Fans of the Day Cheer Astros to a Win!

I have met a lot of great fans in the stands at Osceola County Stadium. Some are Houstonians who are here for Spring Training and some are fans-in-exile like me. Today's blog features some big fans in each category, whose enthusiastic cheering at Friday's game helped the Astros to their first win of the month.

We sat in the first row of Section 104 Friday, next to Mitch and Kevin. They are retired and split their time between Albany NY and Florida, where they are Section 104 Season Ticket Holders. Like my colleague RoundRock15, Mitch and Kevin aren't actually from Houston - they just chose to be passionate Astros fans. Kevin had a great time at Astros Spring Training some years back, when he sat in the row behind the Enron contingent, and got to meet a lot of the players. After that, he was hooked and they've been regulars for years. That's given Mitch a lot of time to collect quite an amazing set of autographs on her hat. Her bear's jersey is reserved for a very special autograph, though - Jeff Bagwell's. This girl's got good taste!

After the game, as my sister and I were about to take our own self portrait with the field behind us, Jim, a nice man from Houston, offered to snap the photo for us. His wife Pat asked me, "Aren't you that Washington woman with the website?" Turns out that we had sat near them last year at Spring Training. Pat used to teach journalism at Houston's Westbury High School, several years after I graduated from there. Small world. They are also Astros Spring Training regulars.

Now about baseball... While our enthusiastic cheering contributed to the outcome of Friday's game against the Reds, the bulk of the credit surely belongs to Russ Ortiz. He threw six shutoutl innings, giving up only one hit and striking out two, making a strong argument for his place in the Astros rotation. Chris Sampson followed with a pair of scoreless innings.

Meanwhile, the Astros put some runs on the board, starting in the second inning with catcher Quintero's RBI single. Ortiz, batting for the first time this spring, followed with an RBI single of his own. In the sixth inning, Berkman hit his first homerun of the season, a two-run blast that gave the Astros a 4-0 lead.

The Reds did not threaten this lead until the ninth inning, when Bud Norris gave up 2 runs on a walk and a pair of doubles in a third of an inning. In a normal Spring Training, Cooper might have just left him in to tough it out, risking a loss. But winless since February, Coop didn't chance it. He pulled Norris, and brought in Fulcino who ended the thread without further damage. After the Sabbath ended tonight, I immediately checked Astros.com, and saw that Houston beat the Blue Jays 9-7 today. So the Astros now have a 2-1 record since I got to town. Let's see where it goes from here... Isn't baseball fun?

Coming Up: The Nats. I promised pictures to all my Washington area Nationals fans, so I have to remember to photograph the Other Guys at the game tomorrow. We're sitting behind home base, in Section 112, so I'll be safety net-challenged. Hopefully I can get out of my seat to shoot some pix without attracting too much attention from the old guys who tell you to sit down.

Fans of the Day

I want to call attention to two special fans who will be at the game today: Carole T. and Elizabeth L.

Yesterday, as I was snapping photos of Lo Chia-Jen (the Astros new acquisition from Taiwan), a lady tapped me on the shoulder and asked "Aren't you Astros Fan in Exile?" I almost fainted. Who would know that. She looked really familiar, so I asked, "What's your name?" and when she answered Carole, I remembered her - we sat together at Spring Training last year, in Section 103. Carole comes down to Florida for two months a year, and has season tickets for Spring Training. Being a working stiff, that's still but a fantasy for me.

My second special fan is my sister Elizabeth, who you might have seen on my photo album, smiling (and posted next to a pair of minor league butts on the bleachers) at the practice field. Elizabeth is not a regular reader of this blog, so I can confide here that in my family she's known as the "Sucker of the Year." That is, the family member who got stuck accompanying me to Spring Training. Ostensibly though, she's here as my guest, in celebration of her VSB (very special birthday - enough said). Elizabeth, like me, grew up in Houston, using the Dome as a good place to get out of the brutal summer heat. On all other days, we were devotee's of Lowell Pass, who was the Astros radio broadcaster back then. Anyway, greetings to Carol and Elizabeth - hope we get to see the Astros beat the Reds today!

