I’ll apologize ahead of time for our non-baseball readers, but I’ve been wanting for some time to touch on the titled topics, especially after star pitcher Roy Oswalt was traded from the Astros.
I have no opinion on the deal itself as I have not followed baseball in some time and thus am not familiar with the prospects received, but from what I gather, it has been well-received insofar as simply being a necessary move in what has been a rebuilding put off for far too long.
I love baseball. Not so much to watch per se–I would much rather watch a game of basketball than a game of baseball–but rather to follow. There’s really no sport more conducive to fan-following than baseball, just simply due to the plethora of statistics widely available for tracking.
People often express amazement when I declare this interest for the game. ”It’s so boring,” is a common response, and technically speaking, there is validity to that statement – in and of itself, a baseball game, in a vacuum is boring to watch. But when one is following a team over the course of a season, and knows that one fastball tossed a little too meekly in the right spot can impact an entire pennant race, each pitch becomes exhilarating. There is truly nothing quite like playoff baseball.
Roy Oswalt was my favorite Houston sports figure of all-time. I only caught a few years of Hakeem’s prime, and no Rocket has really done much since; I don’t watch football. Oswalt is the only great who I watched from his first day in the big leagues. I’ll never forget the excitement of his rookie year when he rejuvenated an aging ball-club with what seemed to be an explosion coming from his right arm. We thought he, Wade Miller, and Carlos Hernandez would be our own Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz for the next decade until things went awry and only Oswalt remained. (To date, moreso than even Yao/McGrady, Carlos Hernandez’s downfall still stands as the biggest tragedy in my Houston sports viewing lifetime.)
I watched reports of the trade with a heavy heart – it was Oswalt (along with Brad Lidge) who provided me my fondest memories as a sports fan. You see, I didn’t really appreciate the Rockets championships. ’94 was the first year that I watched basketball and so, in my naivete, I came to assume that a title was not something so out of the ordinary. But after watching the Rockets struggle for the next decade, and gaining the cynicism we all develop with age, the Stros’ playoff runs of 2004 and 2005 were sheer bliss.
Oswalt’s game 6 against the Cardinals will be forever immortalized in Houston sports history. His first inning strikeout of Albert Pujols where he left the St. Louis slugger scrambling to maintain his balance was the one moment in Houston sports history since the Rockets title years that we all collectively murmured “this game is in the bag; he won’t allow us to lose.”
I should touch on Lidge because, he’s the greatest physical phenom I’ve ever witnessed on the local scene. My cynicism towards society was only fueled by our treatment of him upon commencement of his struggles. I could never quite understand some of the vitriol – he wasn’t good, and in fact was pretty horrid, but how could you so maliciously boo a guy who gave us the memories that he did?
Brad Lidge’s 2004 NLCS against the Cards will be tough to top atop my list of fondest memories in Houston sports history. I’ll never forget the electricity that filled the building when he took the mound, or the adrenaline that pumped through my own veins throughout each of his appearances. Best of all was the awe in Fox’s broadcast crew, for the most part silent without commentary during each of these innings, only announcing the count, as if speechless by the spectacle before them. Lidge was a marvel. While young, I remember thinking I would never see anything like that again, when sparks flew out of a man’s arm and then disappeared into the earth. As he warmed up in the 8th, you almost got chills as the camera panned to the scene and Thom and Buck anticipated his entrance.
I stopped watching baseball entirely last season as, having the blog, and with little spare time due to my real life obligations, I wanted to focus all my effort on the NBA. Even then, I still consider baseball the most stimulating of the major sports. If you have not yet, give it a shot and watch a season. If you like statistics and are driven by a need to quantify, I guarantee you will come away a fan.
