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On Wednesday night, the Houston Astros tied-up the 2022 World Series at two games apiece with a 5-0 win over the Philadelphia Phillies. The game featured a rare no-hitter tossed by four members of the Astros pitching staff.
Game Five of the World Series will be played tonight in Philadelphia. Regardless of the outcome of tonight’s game, the teams will travel back to Houston for a deciding Game Six on Saturday night. If needed, Game Seven will be played in Houston Sunday night.
In an ironic bit of bad timing, Houston’s embarrassing entry into the NFL will play host to another team from Philadelphia this evening.
The NFC’s 7-0 Philadelphia Eagles fly into Houston to play the 1-5-1 Houston Texans. Local fans in attendance at tonight’s NFL football game are likely to be more interested in the outcome of the Astros baseball game.
It wouldn’t surprise me if more Dallas Cowboys fans might show-up for Houston’s Thursday night’s football game just to get their chance to “boo” the dreaded Eagles!
Despite the Houston Texans’ lousy record, the team plays hard on the football field. They simply don’t have enough talent on the roster to be a contender anytime soon.
The team’s top (and overpaid) wide receiver, Brandin Cooks, has been sitting out of team practices this week in hopes that the Texans might trade him to an NFL contender. For most Texans’ players, a trade to ANY other NFL team would likely be just fine.
Alas, the NFL trade deadline has passed this week. There was no deal consummated to trade Brandin Cooks. Afterwards, Cooks found enough strength to log onto social media to announce that he will not be playing in tonight’s football game against the Philadelphia Eagles due to “personal reasons”.
He said, “Don’t take a man’s kindness for granted. Covered for the lies for too long – those days are done. Crossed the line with playing with my career”.
Now that’s the ol’ team spirit, Brandin!
The 29-year old Brandin Cooks came into the NFL as a first round wide receiver pick of the New Orleans Saints. This was at a time when Drew Brees was still the quarterback. After three years of less-than-stellar performance in New Orleans, the Saints traded Cooks to New England in 2017. After lasting just one year in New England, Brandin Cooks was traded once more – to the Los Angeles Rams.
While in California, the Rams offered Brandin Cooks a new five-year, $81 million contract extension. Over $50 million of his new contract was fully guaranteed.
Don’t feel too sorry for Brandin Cooks.
Reports indicated that potential suitors (including the Dallas Cowboys) haggled with the Texans as to which team should bear most of the costs of Brandin Cooks’ expensive contract.
Money appears to have been the primary reason why the disgruntled (but financially secure) Brandin Cooks remains a wide receiver for the Houston Texans.
The Texans have never appeared in a Super Bowl since the team’s inception in 2000. In recent years, fans of the team have watched a number of former top players hit the road for other cities.
Likely Hall-of-Fame defensive tackle and popular fan favorite J.J. Watt jumped ship to Arizona in 2021. Former Texans’ All-Star wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins landed in Phoenix just one year earlier in 2020. The talented (but off-field troubled) former quarterback of the Texans, DeShaun Watson, was granted his amnesty this summer after being traded to Cleveland for several top draft picks.
The Houston Texans don’t seem to mind as long as the local fans keep buying season tickets.
In downtown Houston, the NBA’s Houston Rockets (two-time World Champions in 1994 and 1995) have descended into the murky bottom of the NBA for the past two years and appear to need a life preserver thrown to them again in 2022.
The team is already in last place after a coming out of the gate with a miserable 1-8 record this fall.
The Houston Rockets helped their long-time scoring whiz, James Harden, shuffle-off to Brooklyn in January, 2021. Today, “The Beard” is now playing for (you guessed it) Philadelphia. Harden and his new 76er teammates are off to a modest 4-5 start, but at least Philly has made it into the NBA playoffs in each of the past five seasons.
How ironic is it for the city’s professional baseball franchise to be the polar opposite (when it comes to competing for championships) when compared to Houston’s two other major sports teams?
The Houston Astros have been so successful that they are playing in their fourth World Series in the last six years (winning a championship title in 2017).
Houston’s major league baseball franchise features a great balance of pitching, hitting, and leadership. Long-time Astros second baseman Jose Altuve remains the team’s spark plug and emotional leader. Houston’s easy-going 73-year old coach Dusty Baker is still looking for his first World Series ring as a manager. That would go nicely with Baker’s World Series ring he earned as a player for the 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers.
Here’s another issue working in the favor of the Houston Astros.
Does anyone even know who the team’s owner is? Houston businessman Jim Crane purchased the franchise in 2011 for a reported $680 million.
As part of Jim Crane’s deal to buy the team, he agreed to move the Astros from the National League into the American League West Division the following year.
At this point, the other baseball teams in the American League would probably like to send the Astros back to the National League!
In 2018, the founder of the NFL’s Houston Texans, Bob McNair, passed away.
After his death, his wife Janice was named Senior Chair, and McNair’s son, Cal, became Chairman and CEO of the team. The Texans’ decline on the field seems to have intensified following Bob McNair’s death.
The NBA’s Houston Rockets were sold in 2017 to Landry’s Seafood restaurant giant, Tilman Fertitta, for $2.2 billion. Fertitta (who is quite involved in other Houston-area charities and ventures) has two sons listed in the Rockets’ media guide as working for his management team. They do not appear to be directly involved in the basketball team’s daily operations.
It is much more likely that the Rockets’ recent on-court decline is closely related to dumping several of the team’s highly priced veteran players (such as James Harden, Russell Westbrook, and John Wall). The Rockets appear to favor rebuilding the basketball team utilizing younger (and less expensive) players via the NBA draft. This process can take years to build a winner without adding some talented (and expensive) free agents.
Houston sports fans should embrace the Astros participation in yet another World Series this week.
If the city’s NFL and NBA franchises would like to build a winner, they should carefully evaluate the successful blueprint of the hometown Astros.
It may be a long, long time before Houston celebrates a championship for either the Texans or the Rockets.