Houston, We Have a Problem

So Willie let the music play. The Astros let another one get away.

Don't get me wrong: I'm thrilled by our grit, vim 'n' vigor, moxie, or

whatever you want to call it. Speed never goes into a slump (though it

often does pop a hammy — did anyone else cringe when Reyes took off

for second in 45-degree weather?) even if David Wright and Mike Piazza

do, and sometimes a little luck is the best weapon of all.

All good things, but I couldn't help noticing that the Astros seemed

incapable of getting out of their own way. Witness the fatal (for them)

eighth inning: Leadoff walk and a double, but they still had a 3-1

lead. Marlon Anderson grounds out (3-2), then Reyes squibs a little

worm killer that John Franco has no play on (3-3). Then, just to quiet

a bunch of Houston bloggers crying (with good reason) about bad luck,

Cairo smacks a grounder to Mike Lamb. Ahh…the name is Bootsy, baby! Mets lead.

Sure, scoring three runs on 200 feet worth of grounders can be a sign

of your team's never-say-die attitude, or that the Fates are smiling

down on you. But it can also mean you're playing a yet-to-gel team

that's commenced to play lousy. Something tells me it's going to take a

bit more than this to beat Florida, particularly with Heilman vs.

Beckett looming as the biggest mismatch since Bambi and Godzilla

squared off. (If young Aaron cares to make me look like an idiot, I'm

all for that.)

As for the return of Senator Al, I confess to some remorse over my recent hard-heartedness. Rich Chere of the Star-Ledger had a nice piece

yesterday morning about Al, who let the reporter rummage around in his

tortured psyche. His suggestion that he rejected the idea of the

Yankees because of how much Met fans would have hated that softened me

up a little, but what really got me was Al talking about how much it

would have meant to him to have trailed only Seaver, Gooden and Koosman

in franchise wins. How many current Met pitchers do you think even know

who Jerry Koosman is?

Who knows — maybe there's a videotape of Al surreptitiously flipping

through the media guide before his tip of the cap to Kooz. And he

flubbed when Tom Glavine joined the team. Regardless, I feel a bit bad

now.

But only a bit. If Leiter's approaching 100 pitches in the top of the

fourth on Saturday, I guarantee my remorse will be in check.

Speaking of which, was that vintage John Franco, or what?  When he

got two strikes on Reyes, I said, “Uh-oh, Reyes is exactly the kind of

young, overeager hitter Franco carves up by throwing  junk off the

plate.” But then I realized I'd been using that line for 15 years, and

it stopped being true sometime in the late 1990s. More times than I

care to recall, I watched Johnny throw balls that those young,

overeager hitters ignored, leading either to walks or some kind of

slow-motion John Franco debacle. And indeed, after Reyes got his bat on

one of those not-quite-junky-enough pitches, screw-ups ensued. The

outcome wasn't obviously Franco's fault, but it did happen with him on the mound, so….

Nothing personal, Johnny (honestly), but I'm glad it's Houston's problem.

P.S. Joe Grzenda,

one of 16,583 men to play for the 1967 New York Mets, handed President

Bush the ball for the ceremonial first pitch at the Nationals' home

opener. (Naturally the Met angle will be criminally underplayed by

those philistines in D.C.) The ball was the same one Grzenda threw for

the last pitch in Senators' history. Now that's cool. It would have

been cooler if Livan Hernandez had thrown that same ball for the first

pitch to Craig Counsell, but of course that wasn't going to happen.

(What if Counsell had fouled it off?) Anyway, shucks.