GAMES 87-89: Break Time -- with Bagwell Photos and Video

GAME 87 - July 9: Cardinals 8, Astros 0
GAME 88 - July 10: Astros 4, Cardinals 1
GAME 89 - July 11: Cardinals 4, Astros 2

This is just a teaser. Keep going -- there are lots more pictures (and a video) of Baggy below...

Time for the mid-season All Star Break. For me, that translates into a full week without any live Astros games -- first the 4 days off, and then the Sabbath games that I catch up on when three stars appear in the Saturday evening sky. A whole week! I'll go into withdrawal! It's just not normal to come home from work and face night after night without watching my guys. Tonight I was so discombobulated that I went to the gym after work by accident.

On the other hand, the weekend Astros series against the Cards hardly left devoted fans panting for more. If I were a Cardinals fan, I'd probably be checking the National League scoreboard all the time (Woohoo - Reds lost again!). As an Astros fan, I'm freed from those tiresome tasks - when you're 17 games under .500 going into the All Star break, the standings aren't meaningful to everyday life.

Here's the one-line version of the Cardinals series: Failure to push across runs Friday and Sunday and a terrific start by Myers Saturday. Rather than focusing on the weekend disappointments, let's just go straight to the big Astros news story: BAGGY'S BACK IN UNIFORM! He's going to be the new pitching coach, taking over after Sean Berry got stuck as the fall guy for the terrible offensive performance of the team so far this year. You can check out the blogs of Alyson Footer, McTaggert, and others to get the details of the new position, and how happy everyone is to have Bagwell back, and how sorry they are for Berry because it wasn't his fault that Astros batters suck. As long as you're here on my blog, you might as well look at some of my pictures of Bagwell from the past 6 years. (If you want to see more, check out the Bagwell page of the photo album on my Astros Fan in Exile website.)

Here's a rare one for me, since almost all of my thousands of Astros pix are taken at Spring Training: Bagwell in 2004, playing a home game in Houston (the only time I've ever been in MMP):

Here's Bagwell playing at Spring Training 2005, the year I had a vision in Kissimmee of the Astros in the World Series. (I know, you're tired of that story.)

Here's Bagwell when he tried to make a comeback (unwelcome by the management) at Spring Training 2006:

Here's Bagwell at Spring Training 2008, a couple of years after he retired, hanging out in the dugout and coaching minor leaguers on the practice field:

Here's Bagwell at Spring Training 2009. I missed him in 2010. :-(

Happily there should be many more opportunities to photograph Bagwell in uniform, including when the Astros come here to play the Nats in September. 

There's still a lot more baseball to play before then. (Sorry, Alyson! I know you're tired of this season!) Although we passed the midpoint a week ago, the All Star break feels like the middle of the season. Going into the break with a 36-53 record, on track to lose 97 games this year. I don't think that they will actually manage to accomplish that, given that they've played much better baseball in the last month than in the preceding ones. But, who cares -- if they'll go young, it would be worth losing lots of games for the rest of the year. Who knows, maybe we can really bottom out and get the first pick in next year's draft. 

Meanwhile, enjoy your break from the Astros. Cheer for Air Bourn in the All Star game. Maybe they'll put him in as a pinch runner. See you next week!