Scouts: There’s nothing really good in the news these days. Nothing of any fun to talk about anyways. No really good movies on the horizon, no new shows, just a bit of a blah week. We still have the playoffs, which are starting to turn into a drag. I think I’m just ready for the World Series to start.
Astros 0, Yankees 5 – Scouts: Oh no, folks, we are seriously in trouble of New York going to the World Series here. Houston’s bats have fallen completely silent the past few days and it could not have come at the worst possible time. New York is on a rampage and Aaron Judge has awoken. Masahiro Tanaka held Houston to three hits over 7 strong innings, while Dallas Keuchel got knocked around lasting just 4.2 and giving up 7 hits and 4 runs. We will head back to Houston, where the Astros have to wake up and sweep the next two game or it’s one more year of the New York fans thumping their chests every chance they get. Save us Houston, you are small (ish) market fans last hope!
Dodgers 2, Cubs 3 – Scouts: Facing elimination the Cubs stepped up and gave their fans some hope. Not, you know, a lot of hope, but some hope. Jake Arrieta stuck out 9 over 6.2 innings, Wilson Contreras and Javier Baez both hit solo shots as the Cubs live to fight another day. Joe Maddon got tossed for correctly losing his shit when the umps decided to make a terribly stupid fucking call.
Fan Interference 
Hard to believe the 5th largest US metro population center is the “small market” team in the playoffs. The Astros bats need a major wake up call.
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I said smallish. 🙂
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Fourth largest city per actual city limits. But I have to say the top three are much larger. Houston is really what you would call the biggest of the rest. But a little context in order.
As to actual market size, Houston suffers from an unusual problem relating to location. Texas is so big that there is no large exurban city anywhere close by, and so the last number I saw said that the Houston
media market is tenth overall. Not sure that’s current, but likely so.
Issue #2, Houston is just not the best sports town in the world. You can argue that’s not really bad. If people have other things in their lives than watching sports, good for them. Leave us to fill our empty lives with sports. But be that as it may, much of the oxygen for sports is sucked up by football. ( I used to love football as a kid, but I outgrew it).
Third, it has been argued that most Houstonians came from somewhere else and team loyalties are divided. I don’t really buy that. A large number of Houstonians from elsewhere came from Nigeria, Viet Nam, China or Saudi Arabia. Not much loyalty conflict there.
But back on topic. Through the early 2000’s Houston was generally in the top third of team spenders. That should be about right. I would call them more at the top of the mid-market team range. I would love to see them segue into being bigger spenders, but that will take a larger, more loyal fan base than they currently have. Maybe a few years of consistent winning will help.
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Yea, the Judge hath awoken, right out of Blood Meridian, and he looks little changed or none after all these years: “Ladies and gentlemen, I feel it is my duty to inform you that the guy pitching in relief for the Astros is an impostor….”
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I’m with Spartan here. Nothing that a little hitting wouldn’t solve. But slumps are slumps and Houston is in a dreadful one. No doubt the Yankee pitching staff has stepped it up a notch, but it’s on the Astros to do something about it.
I am much less an optimist than I was on Sunday.
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This might be the first time in the history of this site that I am excited for a movie coming out (Marshall) and you guys aren’t. Weird.
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Hey, I’m all for integration and all that stuff. But where’s the laser battles, marauding extraterrestrials, and Robert Downy, Jr.?
(Just kidding).
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Your preferred mode of entertainment does sometimes include the appreciation and acceptance of non organic photonic life forms.
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The movie I want to see is this art house film that had a brief run at a hipster cinema in SoHo and probably won’t get wide release for months lol.
And The Disaster Artist, but that comes out at Christmas.
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There’s also anti-Semitism. And, like history and shit.
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“There’s also anti-Semitism. And, like history and shit.”
That’s a mouthful.
It appears that approximately 1800 BCE an ingenious system of representing phonetically every sound capable of being uttered by the human voice (the alphabet) was invented. Thus making it possible for every human utterance, every human thought to be preserved for future consideration and enlargement. The initial result was the accumulation of the traditions of a nomadic group residing along the culturally eclectic “King’s Highway” between Egypt and Mesopotamia, in a collection of writings known as the Bible, which in its immediate translation simply means “the BooK”.
Although the majority of human kinds attitude towards this ethnic grouping, recently refereed to as the “Jews”, because of the initial animalistic being of our species, became to be genocidal, our species was granted an all solving and final directive.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Is that not divine?
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“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Harvey Weinstein’s guiding principle
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