A Morning at the Practice Field

We made a list of things to do in Florida today:
1. See if the practice field was open to fans.
2. Get lots of locally-grown produce at the Kissimmee farmers market.
3. Make the annual pilgrimage to the Monument.
4. Go to Cocoa Beach. (This was for my sister, who's from beach-deprived Colorado.)


The practice field was open to fans this morning. Once we got there, most of our other plans went out the window. We spent hours watching pitching practice, one-on-one and group coaching, and a pair of minor league practice games.

There were plenty of gargantuan lenses being lugged around, some by fans and others by pros. I chatted briefly with Ben from Round Rock, who's here with a contingent of reporters and photographers to check up on the Express players. He and the other serious photographers will probably attest to the veracity of the old saw: "Size does matter." (At least with lenses.)

But with such great material - hundreds of very buff young men playing baseball - it would be virtually impossible not to take a lot of good pictures, even with a point-and-shoot. I have a new camera - a Canon SX10 (10 megapixels, 20X optical zoom). It's not the souped-up DSLR of my dreams, but so far I'm pleased with the pictures. I've posted some of my practice field photos on the Photo Album of my website.

A few words before you click off to go look at the photos. I tried to post a set of pictures that were representative of the practice field experience, from a fan's perspective. There are a whole lot of farm-team players out there, and the vast majority of them are not the hot prospects that get written up and photographed by the baseball press. There are lots of players that most of us have never heard of - and maybe never will. The magic thing about the practice field is seeing hundreds of young men who all have the same dream. The hard thing about the practice field is realizing that most of those hundreds of young men will never experience that dream coming true. (Hey, I'm a mom, with sons their age.)

I was very democratic in selecting players to photograph - I just took pictures at all the fields, and posted a selection of them. Other than Biggio (an obvious photographic target), I didn't particularly seek out any particular people to photograph. Some of the brand-name prospects you might want to see are still with the big league team anyway. Hopefully, for those of you who aren't here in Kissimmee, these pictures will give you a sense of the fan experience, wandering around the practice field and watching baseball players in the making.

I especially like to photograph coaches working with the players and watching them play. There's no place like the practice field for photos of coaches at work - both the regular coaches and special guests. Last year I was lucky to be in Kissimmee when Jeff Bagwell was there, and I got great photos of him coaching the minor league players. This year I was equally lucky: Craig Biggio was out on the field working with some of the players and watching the practice games with the coaches.

Anyway, if you like the few pictures I've posted here in the blog, check out the Photo Album, where there are more pictures in a little larger format. Let me know (by way of comment) if you like them.

As for the rest of our plans, by the time we got to the farmers market, they were closing. We did make our pilgrimage to the Kissimmee Monument, which is a singularly ugly edifice. We go there every year. (I will have to do a future blog just on Kissimmee sites.) We didn't make it to the beach; instead I spent the afternoon drinking merlot and cropping photographs while my sister swam a couple of million laps in a pool that was designed for families to splash in.

Tomorrow: The Reds. We'll be sitting in Section 104, Row 2, behind third base. If you're at the game, I'm easy to recognize. I'll be the only person in the stadium wearing a Hebrew Astros hat.

I Love Kissimmee

After the long months without baseball, I'm finally here in Kissimmee. I'm sitting by the pool after the game (yet another loss - I didn't bring the Astros any magic to change that apparently), watching my sister swim laps, and reviewing the pictures I took at today's game. Right now I'm just enjoying the sense of relaxation that comes from being in a warm place where baseball exists. I left my office Blackberry in Maryland, with the Away message on.

But you didn't come to this blog to hear about my alpha waves... So now at long last, having seen actual players on the field, it's time to write about baseball.

