At noon yesterday, the long
rumored and speculated-on demise of the Houston Astros baseball season
was officially confirmed. Not so surprisingly, approximately five
hours later, the long rumored and speculated on demise of the Houston
Chronicle as a news-gathering organization was also confirmed.
It was at noon yesterday that
the Dallas Morning News reported that Astros catcher Ivan “Pudge”
Rodriguez was waiving his no-trade clause and had agreed to be traded to the Texas Rangers, the team for which he has spent the
majority of his career. In return, the Astros received Matt Nevarez,
a right-handed pitcher playing for the Rangers’ Class A minor league
team. The Astros are also going to receive
two players to be named later.
The trade really doesn’t
mean anything to the Astros in that Pudge hasn’t really been much
of a contributor with the bat since around the time of the All Star
break (though it is kind of funny reading Richard Justice on this since
Justice is a huge Brad Ausmus fan and Pudge’s numbers are still superior
to what Ausmus was putting up). But some of the players are seeing
this as a sign that management has given up on competing this season. Roy Oswalt, as usual, seemed
to be about the only guy willing to go on the record with the Chron,
and he said “I think they’re starting to look
toward next year.”
I don’t blame Oswalt for
being upset, because it’s got to be hard to go from being caught by
a Hall of Famer to being caught by career mediocre backups like Humberto
Quintero and Chris Coste. But while I don’t blame Oswalt, I’m
upset for a different reason.
I wish that the Astros would have
come to this conclusion back in July. For even back then, there
were those of us who knew this team sucked and wouldn’t make a run
for the playoffs, so we wanted the team to unload the likes of Miguel
Tejada, Jose Valverde, Pudge, and Oswalt back before they had to clear
the waiver process, and back when it would have been easier to get quality
prospects from teams desperate for that one final piece that could put
them in the playoffs.
Pudge cleared waivers, but it’s doubtful
that clubs are going to let the likes of Tejada, Valverde, and Oswalt
get through waivers, which could prevent the Astros from making a trade
to a team really willing to part with talent for these guys.
And while the Astros season
was officially ending, the Chron’s reputation was finally being laid
to rest at about 5:08 p.m. when it was finally able to confirm that
Pudge had been traded, but was not yet able to report the details of
the trade.
The Dallas Morning News was able to confirm
and report this story a full five hours before the ChronAstros.com
had the story posted at 1:14 Central Time. Multiple blogs went up with the story between noon
and 1:30. SI.com, ESPN.com, the Sporting News, etc., all had the
story posted way before the Chron got around to it.
The front page of Chron.com
sports had a picture of Brett Favre, plus several stories on Favre,
prominently displayed at 1:25 p.m. yesterday afternoon. There was a Richard Justice
blog post on this, but it didn’t post until 12:48, and to find it, one had to scroll
down past the obtrusive ads.
At 2:41 p.m., the Chron was reporting
that a trade appeared to have been made, but that the Astros wouldn’t
confirm the trade and that Drayton McLane could not be found. Finally, at 5:08, the Chron was able to report that it had confirmed
the trade.
What’s funny, and disturbing,
is that Astros.com not only confirmed the story, but it did something
strange and radical, and instead of trying to hunt down McLane, it instead
contacted Pudge Rodriguez who not only confirmed the trade, but offered
up his thoughts on returning to the Rangers and on having played for
the Astros. And there’s also this thing known
as Twitter, and over there, one Brian McTaggart of Astros.com was twittering
away with tweet after tweet after tweet on the trade.
The death of Chron sports has
been rumored since management axed most of the reporting staff way back
in March. But it wasn’t until yesterday, with news organization
after news organization reporting what was happening down the street
from Chron headquarters while the Chron discussed Brett Favre, that
the demise of that paper’s section was properly confirmed.
May both the Astros and Chron sports rest in peace.
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2009.
