Damn you, Craig Biggio

I’m an ardent baseball fan. I’ll watch or listen to anything baseball – all the way from those meaningless September games for teams 20 games back to the local little league action. Having experienced a lot of baseball over the past twenty years, I’ve seen a lot of history unfold – on television or the radio.

So when my favorite player of all time was about to reach the fabled 3,000-hit plateau just an hour-and-a-half away from me, I made darn sure I had tickets for both Friday and Saturday’s games. Even though it meant getting off work early. And a ton of money in gasoline. And getting standing room only tickets.

How did Craig Biggio reward me? By getting five hits (and magical #3000) on Thursday night. But I got to watch it on television.

Despite the near-miss with history, my brother, his girfriend and I still made the trek out to Minute Maid Park on Friday and Saturday and dutifully stood through 15 innings of baseball (we were able to gank some empty seats in the 7th on Friday). And although we missed out on Biggio’s moment in the spotlight, the weekend reminded me that a bad day at the ballpark is still better than being just about anywhere else.

My brother and I were assaulted by a person in a frog mascot suit on Friday and by Junction Jack on Saturday. I dropped my scorekeeping pen down onto the warning track, where it sat for five innings until a heartless batboy tossed it into the bullpen trash can.

We discovered that Matt Holliday has a serious addiction to sunflower seeds and can’t even last a whole inning without getting more from the bullpen. I finally got to see Hunter Pence throw like a girl in person. And we got to witness the phenomenon that is “El Caballos” up close and personal.

The Astros were smart enough to keep Biggio in the starting lineup for those sell-out crowds on both Friday and Saturday, so we did at least get to see the old man crank out his 3,003rd and 3,004th hits.

Friday night was “Super Heroes Night”, which means Drayton made the interns embarrass themselves even more than usual and a ninja turtle threw out the first pitch. Saturday was “Stand Alone ‘Stache Day”, as well as the free jersey giveaway day, which meant lines out the ying-yang to get into the park. Can it get any more fun than that?

Down on the farm

Last week, my brother and I made the trek out to Round Rock to check out the AAA Express, or as we like to call them, the “Lil’ Astros”. The game was fairly decent and featured a number of former major leaguers, most notably Chan Ho Park.

The Ho was making his first start at home for the Express and he turned out to be just as average as he was for the Rangers, getting run after blowing the game in six innings. Other names of note included Humberto “The Q” Quintero, Rick Ankiel and the lamest excuse ever for a major league outfielder, Jason Lane.

The primary attraction was the park itself, though. With its outfield rock-climbing wall, outfield grassy berm, amazing sno-cone flavoring facility and the mysterious “Big Bus” parked behind the scoreboard, Dell Diamond is a pretty nice place to see a baseball game. I hope to go back quite a bit over the next few years.

For those of you who’d like to see more, here’s links to all the photos:
Round Rock – Astros (Friday) – Astros (Saturday)