After growing up with the Astros in the early years, when they didn't make a regular practice of winning games, I've learned to always try to find something to like in a game. Even in this game - yet another non-win in an almost awe-inspiring series this spring - there were some good signs. The best thing in this game: Mike Hampton's five solid shutout innings. He gave up only four scattered hits, didn't walk anyone, and struck out two. An effective and healthy Hampton would be a huge boost to a team that doesn't have a whole lot of dependable starting firepower that doesn't start with "O." He was followed by Valverde, who also looked good in his hitless inning.

Brocail and Geary did not fare as well. Brocail ran into trouble in the seventh, giving up a pair of hits and a walk. He wasn't helped by two Yankee steals on his watch. End result: Two earned runs and the loss of the Astros' precarious 1-0 lead. Geary was just unlucky - he threw a scoreless eighth, but got in trouble in the ninth. He might have escaped unscathed, but a couple of sloppy plays (one of which was marked an error) resulted in two more Yankee runs. However, that was just insult; the game was lost in the seventh, since the Astros failed to score again.

There's not much to talk about offensively. Jason Smith continued his spring spree with a triple in the first inning, the first of his two hits in the game. Carlos Lee hit him in for the Astros' only run. No hits today for Brian Bogusevic (he walked and stole second), but he did make a nice defensive play with an outfield assist from right. The Astros ran through several catchers, none of whom did a whit at the plate. With so many catchers to choose from, one might have guessed that someone would rise above at Spring Training. Not so, apparently; I hear that the Astros are acquiring Pudge Rodriguez, despite all of the recent denials. Hopefully, Puerto Rico will be eliminated from the WBC, so I'll get a glimpse of him while I'm in Kissimmee.

A few more observations from the game: The Yankees are good for filling the house. It was standing room only, with what seemed like more blue shirts than red ones in the crowd. (And - annoyingly - a whole table full of Yankees hats in the Astros gift store.) Whenever the game is against the Yankees, I always end up with seats in the upper deck, even though I buy my Spring Training tickets at the start of the presale. This time I was behind home plate in the first row of the upper deck - a great spot for watching the game, but less ideal for photographing it because of the safety netting. I've sat behind home plate before - you either have to creep down to the first row and stick the end of the lens through the netting or you have to manually focus. Not in the mood for either today, I just let my new camera try to focus and hoped for the best. About half of my pitcher photos were focused on pitchers; the rest were focused on the net. I took a preponderance of photos of Berkman fielding, since first base was beyond the netting - these were the only game pictures I took today that weren't scored by black netting.

This was the first of three games I'm attending with my younger sister Elizabeth, this year's sucker - I mean guest - at Spring Training. She's here to celebrate her 32nd birthday (in some numerical base better left undisclosed) and hang out with me. I didn't think that it was nice to abandon her the very first day to take pictures from my favorite shooting spots. So I took relatively few pictures at today's game. I've posted a few here, and a few more in the Photo Album on my website.

But I'm itching to give my new camera a real workout. So E and I will spend Friday afternoon's game roaming around the stadium, taking pictures from different spots, and trying to duck the old guys who keep telling you to go sit down. (I am sure that most of these old guys are retired businessmen, who used to terrorize their secretaries, and now lack anyone but their wives to boss around. So they fill this need by becoming petty tyrants in stadium staff shirts.)

Tomorrow's an Away game. Elizabeth and I are going to see if we can get into the practice field in the morning; if so, I'll have a lot more photos to post. Then we'll do a few of my other favorite things down here - make a pilgrimage to the Kissimmee Monument, buy produce and artisan dog biscuits at the Farmers Market, and then go to Cocoa Beach for some waves. But we'll be back for more baseball on Friday against the Reds.

Special Hi to SB and RR15! Wish you were here!

Hope all goes really well for a speedy recovery for Aaron Boone.

Countdown to Kissimmee...

It's March 17. In some circles that's cause for wearing green and drinking beer in Irish pubs. For me, it's the day I've been waiting for over the long winter months: Travel day to Astros Spring Training. Never mind that the Astros haven't won a regular (non-WBC) Spring Training game since the first one back in February. One win, fourteen losses, and two ties - not inspiring, but no matter. On Opening Day, they will have the same 0-0 record as everyone else.

