Five Things to Consider When Picking Dates for Astros Spring Training

Someone asked Alyson Footer a question about when is the best time to come to Spring Training, and she answered, comparing February (to see practices) to March (to see games). As a reporter who comes for all of Spring Training -- and gets paid to do it -- she may not be the best guide on this subject. On the other hand, I've got the selection of Spring Training dates down to an art form. There are whole books of tips for Spring Training, but for me, it can be reduced to five things to consider:

1. Forget about February. You want to see games! So plan to come in March. (The February and April games this year are an anomaly, due to the WBC.) On no-game days, you can get into the morning practices, so you can have both. Last year I got an extra bonus: I got to see Bagwell at the practice field working with the Minor League guys.

2. Look at the Spring Training schedule. The dark-grey blocks are home games. Unless you want to chase the team all over Central Florida, you want to find a week (or however long you can stay) that has a clump of home games. For instance, let's say you can only go for 5 days. March 8-12 would be a lousy choice, since there is only one home game in that time block. March 20-24, on the other hand, has 4 games - much better! Treat an away game against the Braves as a home game, since they play down the road at Disney.

3. Do you want to check out lots of prospects or do you really want to see the team that is likely to start the season? If you want to see the "kids," come early in March, before they start getting sent down to Minor League camp. In 2006, I came the first week of March, saw Hunter Pence (wearing jersey 91) up for a "cup of coffee," then saw him the next day on the practice field in his Minor League jersey.

4. Do you really want to check out the pitching rotation? If you come early in March, the starters will only be pitching a couple of innings. Late in the month they'll be in for 5 or 6 innings.

5. Do you particularly want to see (or want to avoid) a specific opposing team? Me, I don't care, but there are a whole bunch of folks who are gaga for the Yankees. If one of your games is against the Yankees, get your tickets as early as possible (like the day the go on sale in January) or you might be disappointed in the seat selection. Better yet, avoid the Yankees games unless you're a New Yorker - they jack up the ticket prices and the fans are, shall we say, not very polite.

I've come to Spring Training early, mid, and late, and each has its advantages. The only really bad choice is not to come to Spring Training!

What I Hate About Baseball Blogs

The Houston Chronicle sports writers all blog. Now Alyson's got a blog too. I don't have any gripes about these bloggers, since they're professionals who generally have something to say that's worth reading. It's the so-called fans who post opinions that are annoying - the ones who:
-Berate the reporters for bothering to write about players they deem as losers (or worse).
-Declare the season dead on arrival before the position players have even reported to Spring Training.
- Feel sorry for themselves for having to live through what promises to be a totally frustrating season.

I stopped reading comment postings in the Chronicle last season, because so many of them were on the verge of abusive. There were some interesting and insightful ones mixed in too, but they'd often be buried in mean-spirited griping about the players, coaches, owners -- and other fans. I still read the online articles and blogs, but just skipped the comment feedback.

This year, the Astros.com site has been bitten by the Web 2.0 bug - now all the articles have comments, and the cranks and complainers have taken center stage. I wasn't going to add to the problem by commenting on the comments, but I couldn't stand it. After "commenter" (a big whiner) bashed various aspects of the team, and then posted: It's going to be a really long season of futility," I felt compelled to respond:

Wow, it really WILL be a long season if we all have to listen to you guys whine about the team every day! I bet on June 1, 2005, when you opened your newspaper and saw that tombstone, you were all nodding like bobbleheads. Not me - I still believed they were going to the World Series. I'd rather be a loony and still be cheering than be gloomy all season. And the position players haven't even showed up yet! As a Fan in Exile, I'm totally dependent on electronic media like Astros.com and mlb.tv to follow my team during the regular season. One of the things I've always liked about reading Astros.com is the way that Alyson Footer can write up a less-than-perfect game with both angst and humor, and can report realistically when things are down without being whiny. I'm not sure that the inclusion of these wah-wah-wah complaints is an improvement...I can't wait to get to Kissimmee!

