Editorial note: For those reading the live recaps on my blog, you’ll notice I am now cross-posting them to The Crawfish Boxes, which is the absolute best Houston Astros blog I’ve ever run across. Stros Bro does a fantastic job over there, and the site is extremely user friendly. I’d highly recommend checking them out, and there’s a pretty good chance that I will start posting some exclusive stuff over there as well.

Once again, I woke up today with no intention of going to Minute Maid Park tonight. I have tickets already for Friday and Saturday, and figured there might be such a thing as too much baseball. I was wrong, however, and there is no such thing as too much baseball. It’s ludicrous, really, and I don’t know why I considered it. So early this afternoon, I texted Jon to see if he’d be interested in going to the game, and he was. We made plans to leave for the ballpark around 4:15. I didn’t know how many people would show up, and after last night’s parking debacle I didn’t want to risk having to drive around for 30 minutes looking for a spot.

Needless to say, I worried for nothing. We arrived at the Juicebox around 4:45 and parked in our super-secret free parking location (seriously, it’s so good that I don’t want to share it for fear of people taking our regular spot. Perhaps if you ask nicely.) We made the trek over to the ticket window, and they had seats in basically every location still available. This surprised me, because it was one of the hottest tickets on StubHub today. We got two seats in section 325, right above third base, and since it was only 5 at this point we decided to head over to The Bus and Home Plate Grille and see about heckling Sean & John from 1560 and Charlie Palillo from 790. 

Got to Home Plate, and the scene was totally not what I expected. For some reason, the remote radio shows on 790 and 1560 always sound like they’re very busy and a generally wild time. This is not the case. At Home Plate, Charlie was sitting at a table by himself at the door doing his show, and not a single person paid attention to him. I actually felt bad about it, so we decided that heckling was out of the question. Plus, he’s a brilliant sports guy, and I figured that if I even said one cross word to him in joking that he might reduce me to a puddle of tears in mere seconds.

We had a drink and went next door to the Bus, where once again our hopes of an awesome remote radio show were dashed. Sean & John sat outside, looking bored out of their minds while doing the show. I actually think John Harris might have been asleep, but I cannot confirm this. At this point, the doors opened and we headed into the ballpark. We were one of the first 10,000 people through the door, so we got our collectible Carlos Lee Silver Slugger statues, which is kinda cool. They are probably plastic, but they are shiny, hard plastic.

We loaded up on foods that are bad for you and settled in to watch batting practice. Either they didn’t open the doors early enough or we took too long in the food line, because the Cardinals were already taking batting practice and the Stros were nowhere to be found. My two recollections from Cards BP? It was very hot, and Albert Pujols is a beast. He hit a shot about the Crawford Boxes that, I swear to God, was probably going 400mph when it bounced off the television screen above the boxes. It made a horrible sound, and I just KNOW that some Minute Maid tech guy is going to be cursing Albert tomorrow while he fixes that thing.

Around the second inning, we noticed that the park just wasn’t filling up, so we moved down to the 4th row in the field boxes in left field. I think I will go with this game plan from here on out: buy a cheap ticket, watch for seats to stay empty, and then move down as early in the game as possible.

Enough with the small talk, here’s the game notes:

• Shawn Chacon had some serious control problems. A friend of mine noted that Chacon can be very good when he’s got control, and very bad when he doesn’t. This was one of those very bad nights. Chacon had only given up 1 hit through 4 innings (I think; it may have been 3 or 5), but had given up two runs due to walks. He didn’t get shelled or anything, but he also didn’t inspire any confidence. I believe he threw 33 pitches in the second inning alone, which has to be some kind of record. I think Fernando Nieve is going to take his place in the rotation before the year is out, and I actually hope it’s sooner rather than later.
• Watching Tejada play is so much fun, because you can tell he’s having a lot of fun. It’s like he’s been given a whole new life in baseball again, and he’s loving every minute of it. His two-run double, scoring Carlos Lee from first base, was a thing of beauty. HIs defense is great, much better than I thought it would be.
• Here’s a note to all major league catchers: if you have the ball in your glove and Carlos Lee is barreling down the basepath towards you, it’s probably wise to just drop the ball and get out of the way. Otherwise, there could be death in your future. Carlos didn’t kill La Rue tonight, and the Cards catcher should be very thankful for this.
• I’m not going to freak out about our bullpen, although I did question why Coop brought Geoff Geary into the game in the 8th instead of Doug Brocail. Isn’t Brocail supposed to be the setup guy? Wesley Wright continues to impress, and Oscar Villareal did a good job tonight in his one inning of work. I was hoping to see Jose Valverde redeem himself for last night’s farce of a closing job, but no such luck on this night.
• Good to see Hunter Pence get out of his funk. Well, kinda. He’s still taking some crazy swings at those low and away breaking pitches, but he did hit a triple tonight. I hope he rebounds soon, because the Astros need him to be the player he was last year, and he’s also dragging my roto team down.