Thanks for joining me here in part two, which is really just part 1A of an obscenely long post I felt like breaking into two. What’s really the problem with the Astros? As I suggested earlier, it’s a combination of McLane’s overbearing personality which led to the hiring of problem number two, Special Ed.

It starts at the top with Drayton. You can’t completely begrudge the work he’s done – he introduced a modicum of stability and success into a franchise that had lost its way. He saved the franchise from being moved in the early 90s. That being said, the best owners keep a watchful eye on their franchise but leave the iron fist at home. Not so with Drayton and I think this is best illustrated by two problems. First, the Hunsicker departure. For once, Dickie Justice is right – running Hunsicker out of town was a terrible idea. He’s responsible for our one and only World Series appearance and (just look at the Devil Rays) clearly knows what he’s doing. You keep that sort of talent around even if you disagree with him at times.

Things are in a right awful state at Minute Maid Park. As much as I enjoy Shawn Chacon going Stone Cold Steve Austin on Ed Wade, that is a downright frightening indicator of the cancerous state of the clubhouse. I’ve got my own theories, mostly premised on two things: (1) Drayton McLane is a despot, and (2) Ed Wade makes me wish Steve Phillips was in charge. But all joking aside, it’s time to be extremely worried about your hometown heroes.

What started as one long post – I’ve decided to break into two parts. The idea is pretty simple: accountability is lacking in two places – the Astros and the coverage. Welcome to part one, where the average fan gets no answers from the media!

Now I usually steer clear of the Chomicale, but these guys have access to the clubhouse – and if I’m going to get a straight answer about what’s going on, I need to give Little Dickie Justice and the merry bad of ass-clowns over there a chance to inform me. How many times must I burn my hand on the stove?

Not the one that begins with, “I never thought it would happen to me…”, but it’s a start.

HOUSTON (AP)—Astros pitcher Shawn Chacon was suspended indefinitely by the team Wednesday for insubordination after reportedly grabbing general manager Ed Wade by the neck and throwing him to the ground.

Now, I’m not condoning violence, per se, as much as I am hoping that, when Chacon grabbed Wade, it dislodged whatever it is that has obviously been keeping oxygen from his brain.  Of course, it’s also fair game to wonder how Chacon grabbed Wade’s neck in the first place.  Was he actually just giving me a friendly colonoscopy that got out of hand?

Nevertheless, it’s fair to think that Chacon has seen his last game as an Astro.  And, here again, we go dipping into our horribly depleted minor league system to try and find an answer.

Dammit.

(PS: Dear AP: I linked to one of your articles, assholes.  See you in court.  And if you think the proven scam artists at the Media Bloggers Association represent me, you guys are incredibly moronic.)

You’ll have to excuse us for a moment as we drift a bit away from baseball.  And in honor of the man who inspired this piece, we’ll be using his trademark royal “we.”  If we’ve appeared to hijack his tone, we apologize.

There are only two mediums in which blogs can truly thrive: sports and politics.  This is because these are the only two large mediums in which opinions are central.  Sure, you could have blogs dedicated to coup d’états and natural disasters (and we would not be surprised if these existed) – but those are inherently fact-based situations.  Either the president of Turkey was overthrown or he wasn’t.  Either an earthquake struck Chile or it didn’t.  It’s hard to have a compelling opinion one way or the other.  But politics and sports are different.  Obama opted out of public financing – this is a fact.  But is this a good idea or a bad idea?  How do we think McCain will react?  Lloyd Carr called a screen on 3rd and 11 – did it cost the Wolverines the game?  Should he have called a slant-route to Manningham?  Politics and sports are ripe for debate and discussion – and thus their respective blogospheres were born.

Last week’s ranking had just a touch of cynicism to it.  This week I’ll do my best to toss out a few legitimately interesting and exciting things.  Don’t hold your breath.

1.  The California Angels of Los Angeles Anaheim California America:  These are, of course, personal power rankings of my nonsensical interests – but this one is a bit more personal.  I spent the last two years living in Philadelphia.  I am not a big fan of Philadelphia.  Fandom stereotypes exist for a reason.  The first time I went to see the Astros play the Phillies, a mentally retarded guy heckled me for nine innings.  His two juvenile acquaintances called him “the Fonz.”  He informed me of two things: (1) he was going to shit in my hat, and (2) the Beatles are gay (I was wearing a Beatles t-shirt).  Because of this, and my equally stereotypical experience at an Eagles game (PEOPLE, I WAS ROOTING FOR THE EAGLES) I hate any and all Philadelphia sports teams.  I wish them 1,000 years of failure and misery.  This is a long way of saying thanks to the Angles for sweeping the Phillies after Cole Hamel’s ridiculous prophecy last week.

2.  George Carlin:  Shit.  Piss.  Fuck.  Cunt.  Cocksucker.  Motherfucker.  Tits.  Seven words I’m sure he can say in the afterlife.

3.  Gaza Hezballers: I was going to drop them this week, I swear.  There’s an event horizon of self-congratulations – though I’m not sure Matt has ever reached that point.  But then Mark Teixeira belted three home runs in one game.  God my team is good.