That quickly got me tagged as a "loony" who needed to read the newspaper and be "realistic," to which I replied:

Commenter - Alas, when I open my newspaper (Washington Post), I won't see more than the occasional one-liner discussng the Astros and the daily boxscore! If i wanted to live in the past, I'd remember the Astros (Colts) in the 60's, when I first became a big fan - despite them! I'm an engineer, and a Sabermetrician-wannabee, so I understand about looking at facts and figures. I also know that it's virtually impossible to accurately predict the performance of extremely complex systems, let alone the relative performance as compared to other extremely complex systems. If that weren't the case, we could just run computer models, with the gazillions of baseball stats, and declare a winner -- why bother with the season? If you want to be "realistic" (pessimistic) so that you don't risk being disappointed later, that's cool. But it's also cool to be moved to tears every year at the first glimpse of the field in Osceola Park, to hope for the unexpected, and to enjoy the ride.

After that a couple of people jumped on the bandwagon and agreed: What's the point of being a fan if you're so "realistic" (i.e., pessimistic) that you already dread the losing season that hasn't yet started?

Alyson Footer kicked off her new blog with news from Spring Training, her Kissimmee restaurant recommendations, and reminders to bring sun block. The comments so far have been friendly, but I suspect that once the season starts and the Astros lose a few games, the gripers and complainers will predominate.

I suppose that it's fairly hypocritical of me to criticize baseball blogs, while writing in one. It's probably even more hypocritical to criticize baseball blogs comment posters, and then to quote my Astros.com postings in my own baseball blog. But on the other hand, since I'm the only person who reads this blog, I can say whatever I want without anyone posting any complaints.

Refreshing the Astros Fan in Exile Website

After the long winter hiatus, I've returned to Astros Fan in Exile Website, only to discover that I never actually got around to updating the player pages of the Photo Album after Spring Training. I did post several pages of Spring Training photos, but I guess the season started and I got distracted with real games. Knowing that I'm likely to return from Spring Training with a few thousand new pictures, I decided to try to get my website fixed up before I go.

Of course, I immediately concluded that the site needed a new design. I did jiggle around a few things on the home page, but it was the Photo Album that needed to be redesigned entirely. Those slide show gadgets loaded really slowly and made the pages ugly. Instead I decided to just post pages of thumbnails that could be enlarged to full size by clicking. I started last night and worked on it most of the day - made some progress but there 's still a lot to do. I want to have at least one page of photos for each player on the 25-man roster, coming out of Spring Training. And I'd like to have a page of pictures for many of my old favorites, who've left the team by retirement, trade, or free agency.

So far, it's coming along - I have updated the existing "current roster" player pages, and added a few new ones - Matsui and Tejada, who were not previously on the team, Backe who I'd never actually seen pitch until last year. I updated a few of the old friends pages, and one of the event pages - the Nats game from July.

I'm not totally thrilled with the results, though: The software I use to create the pages arbitrarily crops the thumbnails into square formats, brutally decapitating many of the player photos. They look fine when you click on them, but given how carefully I crop them, it's annoying to see a page of headless or handless players. It's also annoying that once you do click on a picture, bringing up the fullsized photo, there is no "slide show" option, just a "Next" button that's invisible until you mouse over it - if you know to do that. The pictures do look nice blown up though - in the old slide viewer, I had to shring them down to about 300 pixels in the longest direction. I wish that I could load the full-sized high res photos, but they are large files, and my web hosting arrangement is pretty limited.

It's not clear to me why I go to all this trouble to make the website nice, or for that matter, why I update bother to this blog. I never do anything to advertise the website or the blog, so there are only sporadic hits. I don't get any comments on the blog entries, which I interpret to mean that I am the only one who reads them. I'm not complaining - I'm not sure that I really want to have any readers. And I am sure that I don't want to have to monitor annoying comments. If people did comment, I'd probably have turned that feature off by now. I haven't yet decided whether I am going to write up every game of the season, as I did in 2005, 2006, and 2008. It's a lot of work, and as noted, I'm the only known reader.

I guess that I'll go to Spring Training, see what the team looks like, and then decide. Meanwhile, I have a few thousand more pictures to post.

Pitchers and Catchers are in Kissimmee

It may still be chilly outside here in Maryland, but with the Astros' pitchers and catchers working out in Kissimmee, I know that spring is just around the corner. My tickets are already tucked away in my camera bag, and my flights to Florida are booked. Baseball is back!

