When I was five, my family rarely had the financial resources to go to baseball games.  We definitely watched our fair share on tv, and listened to Milo (back when he was coherent) on the radio.  Those were heady days for Astros fans: unlike the bandbox that is MMP, the Astrodome was a pitchers’ park extraordinaire, and the roster was shaped with that in mind.  Legendary hurlers like Nolan Ryan and Mike Scott were in their primes, backed by young goofballs like Jim Deshaies and Charlie Kerfeldt.  But I wasn’t a pitching fan back then.  I was a Jose Cruz fan.

When you look at his stats now, he’s pretty unremarkable.  He hit for average, not for power.  He was a passable but unspectacular outfielder.  His jersey is retired, but he never got any serious HoF consideration.  If Hunter Pence had less power and fewer strikeouts, that’d be the closest equivalent on our current roster.

But he was my favorite player, dammit, and on the handful of occasions during his 13 years with the ‘Stros that I got to see him play live, you couldn’t draw my attention away from him.  At the aforementioned age of five, I distinctly remember sitting the rainbow seats in the Dome (the nosebleeds) and cheering Cheo while he simply stood in left field and waited for a ball in play.  Let that sink in: I was cheering an outfielder who was just flat-out standing there.  This is why my own baseball career at the time consisted primarily of the taxonomic evaluation of dandelions.

When Cheo became the Astros first base coach, it always delighted me that he got some of the biggest cheers during the pre-game introductions.  For as many times as I’ve cursed the average baseball fan in Houston as a numbskull in search of the Almighty Longball with no sense of history or proportion, the ovations that Cruz receives always restore a little of my faith.

Naturally, when the Astros signed Jose Cruz, Jr. to a minor-league contract this offseason, I got all misty thinking about the opportunity to cheer for another Jose Cruz.  When he tore the cover off the ball in Spring Training, leap-frogging all the other candidates for the fifth outfielder role, I was even more excited.

And then the regular season started.

Cheito, you’re like a hot girl with an annoying voice.  Every fiber of my being says that I should love you, but then you start to do your thing, and it makes me want to bathe with electric eels. You’re awful as a pinch hitter, man.  Just a fucking tragedy.  Last night, when you couldn’t bring in either of the two runners who could’ve salvaged the ugliest game of the season so far, I had a moment of clarity wherein I understood why monkeys fling their feces.

So with that in mind, and his .065 average making Hunter look like freaking Ichiro, it’s time for the good of the team to come ahead of the last name.   Victor Diaz is tearing up the ball in Round Rock, and certainly couldn’t do much worse than 3 hits for the whole season.   It’s time to cut the losses and get a more reliable bat for the bench.

I’ve loved the Cruz family since 1985.  But I also loved Michael Jackson back then, and my therapist says it’s time to let that one go, too