Who Should I Cheer Against?

Editorial note: I wrote this in the airport, but didn't get a chance to post it until now.



There is something oddly satisfying about flying from Houston to St. Louis on the morning after last night’s game. I’m traveling to St. Louis to stand for a wedding; two die-hard Cardinal fans who used to be my roommates are going to pronounce their intentions to be man and wife, and the groom’s father (a pastor) will say a few words, and so there’s a good chance that in a few years there will be baby Cardinal fans in the world and I will have to pretend that this is a good thing. (Joking, of course.) Still, I was not looking forward to the prospect of being in St. Louis during a miraculous game 7 or worse, a miraculous comeback that sent them to the World Series. Yet, the satisfaction I feel goes a bit deeper than that, and I think I need to sort through it.

I have two concerns -- caveats -- I should put out at the beginning. One, I am still cloudy on Nyquil. I have been up writing until 2:30 or 3:30 AM almost every day for 7 or 8 days straight, a furious pace that has yielded some decent results and some wacked out sleep patterns. So, with a flight at 8:45 AM I figured that Nyquil was my best chance to get to sleep immediately after the Astros game in order to get up for my flight. It worked, but the fog has not yet left.

The second concern is that some will read this and think I have “gone native.” I suppose to some extent these attacks would be fair, and in others unfair. But I’ll get to that, and for now let me just say that my intention is not to go all “Yee Haw Texas!” on anybody.

No, this is not a Texas love fest, despite the fact that I am loving life in Austin. (85 and sunny again yesterday.) Texas pride is vocal and renowned, and is not always seen in a positive light. Stereotypes run deep, GWB has not helped, and Texans themselves are not overly concerned with challenging anyone who is sophisticated enough to look down their nose towards that big ‘ol state in the South. When I told people in Chicago and elsewhere in the Midwest that I was moving to Austin, general reaction was Texas? Why the hell are you moving to Texas? Now I think it is similar to my disbelief when my sister and brother-in-law told me that Croatia is beautiful, since my perception was tinged by war photos and mental images of the Soviet Bloc from my travels in East Germany and Poland. I still cannot picture Croatia this way, and I probably won’t be able to until I visit there. While some parts of Texas are certainly cactus and tumbleweed, however, Austin is not, and neither are many other parts of Texas. In short, the stereotype is oversimplified, just like any other.

My point with saying this is that now that I’m living in Austin, I no longer see Texas Pride in the light that I used to. That has also led me to re-think guys like Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens wanting to come back and play for the Astros. It makes a lot more sense to me now; that fierce loyalty just permeates, and it’s not such a bad thing, or at least not the wholly negative thing in which it’s usually perceived up North. It’s the sort of approach I hope for in the Cubs. It felt right when Greg Maddux came back; to Texans, I think it’s the same way for Pettitte & Clemens, except that it’s a state thing.

I’ll say this: if there will be baseball players in the next generation who play their entire careers for one team, my money is that they will play for Houston. That’s just the mindset. Bagwell and Biggio are not anomalies. It’s consistent with what the team officials and owners were saying in the post-game interviews, talking about credit going to the people working in scouting and development. It’s no secret that my sympathies lean towards the scouting and development side of baseball. Someone like Oswalt -- as much I don’t like him for his history with the Cubs and my sense that he’s a bit of a cheapshot artist -- is a darn good pitcher, and the Astros brought him up and will probably keep him. So, I can respect the Astros in this sense. They’re obviously not way up on the moral high ground, having signed the mercenary Beltran last year and having a fairly large market to work with, but the loyalty within the organization still seems strong, and part of that must come from the state.

So, it’s sort of fitting I suppose that this year the two teams with which I have secondary ties are going to be duking it out. Chicago, where I grew up, and Houston, my local team. (Austin’s AAA team is a Houston affiliate, and the Astros are the local TV team.) Austin does not have all that many baseball fans (“Hook em horns!” I hear instead) but what baseball support there is, it’s Astros fans. Talking with them at the bars, they know the game, they know their team, and they are not obnoxious.

Still, I think I have to pull for the Chi-Sox. I think. Maybe I won’t know until I watch the games. I still don’t like Roger Clemens, although I dislike him less than before. I still don’t like Roy Oswalt, although I certainly liked him last night when he threw Pujols some chin music. But past that, the two teams have a lot in common, and a lot of it is laudable. They both emphasize pitching, defense, and smart hitting. They’re both models I hope the Cubs look at closely, which stays in the back of my mind.

Plus, as my flight is about to leave for St. Louis, at least they’re not the Cardinals.