I went to Houston last week for the funeral of a favorite aunt - a wonderful, intelligent, and creative person (although not a baseball fan). After the funeral, we went back to a cousin's home for lunch, and I found myself at a table with several other Astros fans. While this is a normal occurrence for people who actually live in Houston, for me it's a rare thrill to be able to talk baseball with others who cheer for my team - the lonely aspect of being a Fan in Exile. I turned on my laptop and set it up to do a slide show of pictures from Spring Training last year, getting more appreciative oohs and aahs than I ever get at home. (Especially from the women, when I got to the closeups of Brad Ausmus.) I had thought a bit, during the long winter (any months without baseball seem to drag on and on), whether I should just give it up. Why be a Fan in Exile for my original home team - especially now that some of my team favorites are gone? Now that Washington has a team, why not change my allegiance? I can just hop on a Metro train from my office and go to Nationals games all summer. I don't mind if they are not a winning team this year - God knows that I cheered for the Astros enough in the bad old days of my childhood, when I hardly ever saw them win. I always kind of liked cheering for the underdog.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to see a lot of regular season games in a stadium, not just on my computer? Wouldn't it be nice to be cheering for the home team for a change?

I really did think about this, for a few minutes during the off season. And that was it. Then I went back to reading Astros.com and the sports section of the Chronicle, catching up on trade rumors and checking out the prospects. Waiting for Spring Training, so I could make my annual pilgrimage to Kissimmee.

Pitchers and catchers had their first practice today. First thing after the Sabbath ended tonight,* I turned on my laptop to see how it went. WOOO HOOO - baseball is back!

* The blogger server must be on the West Coast - the time stamp on my entries are 3 hours early.

Spring Training Alpha State

Ever since I purchased my Spring Training tickets last week, I need only imagine myself sitting in the sun in Osceola Stadium, right behind the bullpen, and I immediately go into an alpha state. There's just something about Spring Training that brings on a mood of total relaxation and euphoria. I don't even have to be there; just thinking about it makes me happy.

Every year the big decision is when to go? Early in March, I'll get to see more of the minor leaguers up for their cup of coffee. But the starting pitchers only throw a couple of innings. If I go late in the month, after most of the young guys are sent back down to the minor league camp, I'll get to see the final roster guys, and the pitchers will be up to 5 or 6 innings. This year, it's all complicated by the World Baseball Championship. The Spring Training games start early - in late February - and end late - in early April. But some of the major league players may be gone, playing for their home countries' WBC teams. It would be a bummer to miss seeing Oswalt, who's going to be the USA team ace.

In the end, it usually comes down to figuring out which week has the most home games, since I don't want to drive all over Central Florida to go to the games. Besides the starters often stay back home on away game days. This year, the best week for me is smack in the middle of Spring Training. While I generally don't care which teams the Astros are playing against, I did end up with a good set: Starting with the Yankees, ending with my arch-enemy Mets. The Nats in the middle - good chance to take some photos for my local friends. The Reds (our division) and the Rays (last year's AL champs) round it out.

The next big question is who can I sucker into going with me? While my son Josh (the Yankee fan) would enjoy it, he's busy with his last semester of law school. Older son David went with me once in 2005, and that was enough for life. Husband Robert, who couldn't care less about sports events, has gone to Kissimmee at least part of the week for the past 3 years. My daughters don't like baseball, and my friends think my passion for the Astros is unnatural. But this year I found the perfect Spring Training partner - my sister, who was an Astros fan years ago, and who's celebrating her 50th birthday right in the middle of March. It will be a nice gift for both of us - I'll treat her to Spring Training and she'll treat me to being with someone who actually wants to be there!

I'm not really in a rush for Spring Training to arrive. Now that I've scored my tickets (good seats, bought in the presale), I'm enjoying just thinking about being there. There's just something about a field of green, speckled with dozens of young men in tight pants, that puts me in a great mood.

WORLD SERIES - Lidge Rocks and Phillies Roll

It didn't really matter to me which team won the Series - neither of them are the Astros. I have family in both Philly and Tampa. But I ended up cheering for the Phillies because they now have some of my favorite ex-Astros. No one was more critical to the Phillies' success this year, in the regular season and in the playoffs, than the closer that the Astros got rid - Brad Lidge, finishing up a PERFECT year, not a single blown save. If my team wasn't going all the way, the next best thing was to see Lidge standing on the mound after the last guy struck out tonight. He wasn't standing for long - he fell to his knees, gave a hug to his catcher, and then was lost under a pile of Phillies gone wild. I've always thought Lidge was a great pitcher, and if it took a move to Philadelphia to recharge him, I'm glad that he was traded and had the opportunity for the season of his life.

