Remember, Astroturf Is Their Fault

The latest Deadspin baseball season preview is up, and yeah, I know it's about the Astros, but it was written by Whitney Pastorek, who's both a friend of my sister's and a fellow McSweeney's Internet Tendency publishee. And it's also a pretty good read.

And if you think about it, in a way the Mets were to the '86 Astros as the Dodgers were to the '88 Mets (okay, not exactly, but work with me here), so we should sympathize with our Astro fan brethren and, in this case, sistren. And then there was astroturf, then the whole rainbow jersey thing, and then the Enron/Astros/Minute Maid/What's It This Year? Field debacle. Plus, they're from Houston, so they deserve sympathy for that, too. At least they stole Bagwell from the Red Sox.

Whitney takes a philosophical look at the 'Stros lifelong World Series drought:

What I'm trying to say is that lately, I've been looking at life as an Astros fan in a much, much different way. Houstonians! Don't you see how lucky we truly are? Every extra-inning playoff loss, every late-season win streak that isn't quite enough, every time we make it to the World Series only to get swept and called racists—those aren't pathetic events, they're dodged bullets! Stays of execution!

Impressively, she makes it through the whole post without a single Carlos Lee fat joke. Then again, I've made it through a month and a half of this blog without making a joke about Moises Alou peeing on his hands, so maybe we've all matured.

Baseball Season Preview: Houston Astros [Deadspin]