About forloveoftheastros

"A losing team has fewer admirers, but their allegiance endures, year after year. It is a relationship built upon hope and disappointment. And then, in the spring, the most romantic season, longing again. Losing teams are like potboiler novesl, predictable but addictive in their capacity to sustain the dream that one day the clouds will part. The relationship between a losing team and its admirers is more complex and compelling than the simple delight in conquest enjoyed by the winners' fans. Winning teams are grand and heroic, qualities that lack a human dimension. But losing teams are all too human. They are cursed by chance, by their own limitations, by failures of will and desire. But when they win, their victories speak to fans who, having witnessed so much misery, can draw lessons from those triumphs." --Michael Shapiro Okay, so that isn't exactly my extended biography. But it might as well be. I have been a baseball fan, and a Houston Astros fan, from around the time I learned how to say the word "Astro." Some of my fondest early memories are of sitting in those bright orange seats in the Astrodome with my dad in the 1980s. The years of Nolan Ryan, Jose Cruz, Alan Ashby, Billy Hatcher, Kevin Bass, Mike Scott, Billy Doran. The first time I ever knew what true devastation: 1986, when the Astros fell to the Mets in Game 6 of the NLCS in 16 agonizing innings. I was 8. It was the first time I ever cried over a baseball game. But it was certainly not the last. We've had our share of heartbreak over the years. The 2004 playoffs were particularly wrenching, and the World Series in 2005.... Well. But every year, I feel like I'm not entirely alive until those pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training (which I have attended with my friend Sarah for the past two years and hope to continue until I am 95 and walking with a walker and the players call me Grandma). What can I say? I'm an addict. Other information: I'm 28 years old. I live with my two cats, Bill and Olivia, in Syracuse, New York, where I am a first-year graduate student at Syracuse University. It will be two more years before I can return permanently to Houston and Minute Maid Park... My last regular season Astros game was July 28, 2005, three days before I moved to Syracuse. It was the first time the Astros had hosted the Mets since a certain $118-million-center-fielder (whose name will never be written on this blog), and the atmosphere was absolutely electric. People booed him every time he even got near the ball in center field, and every time he got up to bat. Rookie Wandy Rodriguez pitched against Pedro Martinez. The Astros won 2-1. I left the ballpark (it was so hard to say goodbye!) and thought with some pride that Houston had finally become a baseball town.