By Breedlove
Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com on January 31, 2001.

Super Bowl XXXV is now in the books. The Baltimore Ravens are the National Football League champions by virtue of defeating soundly the New York Army Ants, and they were so scary-good they should have gotten two trophies. It will never be said in baseball that one team beat the other simply because they were bigger, stronger, faster and more feral. Baseball remains a pursuit that treasures skill as much as talent and smarts as much as brawn. There is no such equivocation in football, where a Big Apple team can have the body language of the undersized child pretending not to hear his tormentor’s comments from the back of the bus. Read the rest of this entry »

By Breedlove
Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com on January 18, 2001.

In a well-timed announcement, the Houston Astros sent folks home for a January weekend with the promise that their biggest star on the rise, Venezuelan-born Richard Hidalgo, was inked with the team for at least four years. In his first season out of the shadows of Carl Everett and Derek Bell, Hidalgo responded by posting mouth-watering statistics and avoiding controversy — he was given the ball and he ran with it. Read the rest of this entry »

 Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com on January 17, 2001.

After Jeff Bagwell signed a five-year, $85-million contract extension last month, ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian used Bagwell’s performance in MVP voting to emphasize his value to the Astros. From 1994 to 1999, Kurkjian noted, Bagwell received more National League MVP votes than any other player. Read the rest of this entry »

After Jeff Bagwell signed a five-year, $85-million contract extension last month, ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian used Bagwell’s performance in MVP voting to emphasize his value to the Astros. From 1994 to 1999, Kurkjian noted, Bagwell received more National League MVP votes than any other player.

Read the rest of this entry »