That time when Ted Cruz ruined the National Pastime
He even ruined baseball. You can read about it for free. This time. But I’d like you to subscribe too, ok? I need you. I can’t deal with Ted Cruz on my own.
It's that time of the year when I have to convince everyone that yes, I am a Houston Astros fan. I have been since the late 90s when my brother moved down there, and we kinda followed the team together. They mostly sucked so I didn't brag about it or anything. When we still had dial-up internet at home I signed up for MLB.tv to watch every Astros game one year, and I spent the entire summer waiting for my laptop screen to stop buffering. I also created a game-by-game Astros blog, which I presume is still out there somewhere in cyberspace but I can't remember what I called it.
But when the team started not sucking it seemed like I was jumping on yet another bandwagon, which I was not. So there.
And then, yea. The team got caught cheating. Stealing signs and banging trash cans and maybe or maybe not wearing buzzers and there was a collective, pearl-clutching GASP from purists everywhere who conveniently forgot that baseball hasn't really been right since Barry Bond's head grew 8 hat sizes after he was traded from the Pirates. Whatever. Sign-stealing has been the American pastime within the American pastime since catcher's started signaling for specific pitches with their fingers. The first recorded instance of it was 1876, when the Hartford Dark Blues hid a person in a shack to tip off their hitters when the pitcher would throw a curveball. It hasn't grown that much more complex since. The 1951 New York Giants used a telescope. In 1961 the Reds stationed a former pitcher of theirs inside the center-field scoreboard, and knew every pitch that was coming, and still managed to lose 4 games to 1.
I know it's kinda lame to say "everybody does it", but....well......if they don't they at least TRY. The Astros got caught so now everybody has a reason to hate them. I'll admit that if the Yankees got caught I'd pile on with maniacal glee. But all of this is part of the fun of baseball. I mean....they knew when a breaking ball was coming. It wasn't the fucking Cuban missile crisis.
But I got over it, and just about everybody else did too, except the aforementioned Yankees, who always seem to require a reason for sucking, and this time blamed it on the Astros not closing their stadium roof, which somehow forced the Yankees to strike out 30 times in 2 games. a ghastly MLB record of futility that may ultimately cost them Aaron Judge, who hit 62 home runs in a magical season, only to end up getting booed....a song that might indeed be playing in his head when he signs with the Red Sox for a billion dollars this winter.
But I digress.
We were discussing how the Astros are hated, no?
And then Ted Cruz showed up.
His fat ugly bootlicking fascist face, the fat ugly bootlicking fascist face of a man who allowed Donald Trump to call his wife ugly and his father an assassin....and didn't stomp him like a bathtub grape.
There he was....directly behind home plate, swilling beers and stuffing ballpark food down his Trump-loving gullet, cheering every pop-fly like he's never seen a game in his life. As soon as he arrived in the first inning I recognized him, smiling and waving at a crowd already in a bad mood, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he's considered one of the biggest treasonous cretins in the United States Senate, which is quite an accomplishment, since the United States Senate is positively crawling with treasonous cretins. Ted Cruz, who shit all over the NY/Jersey Hurricane Sandy relief bill, and then became an instant socialist when his own state was hit with Hurricane Harvey. Ted Cruz, who encouraged the January 6 riots, and then hid in a fucking broom closet from the actual rioters.
At YANKEE STADIUM.
To their immense credit, Yankee fans abused him unmercifully and imaginatively the entire game, suggesting he fuck back off to Cancun, and inventing new curse words when the old ones wouldn't suffice. Cruz sat there surrounded by his security detail, blithely ruining baseball for whatever percentage of its fans do not support sleazy shitbags who abandon their own fucking pets in the midst of a state emergency. Cruz is such a monumental scumbag that even my hardcore republican baseball fan-friends were appalled that he was there....and kept changing the subject whenever I mentioned it.
And of course he was wearing the Astros orange. Cheering on MY team.
Me and Ted Cruz. United.
I hated myself.
I still do.
I should probably root for the Phillies.
Would this make me a bandwagon jumper?
In a bit...
--tf