Jingo All the Way

I feel like the media is trying to fire Cecil Cooper.

The Houston Chronicle's Jerome Solomon and Richard Justice, and 790 AM's Ted DeLuca and John Lopez have been talking about nothing but the firing of Cooper for the last two weeks, speaking of it as though it were a foregone conclusion.

In the last decade or so, sports media has been building to something, that until recently, I did not realize was really starting to bother me. There are no "sports reporters" anymore - they've been replaced by sports editorialists, who are more often than not personalities.

Look at Richard Justice's blog, for instance. At first, I was going to complain about how the blog, which started out as a(n intended) humorous side project between columns had morphed into a blathering irrelevancy that started to bleed into his proper columns, but then I realized that all blogs are basically that, and having a blog as part of your official workload is the problem in the first place. Some editor somewhere (I'm sure Houston is not alone here) decided that the cult of personality was going to be the savior of print media, and started requiring columnists to keep blogs.

Thing is, we don't tune in to sports media for their opinions the way we do entertainment and dining critics. Sports reporting used to be news with a little bit of analysis thrown in. Now it's all - I can't use the word analysis because it seems too lofty for what these guys do - criticism. Non-constructive at that.

Of course, we don't need Sports news the way we used to. We DVR the games so we can see what happened for ourselves, and now even the most casual fan can use the internet to get the latest on Brandon Backe's rehab assignment or the pitching staff at Salem that's supposed to be on the rise. But boy, do we love to discuss it.

So sports personalities help us facilitate that. The good ones (like Charlie Palillo) stand apart from the pack, stating the facts and letting them vent, and when they do offer up an opinion, it's reserved and backed up, and it almost never feeds into the hype. The Chronicle and the Monsters go it the easy way, by picking up a big stick covered in gasoline and sticking it into the embers, igniting a huge fire out of something that was simply meant to keep our feet warm.

This leads me back to where I led off: I'm sure discontent within the organization has led some to question the security of Cecil Cooper's job. But I would bet you dinner at Fogo De Chao that it was far from a foregone conclusion, and that cooler heads might have prevailed before guys like Solomon and DeLuca stuck their big gasoline-soaked sticks into the mess and made it an issue that couldn't be avoided. Now everyone who follows the Houston Astros has been innundated with the nonsense of "Cecil Cooper should be fired" to the point where half or two-thirds of them believe it to be true because this is their sports *news,* after all, and they start clamoring for Coop's head, booing him at home when he comes out to make a pitching change or something. And Drayton McLane, one of the biggest sheep in the flock, hears this, and decides that the manager has to go.

Maybe Cooper needs to be fired. I don't know, and I don't want to discuss it. My beef is with the sports media for creating a situation in which he has to be. They've made themselves a part of the story. It's irresponsible journalism, and I am sorry that it had to end this way for a decent, hard-working guy, a guy who will probably be a lot more forgiving towards his transgressors than I would be.

All for now.

This is a Scare Tactic, Right?

I mean, there's no way that the Astros are this bad... at least I hope not.

Wait, do I? I love baseball, and will probably watch a butt of games this season anyway, but as long as losing 100 games doesn't result in Oswalt, Berkman, and Pence being sold off for spare parts, would that really hurt so much this year?

From an economic standpoint, probably. Houston is one of those towns that refuses to sponsor you unless you're the biggest and the best always. Still, it would be nice to have dibs on one one of the top three draft picks in 2010.

The Last Three Outs

Rest in peace, Dave Smith.

Dave was the Astros' closer when I was a kid, and closed games for our famous 1986 squad. He died today of a heart attack at age 53. I'm pretty sure he was non-steroidy, so that's an awfully early age to die. Still, pitchers aren't exactly models of fitness, even if we do classify them as athletes.

Dave still holds the Astros record for career saves - more than Billy Wagner. To put it in perspective of Valverde's record-setting single season of fourty-four, he'd have to have 4 1/2 seasons straight like that to tie Smith.

All for now.