They've had weeks now to assess the non-roster invitees, to give the prospects from the farm a chance to strut their stuff, and to wait for some of the regulars - Oswalt, Lee, and Tejada - to come back from the WBC. So let's just say that a lot of the guys who were trying out for spots on the roster aren't going to be on the field come Opening Day. The current crop of catcher wannabees has been so ineffective that none of them are likely to play that day - the current gossip is that (despite copious denials) the Astros are signing Pudge Rodriguez after all. The pitching rotation is kind of shaking out - with Russ Ortiz and Jose Capellan pulling ahead of the rest, including injured Brandon Backe. Nobody's hitting much, but hey - we've seen that act before.

There's something totally different about Spring Training games that aren't even televised and Spring Training games that you see in person. It's easy not to care too much about losing when you just see the box score and a few game notes and gossip from Alyson's blog. There's always something to like, someone who's impressing the coaches, or at least some excuse - well, he (the goat) is going back down to the minor league camp any day now. But when you're there in person, of course, you want your team to win.

I got an email from Alyson Footer - she wrote: "If they start winning when you get here, I'll consider you the magic potion!" It's hard for me to imagine that the Astros are going to lose all five games when I'm at Spring Training. (I don't think that's really egotistical; it's just a lack of imagination.) I won't be really surprised if they start winning when I'm there though -- halfway through Spring Training, you'd expect to see the kids migrating back to the minor league camp, and the nonproductive invitees invited to leave. You'd expect to see more playing time by the regulars, and more innings from the intended starting rotation. In short, you'd expect to see your Opening Day team start to jell, and maybe even start to win...

In any case, I'm well equipped to document it: I have a new camera. For the fifth year in a row I thought about - and then decided against - moving to a DSLR. Too heavy, too expensive, too much trouble to learn to use. There's always next year. In the end, every other year, I just upgrade to more megapixels and more X optical zoom. This time, with a jump from my 6 meg and 12X to 10 meg and 20X, the camera is already feeling more like a SLR than a point-and-shoot. I played with the new camera a bit yesterday when I got it home from the store. But snapping shots of my husband and the dog, or macro closeups of the instruction booklet isn't really satisfying. I want to be taking pictures of slides into second (or better, home!), big homerun swings, pitchers in motion. What I really want is the chance to photograph Oswalt on the mound, but for that Team USA needs to lose so he can come back. I'm not that into the WBC anyway.

So I'm packing my bags, counting the hours, flying later this morning. Next posting from Kissimmee...

Be Happy! It's Purim!

The Astros won big today, defeating the Braves 47-4 in a blowout homegame that went a long way in restoring the team pride that has been eroded by the losses in the first two weeks of Spring Training. Houston took an early lead, scoring the first 17 runs in the first inning, when the team batted around three times. Carlos Lee celebrated his return from Panama's truncated venture into the WBC by hitting two grand slams in the first inning. Everyone in the Astros lineup contributed to the fun, including starting pitcher Brian Moehler, who hit a 3-run homer of his own. "I was actually trying to bunt," Moehler admitted. "But I guess I hit it a little harder than I meant to."

Even the bullpen contributed at the plate - in the fifth inning Jose Valverde stretched what looked like a double into a three-bagger, then stole home on the next pitch with a head-first dive to the plate. Manager Cooper was delighted with the offensive energy, but not to the point of encouraging foolish risks: "I'm glad that I decided to let the pitchers bat today. The DH is a stupid American League thing anyway. But I'm fining Valverde for sliding into home pitching-hand first - what good would he be to us if the catcher had turned his pitching hand into Swiss cheese with his cleats?"

