According to the Boston Herald, Red Sox center fielder Johnny Damon did not realize that he had accidentally received a Houston Astros Division Series cap Sunday afternoon until someone pointed it out to him during a live television interview:
“I saw the star, and I just thought it was a different (cap) design,” said Damon about the Astros insignia. “I’m sure people thought I was rooting for the Astros.”
Red Sox equipment manager Joe Cochran said “slip-ups like that occasionally happen.”
On the heels of announcing the sale of almost a billion dollars worth of power plants in New York City and the Bush Administration announcing an energy conservation campaign centered around a mascot called the “Energy Hog,” Houston-based Reliant Energy Inc. announced Monday that it would be raising its electricity prices for Houston-area customers by almost 15% as soon as possible and could implement an additional increase of about 10% in January. Those price increases will make Reliant’s price for electricity among the highest in the nation.
Under Texas’ deregulation law, Reliant is required to offer a semiregulated price through 2006 that is tied to natural-gas prices. Reliant’s current electricity rate is based on a price of $7.50 per million BTUs for natural gas, so it is increasing its electricity rates based on a benchmark price of $11.38 per unit for natural gas. Reliant’s two-step increase will result in a price of more than 16 cents a kilowatt-hour from the current 12.88 cents.
On the heels of their dramatic win in the last game of the regular season to seal the National League Wild Card Playoff berth, the Stros announced today that the club had signed future Hall of Famer and lifelong Stro Craig Biggio to a one year, $4 million contract covering the 2006 season. Bidg will play that season as a spry 40 year old.
Although the purely baseball-related analysis of whether to bring Bidg back is a closer question than the casual fan might think, it’s hard to look at what the Stros accomplished this season and not think back to the one game that was truly the turning point — that September 7 game in Philly when a ninth-inning, two-out, three-run home run by Bidg completed an Astros sweep of the Phillies. That Billy Wagner fastball that Bidg parked in the leftfield seats turned out to be the difference between the Stros going to the playoffs and the Phils going home.
But as good a baseball player as Bidg has been to the Stros, he has turned out to be something more for the club and the city. Bidg is a genuinely nice man who has embraced Houston as his family’s home as much as Houston has embraced him as the face of its baseball team. Craig Biggio is a dying breed, the professional athlete who plays his entire Hall of Fame career in the city that he adopts as his home. As a result, Stros owner Drayton McLane is clearly making the right decision in accomodating this aging star in playing out his string in Houston. As with Roger Clemens, it is highly unlikely that any of us will ever see the likes of Craig Biggio on a baseball field again in our lives.
Bidg’s recent seasons and career statistics are here.
| Craig Biggio | ||||||||||||
YEAR | AGE | RCAA | OBA | SLG | OPS | AVG | HR | RBI | SB | G | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | 37 | 1 | .350 | .412 | .763 | .264 | 15 | 62 | 8 | 153 | ||
| 2004 | 38 | 8 | .337 | .469 | .806 | .281 | 24 | 63 | 7 | 156 | ||
| 2005 | 39 | 8 | .325 | .468 | .792 | .264 | 26 | 69 | 11 | 155 | ||
| CAR | 354 | .370 | .437 | .807 | .285 | 260 | 1063 | 407 | 2564 | |||
| LG AVG | 0 | .338 | .419 | .757 | .268 | 279 | 1229 | 207 | ||||
| POS AVG | -104 | .333 | .392 | .726 | .265 | 202 | 1037 | 232 | ||||