For one afternoon, the Stros shook off the weight of a disappointing season and hammered the cocky Cubs with five yaks in winning easily at Wrigley on Friday afternoon, 15-7.
Things got a little chippy again between the Cubs’ Michael Barrett and Roy Oswalt just five days after Oswalt was ejected for beaning Barrett with a pitch in the back following a Cubs’ homer. Both benches emptied after Barrett confronted Oswalt as he stepped into the batter’s box in the second. After the umpires clearly warned Barrett to knock it off, he continued baiting Oswalt as he ran back to the dugout after grounding out. Later the Cubs’ Kent Mercher intentionally hit Oswalt with a pitch, but the umpiring crew again did not eject anyone.
Inasmuch as Oswalt was ejected a week earlier without even a warning, the umpires need to get their criteria together for throwing players out of games. Sheesh!
At any rate, Oswalt (15-9) allowed six runs in eight innings for the win on a hot and muggy afternoon at Wrigley, but he retired 13 batters in a row from the fourth inning until giving up a single and a two-run homer to Nomar Garciaparra with two outs in the eighth.
The Stros jumped on the Cubs’ Kerry Wood for four runs in the first and never looked back, whacking him for eight runs on eight hits in 4 1/3 innings, including four of the taters. Beltran led the way with two yaks and four RBI, and since coming to the National League in June, he is 11-for-21 with seven homers and 11 RBI in five games at Wrigley Field.
I think the Cubs need to pitch around that guy.
Bags and Berkman hit back-to-back solo shots off Wood, and JK added another yak as the Stros cranked out 17 hits for a gaudy 37 total bases. The win was the ninth for the Stros in their last 12 games.
In a personnel note, the Stros mercifully released David Weathers after the game, who came over from the Mets in the Hidalgo salary dump. Weathers looks washed up, although his runs saved against average is not as bad as some of the Stros’ bullpen. However, Weathers is earning over $3 million, and the Stros are not interested in retaining him at anywhere near that compensation level. So, it was time for a divorce.
The Rocket takes the hill on Saturday as the Stros try to maintain the momentum of their best play since their great start in April.
As noted in this earlier post, Equatorial Guinea is one fascinating place. Now, this NY Times article reports on the latest bizarre development in the affairs of this little African oil enclave. Here are all earlier posts on Equatorial Guinea.
With true stories like these, who needs novels?
In case you have tuning out the world over the past month or so, you already know that prominent Houston attorney John O’Neill is the author of the best-selling book “Unfit for Command” and has been at the forefront of the group known as the Swift Boat Veterans that has been waging a public campaign against John Kerry’s candidacy for President. In this Wall Street Journal ($) op-ed today in which he defends the SWV’s right to campaign against Mr. Kerry. First Mr. O’Neill debunks the notion that the SBV’s are a mouthpiece for the Bush-Cheney campaign:
Are we controlled by the Bush-Cheney campaign? Absolutely not. The Swift boat veterans who joined our group come in all political flavors: independents, Republicans, Democrats, and other more subtle variations. Had another person been the presidential candidate of the Democrats, our group never would have formed. Had Mr. Kerry been the Republican candidate, each of us would still be here.
We do not take direction from the White House or the president’s re-election committee, and our efforts would continue even if President Bush were to ask us directly to stop.
Then, Mr. O’Neill explains simply why the SBV’s have come forward:
Why have we come forward? As explained in “Unfit For Command,” Mr. Kerry grossly exaggerated and lied about his abbreviated four-month tour in Vietnam. He disgraced all legitimate Vietnam War heroes when he falsely testified to Congress that we were war criminals, daily engaged in atrocities that had the full approval of all levels in the chain of command. So, once Mr. Kerry decided to apply for the commander in chief’s job with a war-hero resumÈ, we felt compelled to come forward to explain why he is “unfit for command.”
Read the whole piece.
And, in this related WSJ op-ed, the WSJ’s Daniel Henninger shakes his head at the way Mr. Kerry is responding to the SBV’s:
How can this be happening? Why didn’t John Kerry months back — if not years — find some gracious way to make peace with the John O’Neills of the world? Why didn’t one wise head among the Democrats point out the obvious difficulties of the Kerry candidacy once past the party’s primary voters? This is a man who would be running as both a hero of Vietnam and a famous accuser of the war’s heroes. This is an election, not a Shakespearean tragedy. How come John Kerry never worked out, before the final leg of his long odyssey, a let-bygones statement, admitting the hyperbole (at the least) of his accusations of atrocity before Congress in 1971, honoring the service of colleagues who never felt obliged to apologize for Vietnam, but reserving his right to oppose that troubled war?
As I noted in this earlier blog post on Mr. O’Neill from several months ago, John is a highly regarded attorney in Houston legal circles and independent politically. The Kerry campaign’s attempts to discredit him as a Republican shill are doomed to failure.
John Kerry has recently admitted that he used poor judgment and engaged in youthful indiscretion in condemning many of his co-Vietnam veterans publicly during the early 1970’s. Was that earlier criticism truly a product of youthful indiscretion? Or is Mr. Kerry’s response to serious critics such as John O’Neill prove that he simply has poor judgment and that he has not really changed from his earlier indiscretion?
By the way, before commenting, please know that I am also independent politically.