Dear Baseball Gods,
This year we, the Astros fan, lift our voices to you in eager anticipation for the coming year. We thank you for our bounty this decade. Thank you for Craig Biggio in his prime, before he and Jeff Bagwell took over the clubhouse and refused to make way for younger talent, thus ending the promising major league career of Chris Burke. Thank you for Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt, two stars that shine as bright in the baseball firmament as any other for any team not owned by a Steinbrenner. And, most especially, thank you for Hunter Pence, long may he roam the outfild and continue to be a plus player on a team full of averages and negatives.
We come to you at this time, in the twilight hours of the off-season before the dawn of the first game, with a simple list of requests.
1. We pray for the season-long health of Roy Oswalt, for without him we are surely sunk.
2. We pray that something in the closing mechanism of the roof at Minute Maid gets irreversibly jammed, forcing the roof to be open all year.
Finally...
3. We pray for four days of rain subsequent to every Roy Oswalt start. Honestly...it's pretty much the only chance we've got.
If, in your wisdom, you decide that two of these requests are not in keeping with the spirit of the game, then we pray that you conk Drayton McLane on the head and bring about in him the realization that he's not doing what it takes to compete for a title every year. Maybe that way he'll either admit the Astros are rebuilding or will spend some freakin' money on some pitchers.
In Koufax' name,
Amen.
Happy Opening day (sorta - if you ignore the travesty last night*)
*Thanks Selig, you no-sense-of-history-havin' geek.