The other ex-Astro who will get a lot less attention, but who also played a role in the Series, is Eric Bruntlett. He scored the winning run in the last two games of the Series.

The Astros got themselves another great closer and some really good bench guys, but it doesn't look like they came out ahead on their trade with the Phillies to get Michael Bourn.

The 2008 season is officially over. Congratulations to the Phillies! Long live Lidge!

I can't wait for Spring Training.

GAMES 159-161 - September 26-28: There's Always Next Year...

September 26: Houston 5, Atlanta 4
September 27: Atlanta 11, Houston 5
September 28: Houston 3, Atlanta 1

Word for the Day: Eliminated. Removed from consideration by defeat; excreted (bodily waste). Take your pick.

Give the Astros credit for living up to their reputation for exciting finishes. Back in the middle of the season, when the Astros were in last place in the NL Central Division, there were not a lot of folks writing that Houston would still be in contention for a playoff spot right up to the last series of the season. Even if October isn't going to be very interesting for Astros die-hards, we can be proud of a team that surprised a lot of people by staying in the game till the end, with a 42-24 record since the All Star game. They even came in a half game ahead of the Cards...

When I turned on my computer Saturday night after the Sabbath, the headlines featured the dreaded "E" word - eliminated. The Astros won a great game on Friday night, taking it with a Darin Erstad's walkoff homer, after Valverde had blown the save in the top of the ninth. But just a few minutes later, all it took was one win by the Braves to knock them out of contention. As Berkman noted afterwards, it was unreasonable to expect that both the Brewers and the Mets would be swept - a necessary condition for the Astros to even require their 162nd game. But it wasn't really reasonable for the Astros to have advanced so far so quickly - miracles happen. Just not this year.

Saturday night's game was a mess, from the first inning on. Backe was true to form, continuing his Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde routine that has been going on all season. This was one of the less fortunate starts - he gave up 8 runs in one inning and change, his worst start of an up and down season. The relievers allowed a few more, but the damage was already done. Better to have been eliminated on a night that they won than due to a game like this one. It's not clear where this lackluster performance leaves Backe - with single digit wins, it was definitely a disappointing year for him.

Despite elimination, the season ended on a high note - a win and a ceremonial goodbye to a player who routinely receives accolades and scorn, depending on who you ask. If you ask this Fan in Exile, you won't hear scorn for Brad Ausmus. After ten years and 1249 games worth of seeing him behind the plate, I'll be sorry to see him go. I doubt that the Astros will ever have another catcher who is as intelligent about the game, a factor that has kept him on the team despite a less-than-impressive batting average. I also doubt that the Astros will have another catcher who is as photogenic as Ausmus - a loss which will be notable to this Spring Training shutterbug. I am not the betting type, but I would have bet money on one thing: With old friend and ex-Astro Mike Hampton on the mound, Ausmus was going to hit a home run in this game. Both teams out of contention, the outcome of the game meaningless, and a long-time veteran playing his last game... Hampton can deny it, but Ausmus' first-pitch homer off him smelled like professional courtesy to me. (But he struck him out in his next at bat - one big fat one over the plate per customer.) Ausmus' two run homer was the deciding hit of the game, as Wandy pitched extremely well in his final start. He earned his ninth win of the season on seven strong innings, giving up only one unearned run on 4 hits, no walks, and 6 strikeouts. Valverde closed, getting his 44th save of the season - that ties Wagner's team record from 2003.

As soon as Sunday's game ended, I jumped over to watch the end of the Mets' game. The Brewers had won their game already, and the Mets had to win to tie for the Wild Card spot. I know it's ugly but my longstanding antipathy to the Mets had me standing in the kitchen cheering as they lost their last game in Shea Stadium, another season in which they failed at the very last minute. I enjoyed every NY fan's miserable face.

So 2008 is over for the Astros. I'll probably cheer for the Rays and the Brewers in the playoffs, in honor of my cousin Jon in Tampa and my Uncle Syd in Milwaukee. I've got cousins in Chicago, LA, and Philly too - but I think that it's the Brewer's year. I wish the Rays still had "Devil" in their name. Truthfully though, it doesn't really matter to me which of these teams wins in the playoffs. I'm a one team kind of gal, and my team's on vacation. Time to turn my attention to the Presidential election, which will be a much more interesting race.