Not a good weekend...

...for either my home town or my adopted city. First, Houston is hit with a true monster of a storm. Then, its baseball team puts up 18 innings of 1-hit ball. A good portion of its multi-million dollar football stadium's roof is torn asunder, meaning that the Texans will face an even more brutal schedule. Much of Houston is without power.

The Saints lost (don't really care, but Reggie Bush put up a 2.8 yds/carry game, which is always hi-fucking-larious). The Green Wave got its second "almost-but-not-quite" upset of the season.

The lone good point: Matt Forte put up 4.0 yds/carry with the Bears on Sunday. Awesome. One of my friends has him on his fantasy team, so good for him. As he pointed out, Forte has all the markers of a great running back. He's got great speed. He's physically powerful. He's got good vision and intelligence. And he can catch, to boot. The only reason he was a surprise in the 2nd round of the draft was because he came from Tulane and not LSU, USC, Texas, OSU etc.

On the bright side for me: we got almost 100 people to sign up for the debate society. If even a third of that shows up, we're doing good. It looks like we're going to have a great year.

I'd like to talk a little more about Coop.

As I posted over at the Crawfish Boxes, Coop has really improved over the last year. He's no longer doing the "small-ball" shit that was helping to lose games in April. He still doesn't just sit back and wait for our hitters to score, and I think he still orders stupid shit like the hit-and-run play WAY too often, but he's managed well.

More importantly, he's kept the bullpen in good shape. He's been handed a pretty good bullpen, and he usually distributes the work fairly evenly. He gets Wesley experience and puts the ball in the hands of Sampson, Hawkins or Brocail if we're in a jam. He keeps the pitchers well rested. That's great.

And he sticks up for his charges. He knows when the Astros are getting fucked. There's nothing wrong if a manager gets thrown out of the game, and he's willing to go to line for his guys (hell, he chewed out the commissioner!).

That's all you need from a manager. You don't need (or really want) guys like LaRussa or Torre. You just want a guy who can manage the bullpen, keep everyone in line, and who will argue the bad calls so his players don't have to.

Who Dat Say They Gon' - oh wait

Watched the first two innings of the Astros game. That blew. Wigginton continued to say "Fuck you!" to all the whiny douchebags calling in to sports radio and complaining about the Wheeler trade. He go two doubles and a triple (!). Pretty good for a chubby guy. After Carlos' injury, Wiggs is the second-best hitter in the lineup. Why Coop doesn't bat him clean up I don't know. He's making it clear that he's the best third baseman the Astros have had since Ken Caminiti was traded and Morgan Ensberg turned out to be a fluke. Though he's certainly not as good on defense as either. Backe got the ball, played for 5.2 innings and gave up 11 runs, all earned. Geary, Brocail, and Hawkins came in and finished up the game without giving up another run.

Kazuo was placed on the DL. This isn't too big of a deal, given that the Stros are out of the race, but injuries have been Matsui's problem since he came over from Japan. JR House was called up from Round Rock, getting a pinch-hit RBI groundout in the 9th inning. House was in the Astros organization for a season a couple of years ago, and he was briefly called up then for a few games. He's played in AAA Round Rock for the season, as both a catcher and first baseman. He's got an 853 OPS there, which is pretty good. But he's also 29, so he's probably condemned to swinging between AAA and the MLB for the remaining few years of his career.

But the Texans handed a loss to the Saints. I'm glad that the NFL and the respective clubs have decided to nurture the burgeoning rivalry between the two teams. Though it's more of an all-in-fun thing than that between the BE-SF and the Texans.

Reggie Bush continued to show that he's a bust. He actually played today, which makes me think that maybe the Saints organization isn't happy with him, telling him that he's no guarantee to play during the year if his performance doesn't improve. He responded with a total of 7 carries for an average of 3.4 yards. No touchdowns on rushing. He caught one 12 yard pass (though he dropped another) for a touchdown. He was tackled once by Williams, which was pretty cool.

One of the sideline reporters asked Mario about the Bush-Williams "rivalry," and he responded with the typical non-interest in such talk. He's right - the discussion of who was the better draft pick was over TWO SEASONS AGO! Hell, in 2007, the only argument one could make was Young vs. Williams, and that's shown to have been in Houston's favor, as well.

I saw PTI's discussion of Reggie Bush yesterday, and they were both saying that his first season was good, but that he went through a sophomore slump. This is bullshit. He only had two more touchdowns his first season, but he was averaging fewer yds/carry, too. He received better, but he still wasn't the RB everyone thought he would be.

Back to the Texans. The defense looked alright, otherwise. Nothing particularly awful (Pass rushing wasn't great. Two sacks were recorded, though), but nothing totally awesome.

Matt Schaub came out and threw perfect passes. Anyone would look good after years of Mr. Mittens throwing in Houston, but Schaub is proving to be an excellent QB. He had a beautiful short passing game - perfect laser shots into his receivers. Excellent. Sage was Sage, and the two Texans QBs look good. Our passing game is going to be great.

But the most pleasantly surprising thing tonight was the running game. Maybe Slaton was just better than anyone expected, but I think a lot of credit goes to the zone blocking scheme. The announcers talked about how Slaton wouldn't be good to use to set up a passing game, but that's not the Texans' game, anyways. During the season, Schaub will come out and throw a few passes, and then we'll use the running game a little, not the other way around.

Jacoby Jones wasn't too good, fumbling THREE TIMES! FUCKING HELL GODDAMMIT! But the defense was able to save the day every time he did it. He fumbled on the first punt return, resulting in a turnover. Not pretty.

So the Texans are looking good. The Astros definitely aren't. Biggio's jersey retirement is tomorrow, though. So we'll get to fondly remember the good days, circa 1996-2005, when the Astros rocked the National League but routinely got pounded in the postseason because God hates this fucking town. Maybe Bagwell will show up in the shirt he wore last year. Good times. Randy Johnson and Roy will be pitching, which should be nice to see, even if the Good Guys collapse.