Houston News Blog

Photo by Jeff Balke

​There's a popular belief in NBA circles that the third year is when a player makes the transition to stardom, if he's going to make it. Among point guards, that worked for Chris Paul and Deron Williams, and much has been said about Aaron Brooks making a similar - though smaller - leap. Through five games, Brooks seems on the right track, averaging 20 points and eight assists while directing the Rockets to a surprising 3-2 record.

But slightly under the radar is Carl Landry, the other overachiever from the Rockets' 2007 draft class. Can he, much like forward Jeff Green in Oklahoma City, also make the third-year jump?

If Wednesday's matchup with the Lakers was any indication, it's possible - especially on offense. Landry's 20 points and eight rebounds were crucial as the undersized Rockets again held their own with the star-studded Lakers at Toyota Center, losing a 103-102 overtime heartbreaker in Ron Artest's Houston return. The Rockets led throughout, but as usual, three close calls down the stretch all went the direction of Kobe Bryant's team.

But individual wins or losses don't define an 82-game season, particularly for a young team like the Rockets. It's about development and the ability to put their best team forward by April, and the Rockets learned a lot about Landry in their battle with the defending champions.

​I hope everyone had a great weekend, and that you were all able to enjoy the nice weather by moving your television and recliner into your driveway to watch football on TV.  I'd like to start off by welcoming the Texans to this new thing for them called "November".  Boys, I know in the past this has typically been the month where you start making hotel reservations for your first post season golf trip (or if you're a wide receiver, this is the month you hope and pray that Andre Johnson makes the Pro Bowl and he brings you with him to Hawaii), but you need to know that for good teams this is when the season begins.  Games matter more, possessions are more valuable, and you need to bring it all 60 minutes.  You appear to be one of the "good teams this year.  Don't screw it up.

Photo courtesy of Brit_2

​For most teams, a season-ending injury to arguably the NFL's best receiving tight end would be considered a devastating loss.

But to the Texans, the absence of Owen Daniels may not be all that significant.

Sure, Sunday's come-from-behind, 31-10 romp over Buffalo was tempered with news of Daniels' apparent torn ACL. Yet, at the same time, it's hard to overlook how the Texans (5-3) still managed to post a 21-point road victory - all without Daniels and after handing the Bills (3-5) three moronic turnovers in the first quarter.

Somehow, these Texans appear to have enough talent to survive and flourish - even in spite of the trademark brainfarts and bad luck of the Gary Kubiak era.

"Through adversity, teams get stronger, or they can go the other way," said Kubiak, according to a post-game quotes release from the team. "They went and regrouped and played a tremendous second half."

The offense didn't skip a beat without Daniels, largely because they had a stable of suitable replacements. While Daniels is listed as a tight end, the Texans have had their most success this season when spreading the field and using him as a virtual wide receiver - where his productivity and skills are still good, but certainly replaceable.

In addition, it could be argued that the Texans' most successful run plays this year (before Sunday) also came out of the spread, when defenses were so concerned with the pass that Steve Slaton and Ryan Moats slithered through gaps.

Photo by Fred Trask

​Case Keenum delivered his standard Heisman-worthy performance. Charles Sims continued his fantastic freshman season. James Cleveland and Patrick Edwards caught key touchdown passes. But the Houston Cougars 50-43 last minute win over the Southern Miss Golden Eagles can, perhaps, best be attributed to unheralded senior tight end Fendi Onobun, a transfer from Arizona.

Onobun didn't make a mark by catching any passes from Keenum. He made his mark in the first half on special teams. And he was really special, blocking two Southern Miss extra points, the second of which found the ball winding up in the hands of defensive back Nick Saenz, who then ran it back more than 100 yards to the UH end zone for two points. And suddenly, instead of the score being 21-20 UH deep in the second quarter, it was 23-19 UH.

"It's hard to describe as a coach, to give up a touchdown then change the momentum by blocking an extra point and running it back," head coach Kevin Sumlin said. "That was a momentum changer in the game. I don't know that that's...that's not what we want to do to change the momentum, but I think that says a little bit about our team playing and winning as a team."