4.  Curt Schilling’s Shoulder:  I’m disappointed he didn’t live-blog the surgery on his site!  New word is that he could be pitching by winter.  Yup.  And by winter I’m gonna be Pope!  Good riddance to annoying self-righteous gasbags.

5.  Fresno State Bulldogs:  A complete 180 from my reverence for Tiger’s total domination last week.  Fresno State making the College World Series finals (against the Georgia Bulldogs) is – seeding and competition wise – more impressive than George Mason making the final four.  You gotta root for the underdog!  They’d be higher up the list if Fresno State wasn’t the alma mater of a certain white-glove wearing fairy who couldn’t beat a blind midget in HORSE if you spotted him H-O-R-S and a lay-up… much less an SEC baseball team.

And just to echo the new mantra that seems to be drifting round the blogosphere today – fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.

The Astros team I feared in the offseason? The one with no pitching what so ever and a streaky, long-ball based offense? Yeah - I found them. And since they are playing Baltimore, they’re even in my TV viewing area! Which means I’ve been able to watch it live and on TV! If you need me, I’ll be over here crying myself to sleep because I see no fixes in the near future and nothing coming up from the farm.

That’s a long way of saying the following - it’s time to fire Ed Wade and Cecil Cooper. To be fair, Ed Wade should never have been hired in the first place. There are not actually words in the English language to express my utter dislike of Ed Wade. “But he drafted Utley, Rollins and Howard for the Phillies!” And tried shipping two of them out of town for crappy veterans. I really don’t understand - the model for sustainability is to develop a strong farm system and compliment it with key veteran/free-agent signings. Look no further than the Red Sox. The core of that team is home-grown talent (Ellsbury, Masterson, Paplebon, Youk) with some fantastic free agents. So what do we do? Ship whatever is left and bring in aging veterans like Tejada and Matsui. This, friends, is not a recipe for success. And don’t tell me we can’t afford that model - look at our payroll.

And as for Cooper? I no longer can justify his moves. He rests veterans for inexplicable reasons, makes curious pitching decisions, and just generally seems out of his league. Gah!

I understand this is a long rambling rant from a disgruntled fan. But watching the Good Guys play ball the last few days has been nothing short of distressing. And the Cubs are in first. God I hate baseball.

A day late and a buck short (no seriously, BFD doesn’t pay me – does someone have bus money?)  Nevertheless, here is this week’s power ranking!  No change at the top, but since I have the attention span of a – hey look over there!  Er yeah… wholesale changes everywhere else.

1.  Gaza Hezballers: The Hezballers hold on to the top spot, mostly because I’m still dominating my fantasy league by a ridiculous 19 points.  Seriously – the last three years I’ve finished dead last.  This is about the best thing going for me right now.

2.  The New York Mets:  I like a team that provides me comic relief.  And nothing says big dysfunctional family like firing your manager, pitching coach and hitting first base coach after back-to-back wins – and releasing the statement at 3:15AM EST!  Honestly, Omar Minaya gets too much of a free pass – he’s made some truly awful signings, and expecting to contend with a team that would rather read Readers Digest and watch Matlock than play baseball isn’t usually a winning formula.

3.  Hank Steinbrenner:  Special thanks to the ever-vigilant Crawfish Boxes for pointing this one out to me.  And I quote: “My only message is simple,” Steinbrenner said in Tampa, Fla. “The National League needs to join the 21st century. They need to grow up and join the 21st century.”  There are limitless possibilities there – seriously, free-for-all in the comments.

4.  Tiger Woods:  Look, I’m not really a golf guy.  I enjoy it in HD because it’s pretty to watch – but my interest extends only as far as Tiger’s in contention.  That said, you have no soul if you weren’t consumed by the Saturday-Sunday-Monday spectacle that took place.  His Saturday round was completely ridiculous, and he birdied 18 TWO days in a row to prolong the tournament.  All on a bum knee.  That, friends, is complete and total domination of a sport.

5.  The NL West:  One team over .500?  Check!  Reigning NL Champions in last?  Check!  General indifference of national media?  Check!  Ladies and gentlemen your NL West!  After a sizzling start the D-backs have stuttered back down to earth.  Joe Torre doesn’t seem to be able to get Dodger fans in the stands before the 3rd inning (though to be fair, who can?)  And only one team has scored over 300 runs so far this season.  Thankfully this sort of anemic baseball only airs after 10pm.

Sidenote: Guess who’s calling the College World Series?  Robin Ventura!  Does anyone – ANYONE – look at that guy and not think “got his ass kicked by 40-year old Nolan Ryan”?

Real life has been real busy lately, and this will be a quick edition of rights and wrongs.

Rights:

Carlos Lee, Darin Erstad, and Miggy Tejada all put up OPS better than 900.

Brad Ausmus and Michael Bourn both had OPS over 790.

And that’s about it.

Wrongs:

Team batting line for the week: .263 avg, .306 OBP, .351 SLG, for an OPS of 657.  Hunter Pence was 2-23 for the week.