It's difficult to pick a Player of the Game, when so many players contributed at the plate. Matsui went 3 for 4. Bourn hit two infield singles, and stole second bath times; he hit a double in his third at-bat and stole third. Berkman, Pence, Smith and Boone all connected for multiple extra-base hits. Towles, in the most innovative at-bat, swung at a slider that bounced on the plate. He did a complete sommersault, managing in the process to hit the ball, which skidded past the diving Braves third baseman. The acrobatic Towles ended up standing on second, right-side up, with a double.

It would have been hard for the Braves to have topped this phenomenal offense, but they didn't have a chance against a totally dominating performance by starting pitcher Moehler and the Astros bullpen. The Braves only managed two singles and a walk in the first 8 innings. After all of the Houston pitchers had gotten in their work for the day, Cooper -- apparently embarrassed by the lopsided score -- decided to move Towles to the mound for the final inning. "I thought it would be educational for him to see the game from the other side," Cooper said. Towles gave up 4 runs, 2 of them unearned, on 7 hits, 4 walks, and 3 hit batters before the afternoon game finally ended, just as the sun was setting over Osceola County Stadium.

NOTE: I think I may have gotten a few facts about today's game confused. What can I say? Today was Purim, a Jewish holiday that is celebrated by reading the Biblical Book of Esther, giving charity to the poor, giving gifts of food to friends, and by drinking wine to the point where one cannot tell the hero of the story from the bad guy. Or in baseball terms, imbibing to the point where one cannot tell an Astros blowout of epic proportions from just another loss in Spring Training 2009. You know, now and then, a little confusion goes a long way...

Happy Purim, y'all!

When Will Spring Training Start in This Blog?

I keep thinking that I should start writing about baseball - games, players, pitches, prospects - instead of hotels and rental cars and cheap air fares. After all, they've been playing games for almost two weeks already. You might not know that from reading my blog.

The Astros won their first game.

They haven't won any real games since then. In fact, they've lost a bunch of games pretty spectacularly, especially the Away games that fill the lineup card with prospects and invitees trying out for a place on the roster. They're probably in line to set a record for the most runs walked in.

Maybe subconsciously I'm waiting for the Astros to win, for when Spring Training really starts...?

Maybe. But I think it's actually much more fundamental than that: I can't see anything. For all that I complain that watching games on the computer limits my view to what the producer thinks I should be interested in, at least I can see the regular season games. There have only been a couple of Astros Spring Training games televised. So it's hard to really see what's going on - who's hitting the ball hard - even if the ball is caught, who's making the great plays, who's swinging wild and crazy. There's radio coverage, but I've only been able to listen in to a few of the live broadcasts - they mostly play in the afternoons when I'm at work. So I'm not really even hearing the KTRH guys tell the story. And even those guys are still getting back in shape - in today's broadcast, they didn't catch on until the last inning that Backe had left the game after two (not three) innings. They said Hensley and Backe look a lot alike on the mound. I guess they'd know - they can see the game and I can't.

Well, not yet. I'll be at Spring Training in 10 days. One week, five games, and hopefully a morning at the practice field too. That ought to give me enough opportunity to have something more meaningful to say about baseball than "The Astros lost again today."

What I'd like to be saying is that some prospect sure looks good, but some of those prospects are probably going to be in minor league camp by the time I get there. I'd like to be getting a good look at the invitees too, but some might be cut by the middle of Spring Training. That's the price of going the second half. I'd also like to be saying that Carlos Lee sure looks strong or Tejada's in good shape, and most of all, that Roy Oswalt is still The Man. But due to the WBC this year, I'm not sure which of them is going to be back by the time I get there. And I'd really love to say that it's heartwarming to see Jeff Bagwell in uniform, out on the practice field with the minor league guys - but I don't know if he'll be there the week I'm in Kissimmee.

Guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, there are Alyson and the Chronicle guys, and a gazillion blog commenters - most of them annoying, but a few with ideas worth reading, some with blogs of their own. And of course there are always the numbers. Somewhere in the stats and box scores there are hidden stories. It's just hard to pick them out, sitting out here in Exile.

Guess I'll just have to wait and see.