Well, you voted for an Astro in the American League. That can't be right.

Can we get the X-man back?

Why not? He's just down the road:
http://www.hbuhuskies.com/coaches.aspx?rc=132&path=baseball

Probably not new news, but McTaggart tweeted this morning that they are looking at six potential candidates.
https://twitter.com/brianmctaggart/status/326043515152896000

Of course, if I could, I would happily drop 30-40 of the bullshit channels like Wedding Central to compensate for CSN Houston's fee.

This is the part that doesn't ring true to me from the cable providers. "We don't want to charge people for channels they don't want to watch!" Umm, you already do that with 90% of your channels to 90% of your subscribers.

West is less than 20 miles up the road from us here in Waco. Today is Diadeloso at Baylor -- an annual sort of field day that dates back to the 1930s -- but the focus around campus has been on trying to help the people in West. Cool to see how people have reacted around Central Texas.

http://www2.baylor.edu/baylorproud/2013/04/baylor-community-rallies-for-west-texas-as-diadeloso-becomes-diadelwest/

I didn't realize Jimmy Wynn had written a book... Anyone here read it? Is it good? He was before my time as an Astros fan, and I could stand to learn more about that time period in Houston's history.

MLB's blackout of internet radio broadcasts is as absurd as their regulation of video transmissions in markets with no predictable media conduit for either.

One big difference: At least the Internet radio blackouts can be circumvented for a nominal fee.

Thought this was interesting -- from a recent Greg Lucas blog post:

While going through old copies of Baseball Weekly to find notes that might fit for a second book someday--and before throwing the copies out I found something very interesting.  As far back as 2000 the Astros fate in being moved to the American League West was a realignment proposal the Player's Union had suggested.  And the Texas Rangers were all for it.  They wanted to find a way not to have to play all their road division games on the West Coast.  As we know nothing came of this until last year.  Then the Rangers got their way...the Astros didn't, but the Union got the realignment they had suggested. 

One has to wonder what took so long?  And one has to think the success of the Astros from 2001 through 2008 kept it from happening.  In 2005 Houston won the NL title.  But before and after they had been either in the post season or contenders.  Once the bottom fell out in 2010 it was time to strike.
Major League baseball did.  The sale of the team was timed perfectly for Bud Selig and the other owners to force the move.

Interestingly, even though the Rangers had backed getting the Astros in their division in 2000 it was not the same Ranger ownership that pushed for it in 2010.  And, it was not going to be the same Astro owwnership that had to accept.   It would appear the only way the Astros could have held off moving to the A.L. was had they continued to be a contending team.  When the club was being prepped for sale by Drayton McLane and costs (primarily player salaries) were being cut there was no chance it would not be the Astros moving.  They did not have enough strength to resist.

http://greglucasfshou.blogspot.com/2013/04/guy-v-lewis-finally-will-get-his-due.html

The combination is: 1-2-3-4-5.

1-2-3-4-5? That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!

Two thoughts, Valpo:
1) If you've got a smartphone, I think the MLB At Bat app might be your new best friend. Waco at least still has the Astros -- except for day games, when they're pre-empted for usual programming. The At Bat app rocks, and is fully worth the price. Fun to listen to other teams, as well.

2) I doubt Steve Grande is the right guy, since his title is media relations. You probably need someone from community relations, or else head straight to the top. Staff listing here:
http://houston.astros.mlb.com/team/front_office.jsp?c_id=hou

Somewhere, James Mouton had a ribeye steak for dinner, and enjoyed it.

That made me wonder what he's up to these days... Apparently he's an area scout for parts of Texas with the Dbacks.

MLB has spy sattelites, they know where you are and everything you do.

YTIFY

I wonder what percentage of players already had one; I'm guessing it's pretty high.

I noticed last night that the free version of the MLB package (lasts a week or so) didn't black out the game in Austin.  I guess MLB wants to give the impression that the games won't be blacked out in order to lure you in.  Pretty deceptive, IMO.

Interesting... The CSN feed WAS blacked out on Time Warner here in Waco, and TWC often seems to consider Waco a subset of the Austin market.

Agree with the Comcast, but now my DirecTV bill is $60 less every month.

I think you can often get some sort of discount on your cable bill just by threatening to cancel, regardless of your reason.

Since I was directly involved in the purchase and relocation of the Zephyrs from Denver back in 1993, I wonder what outs the club would have to relocate since Jefferson Parish built that yard for the club back in the mid-90's. I thought that there was a long-term lease with the team.

This says the lease runs through 2016:
http://www.nola.com/zephyrs/index.ssf/2013/04/zephyrs_owner_has_talked_with.html

Unfortunately, I'm not willing to subscribe to the Chron to read that story.

The sentence I quoted in the post was really the most interesting part.

Odd, though -- looks like if you find a story via Google, you can go to the link and read the whole thing. But if you return to that link directly, you have to be a subscriber.

Ford obviously does substantial and deep research because his knowledge of things on both teams' rosters and coaching staffs is impressive. He's a baseball guy.

Thought this tidbit on Ford was interesting:

Astros owner Jim Crane, in fact, has said his was the only voice in Astros management that preferred Ford over a more experienced announcer.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/sports/astros/article/Newness-carries-over-into-Astros-broadcast-booth-4386920.php

101

This is how it is done

That's pretty good.