Worst of all, and I harp about it constantly, is our inability to draw walks.  In 206 PAs, we drew the grand total of 12 walks.  To put it in perspective, the “normal” season for a starter is a little over 600 PAs.  As a team over the course of a season, we would’ve had 36 BB and 114 Ks.  That’s downright NEIFI!-esque, and it’s why we are struggling.  As nice as it is to hit home runs, you’ve got to put people on base.  Out-making is not a viable offensive strategy, but it’s what we are doing.

Speaking of out-making, Friday’s game deserves the ole’ pink highlighter treatment thanks to all the caught stealings (CS).  For the week, were had 8 SB and 5 CS, which, in reality, is just below the steal break even ratio of about 67% (in other words, you must be successful on 67% on your steal attempts for the steals to be worth it).  But that doesn’t include a huge out by Hunter on the bases in Saturday’s game.

And the pitching?  For the week, we had an ERA of 7.01 with a WHIP of 1.65.  *We* walked 29 BB in just 54 innings, which gave our opponents a net gain of 17 baserunners.  That’s three baserunners per game via walk alone.

Roy, who had his best start of the season earlier in the week, got lit up on Sunday.  Shawn Chacon had the only other quality start for the team with his outing.  For almost everybody else, it was fuggly.

After failing to take advantage of a week of home-cooking, we again hit the road where we’ve struggled with a 16-21 record.  We kick off the festivities at Baltimore, and we wind up the week with one of the surprise teams of the year, the Tampa Bay Satan Worshippers.  They’ve been my second favorite team to watch this year, so I’m excited about the match-up.

I don’t get home to Houston much and when I do it’s usually holiday season - which means no baseball.  So whenever I get a chance to catch a game at Minute Maid, I’m usually pretty damn excited about it.  Just such an occasion presented itself to me this year.  Of course the only series I could see was against the Washington Nationals - a team I’ll spend all summer watching since I’m living here - but whatever!  It’s Astros baseball!  It’s Minute Maid!  It’s cheering for the home team for once!

But something peculiar caught my eye when I was purchasing tickets.  There were two sets of prices - one column of costs a full 50% more than the regular ticket prices!  “Have we started charging for premium games against the Cubs and Cardinals or something?  Rivalry games?” I asked myself.  Oh no.  These were the special costs for the home series against the Yankees and Red Sox.  Areyoufreakingkiddingme?

Look - I can understand the idea of fleecing every Masshole and Bleacher Creature roaming the streets of the Greater Houston Area.  But that’s the sort of bullshit gimmick reserved for teams that can’t sell out the cheap seats.  The Astros don’t have that problem.  Despite hiring Ed Wade and fielding a beer league softball team - the team still sells tickets.  The fans still come out.  People still care - and more importantly still PAY.  So to jack up the prices on everyone just because the storied Yankees and Red Sox are coming to town is an insult to any and every Astros fan.

What exactly are you charging me extra for?  To see the decaying corpse of Mussina take the mound?  The right to boo Andy P?  The chance to high-five Manny when he jumps the fence for no good reason? (Ok that I’d pay to do.)  But the point remains - what makes them so damned special?  If Bristol wants to fluff these two teams nine months out of the year, that’s their prerogative.  But for Uncle Drayton to pass the buck on to the regular Astro fan - that’s unconscionable.

Just needed to get that off my chest.  If any of you lads bit the bullet and paid the premium - please share with me below why!  And if it was worth it.

OFF TOPIC:  RIP Tim Russert.  For a political junky like me, Meet the Press is as much a part of my week as box scores and breakfast.  He was the finest and most objective political journalist left - and he will be missed.

I had grandiose plans of getting some content up today. However, I’m nursing an absolutely epic hang over right now - so I’m going for a bit of a cop out and just dumping some interesting baseball links here. Forgive me!

• Jose de Jesus Ortiz (who is one of two writers I will actually read at the Chron) seems to think the Astros should sign recently released Sidney Ponson. I am 100% behind this idea because it would make the ‘Stros the fattest baseball team ever. Also, every team should have an Aruban Knight.
• Jack Wilkinson has a good piece on Griffey’s 600th homer over at SI.com. I get kind of depressed anytime I read/see/think about Griffey - mostly because of the “what if.” What if this guy had stayed healthy? Bonds-Griffey would have been the ultimate good versus evil - and could have been the greatest storyline/spectacle in sports. Alas…
• Lesbians and baseball. (I know this story has already gotten a lot of traction, but I reiterate my initial point - lesbians and baseball.)
• Pujols strained his calf yesterday, probably while standing at home plate admiring his own homer - likehedoeseverysingletime. Wait what? Oh - Joe Strauss at the Post-Dispatch tells me it was while digging out a grounder. He also says a DL trip is imminent and the Flying Red Rats have already called up Chris Duncan. When reached for comment, Backe told me “He’s just scared I’m gonna whoop his ass.” You sure are, Brandon… you sure are.
• Zlatan Ibrahimovic unleashed an absolute cracker of a goal in Euro 2008 action yesterday. (Third video down) Ok so it’s not baseball related - but I just wanted to share because (a) I’m a huge soccer fan, (b) the guy’s name is ZLATAN!, and (c) it’s my post.

Alright that should be enough to keep you kids busy for a little bit. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to have my lunch of advil, water and prayer.