May The Fourth Be With You (And The Astros)
Your service here at the salon is always temporarily interrupted during baseball season – especially for day games.
I know it’s a crisis day in Washington, DeeCee, y’all, but we’re playing the Rangers on the last day of this home stand, and we’ve had a pretty near flawless record against them this time. Game time is at 1:00. Yes, I know I was just there last night, and the night before that, and the night before … oh hell, I could legally change my voter registration to the ballpark. Yes, I know I have to drive 45 minutes to get there and then ride the train for a couple of miles, and then walk a few blocks, and I don’t understand why they just won’t let me pitch a tent and stay all night because it ain’t like they lack the space or anything, but it’s baseball and I flat love baseball.
So, May the Fourth Be With You to call your congressfool all damn day long. Use this thread to talk about it.
This was taken two years ago on May 4th. It still makes me smile.
My little bride is a lifelong Astros fan and National League baseball fan.
And my American league Texas Rangers seem to, at 11 and 17, be doomed to yet another sub-.500 season.
But with all the history and etc etc. pulling for the Astros would be an un-natural act for me.
Go Rangers.
1I’m listening to the Nats v. Diamondbacks game right now.
2DH wants to get an apartment in that building just built where we used to park, on Crawford, right across the street from the main entrance.
3He and son did had season tickets for years. Son moved to Dallas, but comes to Houston for all Sunday games now.
They did fuss about spring training moving to south Florida instead of Kissimmee, but did enjoy seeing Mar a Lago is across the street from a mobile home park. That close, Trump should have some knowledge of how us common people live.
Did you take that picture ? Your seats are close to my family.
See ya at the ballgame.
4Micr we are a divided family also. My bride is a teasip and I’m an Aggie. Makes for some interesting conversations now and then.
5@Paul
In a sense we have “generational” division. My family and my little bride’s family consistently attended East Texas State in Commerce. Then her dad, my father-in-law, went to Texas for a doctorate and all h377 broke loose. All of my kids went to Denton for bachelor’s then SMU, UTA, and UTD for master’s. My nieces and nephews went to Nac and San Marcos and G*d knows where else in the south half of Texas for their degrees.
And yes the conversations get lengthy. It takes some kids a long time to realize they are wrong.
6Go A’s and Pirates!!!
7First, agreed as far as the importance of baseball goes. (Micr, do you still think the Astros are an NL club? Not true for a while.) Also on the Astros, who share with the Royals — most years — the Most Interesting AL Club Award. (This year I find myself going against decades and including the Yankees in there.)
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Of course the Mets will always lead the pack — sometimes I think my life has been nearly seventy years of being a 1962 Met player.
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But we never realize that baseball gives us a good analogy for the healthcare problem — analogy is the wrong word but I just got my first sip of 8 O’Clock Columbian of the morning.
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In fact, we could use BB as a hook to pin anti-Trump care ads on, because employers realize that, by paying for far more expensive procedures than most of us will ever encounter — and paying a player his full salary while he is recovering (And now providing parental and bereavement leaves and concussion protection) not just because they were pushed into it by the Union, but because it is good for their business.
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True, few of us are Altuves, Correias, Springers or Keuchels, but we also don’t earn their salaries. (The Presidential salary is lower than the MLB minimum.) Yet, even for people earning $10 million, it is to the club’s benefit to pay for the operations they need. They even supply food, and to give a daily meal money on the road — despite the clubhouse meals — that would (last I checked, some time ago) be more than the average family has to spend for food for a week.
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Since the key to the next year and a half is not just improving our messaging, but targeting it better (so, if nothing else, we stop spending 80% of our ad budget convincing people who already agreed with us — preaching to the choir is so much easier) and ads on tv and particularly on radio MLB broadcasts not only are cheaper but probably get heard 50% more than elsewhere, shouldn’t we start thinking about a campaign using this? And even for backyard watch parties, we can work facts like the above into the conversation.
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Remember, the ‘magic words’ we are hoping to hear are “… Y’know, I had never looked at it from that direction before.” Without them, changing minds is impossible.
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[The umpires are getting ready for the first pitch, so I return you to the game — but think about it a little.]