoff game ever--I went with my sister Cristina, and we wore matching Willie McGee jerseys, only to watch the Astros take control late with a Beltran home run. I felt horribly for a team that I had been with since spring training, but more than a little of my frustration was directed inward as my sister and I were treated less than hospitably on the way out of the ballpark. I’ve often said that only good can come from having a real investment in a sports team--whether the team wins or loses, you’ve gone through something with them that deepens your involvement and your appreciation. If I’m going to take that approach, I guess I have to accept that the games that get you down are part of that process. A lot of people, it seems, try for sports to be something else. These people live vicariously through sports in a very selective way. If their team does well, it gives meaning to their life and gives them a reason to feel superior to all the people whose favorite teams weren’t as fortunate. If their team does poorly they write the team off and call in to sports talk radio complaining about how the team’s a bunch of schmucks.

Tonight’s game I attended with my sister Cristina and my friend Elliot, who is an Astros fan but always tolerates my love of the Cardinals. We arrived in time for batting practice, and I got to see Albert Pujols play his own brand of “around the world”--starting with the right field foul pole, he would take turns hitting home runs into virtually every section of seats until he got to the no man’s land in straightaway center, and when he started hitting to left field he was content to keep hitting the railroad tracks.

The game itself may have been the best pitched game I’ve ever seen. Pettitte gave up one run through seven innings, and Carpenter was unscored upon through eight. The Astros had chances to get to Carpenter, the best being in the fifth inning. With a runner on third and one out, Willy Taveras failed to make contact on a suicide squeeze, and Adam Everett was quickly caught in a rundown. Then, Taveras singled to right, and Andy Pettitte was waved home from second. The throw from So Taguchi was a couple steps up the third base line, but remarkably Pettitte was just getting around third. The phrase “out by a mile” is so overused that it has lost all meaning, so I’ll just say that he was out by 30 feet. So, twice in the same inning, the catcher had the ball in his glove and saw a man making a beeline toward the plate while he was still only about halfway there. Which means that twice in the same inning, Yadier Molina saw two people running toward him who magically turned into giant gift-wrapped boxes with big, pretty bows on top, not unlike when the Tasmanian Devil would envision Bugs Bunny turning into a feast on a giant platter, complete with all the trimmings.

It remained a one-run game until the ninth inning, when Pujols homered to the train tracks in left, just like in BP. All in all, the game was one of the best I’d ever seen. It was tight the whole way through, with a plenty of exciting moments. And best of all, it allowed me to forget about last year’s playoffs.


Game 2:
Today was Astros Umbrella Day. It’s a good thing the umbrellas weren’t handed out for yesterday’s game, or most of them would have found their way into the third base coach’s back.

Before the game began I told my sister, “This game has the potential to get lopsided.” I should have said, “This game has the potential to get silly.” That’s the kind of win that’s especially demoralizing--the win where the other team has given up on trying to keep its game face and is all about having fun. The game has gotten so out of hand that you can no longer pretend you’re in an actual competition. It’s like when a basketball game is a blowout by halftime and the game ends with all the starters who are sitting on the bench giggling at the guy who hasn’t played all year and jacks up threes every time the ball touches his hands.

The Astros threw Wandy Rodriguez against Jason Marquis, and it looked instantly like a mismatch. Rodriguez had pitched only 11 innings through two starts, and had an ERA of about six and a half. Marquis, on the other hand, has been pitching very well and has such a good bat that he’s been used as a pinch hitter a few times this season. Heck, his batting average is about 25 points better than anybody in the Astros’ lineup.

The strike zone in today’s game was as big as I’ve ever seen, which surprisingly led to a glut of runs. After both teams traded runs in the first and failed to score in the second, things really got interesting in the third. Marquis led off with a single, Eckstein followed with a single (he took second on a throw to third), and Pujols was intentionally walked after an Edmonds strikeout. Reggie Sanders then homered, which brought out a smattering of boos from the crowd. The Cardinals plated two more runs before Jason Marquis came up again, this time with a man on and two outs. His second hit of the inning was a home run that cleared the right field foul pole by ten feet and had the ‘Stros fans booing like crazy. The Cards fans, on the other hand, were trying to hold back the giggles in a hostile environment. After that, Brandon Backe, scheduled to start in just four days, settled things down in two innings of work.

The Astros made a game of it, closing to within two runs only to lose 11-9, but the only really interesting part of the last six innings was the seventh inning stretch. Before we started singing, the public address announcer encouraged everyone to open their umbrellas and twirl them. And they did, which was bizarre.

Game 3:
Going into this day, I had only two questions: Would the Cardinals get the sweep? and Would the roof be open?

I’ve grown used to the roof at Minute Maid Park being closed, but I’ve never understood it. I always thought it was universal that people liked to see the sun shining during a ballgame, but apparently a lot of Houston prefers to have the roof closed.

I guess I should have had Roger Clemens on my mind as well. This was my first time to see him pitch in person, but for whatever reason he’s not high up on my “must see” list. Here are some of the guys I’ve made a point to see in person: Willie McGee, Tony Gwynn, Ozzie Smith, Dwight Gooden, Alex Rodriguez, and Joey Gathright (okay, so you think the last name doesn’t fit in. Just wait.) Here are some players who are next on the list: Greg Maddux, Ichiro Suzuki, and Vladimir Guerrero. But Roger has never been one of those guys I’ve ached to see. Still, the matchup was attractive. Clemens was pitching against Mark Mulder, and the last time they got together the Cardinals won 1-0 in ten innings.

The Cards looked good early, getting three runs off Clemens in the top of the first, which you would figure might hold up considering the Astros scored a total of 11 runs in Clemens’s first 7 starts. But the Astros scored five runs in the bottom of the inning, giving him more run support than in any game this year.

After two innings, with the score still 5-3, I noticed that Clemens had thrown 53 pitches and Mulder 40, and I decided to track pitch counts, figuring that the team that could get into the bullpen first could have a leg up. It didn’t work out that way. Clemens settled down with innings of 15 and 11 pitches before throwing 20 in the 5th inning and departing after giving up a hit to lead off the sixth. But Mulder was chased out after failing to retire the first two batters in the bottom of the fourth. The score didn’t change much--the final was 6-4, and the Cardinals never really looked like they were going to make a run.

As for the roof, it stayed closed. With the roof closed, Minute Maid feels more like a shopping mall than a ballpark, especially since last year’s playoff atmosphere has given way to a quieter, less lively crowd that has already seen its share of bad baseball this year. Leaving the stadium, I had kind of a mixed reaction to not being talked to by any overzealous Astros fans. It was nice not to get the drunken yelling that had greeted me almost a year ago, but today’s silence was more about apathy than politeness, which is no good. But the weekend was great overall--I’m going to have to do this again.