Pet Renegades

In case you were wondering: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/pets/others/6156855.html

It often comes up among friends of mine that none of us knows the specifics of how to legally own a monkey. Now we do. According to the law in Houston, I can legally have my Golden Lion Tamarin butler now!

Not too long ago, two grizzly bears were rescued by the SPCA from a north Harris County home. As Chris explained, the story isn't that a man had two grizzly bears, it's that he had the nueterables to mistreat them.

All for now.

My Name is Captain Brusin'

If you travel in and around the Memorial / Heights area of town, you may have passed the Citgo on Heights Blvd. which is next to the Art Car Museum and just a stone's throw away from the Hickory Hollow (wow, does that ever sound quaint and small-towny).

This Citgo, for reasons unknown to me, charges prices for its' gasoline which have little, if anything to do with the current market. In Houston, TX, the current going rate for gas is about $2.65 - $2.75 per gallon. So imagine my surprise to see this Citgo charging $2.99 9/10 for a gallon of unleaded fuel this morning on my way to work.

This situation begs the question: Citgo on Heights Blvd., who do you think you are?

I'm not even mad, just curious. I can avoid buying gas at this Citgo rather easily, as there are several gas stations within less than a mile of this gas station / convienence store. I've thought about this as much as I can, and I've come to the conclusion that the answer is one of the following.

1. Every day, you check the national gas price average, and set your prices. This is too bad for you, because no one will buy your gas here. Even if the national average is $2.99, we're operating a quarter below that in the Bayou City (it's under $2 in Harlingen, TX), and since the average gas tank holds about 12 gallons, you're looking at a difference of about $3.00 at your gas station alone, and I need that $3.00 to save up to buy milk. And not the over-priced, convienence store Oak Farms milk you sell at Citgo, either. Regular grocery store milk.

2. You really have no intention of selling gas. I actually think this is the most likely answer, although why you wake up every morning, and exclaim, "Dag, yo! I can't face a line of customers coming into my store for fuel today, wanting to pay me money for it and shit!" is beyond me. It kind of reminds me of Lou's Grocery Store in Bacliff.

What's that, you say, Citgo on Heights Blvd.? You've never heard of Lou's Grocery in Bacliff? Well, let me explain.

Between Kemah and Dickinson, TX on the South-Southeast side of Houston, about halfway down to Galveston, there's a little town called Bacliff. It's a peculiarity of a town, a place where land titles mean almost nothing because banks gave away multiple copies of them for free back in the early 1900's, so no national chains exist there, except for a Jack-in-the-Box along Hwy 146, which connects Kemah to Galveston. It's a mix of port resort and shanty town, truly a wonder to behold. If you've ever wondered where sex offenders have to live, it's in places like Bacliff, due to a school district never wanting to build a school there what with their overabundance of sanity.

Bacliff has one grocery store. ONE! And it's Lou's (most people drive to the Wal-Mart in Dickinson or League City). Only, the thing is, Lou's is not a grocery store. Lou's has beer and liquor, cigarrettes, lotto, and canned food like you might find at you, Citgo on Heights Blvd., but I'm pretty sure their produce section is made up entirely of props. Wilted props. Fresh foods at Lou's are like the regular movies in a video store that you know makes its' money on porn, so the regular movies are all dusty D releases from 1993, and nobody in their right mind would ever rent them. Come to think of it, Lou's smells kind of like a video store that is 12% "real" movies and 88% Cal Vista releases.

'Cause here's the thing: Lou's isn't going to sell celery or watercress. It knows better than that. So it stocks up on what it does sell, and calls itself a grocery store much like you call yourself a gas station instead of The Vice Stop. Admit it, Citgo. You make your money on lotto tickets, tobacco, and porn. The end.

3. You honestly think you can sell this gas and make a profit. Citgo. Citgo! You are not the Shell station on San Felipe and Weslayan, the only gas station that the River Oaksies go to. You are 100 yards from I-10, and nobody's buying it. I can't imagine that the art cars even go to you. In fact, this is so dumb, I secretly suspect that you, Citgo on Heights Blvd., are really Gary Sheffield.

All for now.