Onobun credited his special team's coach, Tony Levine, with making the blocks possible as it was Levine who prepared the scouting report and told him the opportunity would be there. "So I went out there and I just wanted to make something to happen," Onobun said. "And I made it happen."

Photo by Orion Lee

​The 2009 MLS Cup Playoffs officially kicked off yesterday, as our boys in orange played the Sounders FC to a 0-0 draw in Seattle. The match was a hotly contested one, with the Dynamo trying to bully the smaller, more finessed Sounders squad. Even though both teams finished with three yellow cards each, the Dynamo ended up 18 total fouls. The Sounders, being the flopping pricks that they are, finished the game with six fouls.

The Dynamo's game plan was simple, go into Qwest Field (where the Sounders play well) and disrupt the flow of the game. The Dynamo did a good job of keeping Seattle's Freddie Ljungberg and Fredy Montero off balance, making it difficult for them to get a good shot on goal -- especially Montero, who was involved in an scuffle with Dynamo goalkeeper Pat Onstad in the 16th minute. Going back to the Sounders being flopping pricks, Onstad didn't take kindly to Montero flopping in the box to draw a penalty. Onstad shoved him to the ground and both teams exchanged words. In the end, both Onstad and Montero received yellow cards.

​Just cleaning up some random broken glass in my "Blog" folder on a Friday ...

Can You Guess This Team?

Channeling my inner Cosmo Kramer... WHO WANTS TO HAVE SOME FUN?! Ok, well, I'm going to describe a fairly well known football team to many of you, and after I'm finished describing them, see if you can guess what team it is! The answer is below. (Sorry, other than recommending you go print my NBA Preview post and spend a couple hours on the crapper, this is the best I can do to distract you from work right now.)

1. In his most recent job before becoming a head coach, this team's head coach was an offensive coordinator under a future NFL Hall of Famer.
2. The embattled coach is on a bit of a hot seat and probably needs to play a meaningful game in January to keep his job.
3. The team has had literally almost every game down to the last minute this season.
4. Two of their losses were in the final minute, complete with excruciating goal line drama.
5. This team's quarterback is finally putting up numbers in his third year with the team ... like silly numbers.
6. The team has arguably the best wide receiver in football, and one of the best tight ends.
7. The team has serious trouble running the ball sometimes despite a very talented starting tailback.
8. The defense has been suspect at times, but the run defense has been nails the last few weeks, including recently shutting down the leading rusher in football week before.
9. The most impactful first year player on the team is a difference making linebacker.
10. The secondary has been shuffling different combinations around this year, trying to find an answer, while making some very average quarterbacks look good.
11. The punter's last name is Turk.

Photos by Paul Knight

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Hair Balls traveled to a high school football game this weekend with a native Pennsylvanian to see how high school football in that state matches up against high school football in Texas. We went to Rosenberg to watch a Saturday night match up between the B.F. Terry Rangers and the Bay City Blackcats.

In our first 4-A game of the year, Terry beat a struggling Bay City 17-0 in a fairly uneventful night. But the game was Terry's homecoming and, apart from our first week in Katy, it was the largest home crowd we've seen at a game, surprising for a Saturday night.

We were told that the game play didn't look much different than an average game in Pennsylvania. (It might not mean much, but there are more professional football players from one high school in Pittsburgh than any one high school in Texas. Pennsylvania, however, doesn't crack the Top 10 in professional players per capita, where Texas is ranked ninth.) But, judging from Saturday night's game, there were several areas where things don't match up.

Photos by Monica Fuentes

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The Houston Rockets hosted a party last night at Hotel Icon to celebrate the team's new Red Nation marketing campaign. Other than "alternative jerseys" for this year, the team -- as part of the campaign -- has developed a Bill of Red, "a document passed down from high and now ratified by the House of REDpresentatives."

Hair Balls went to last night's event armed with the bill to see how well the party goers (we think about 200 people showed up) represented the Red Nation. Our analysis:

1. Right to wear RED. Yes, plenty of people wore red. They were mainly the people required to be at the party because they worked for the Rockets, but that was a good portion of the people there. It's tough to say if the players support the Nation yet, because the players that showed up -- Chuck Hayes and Carl Landry -- did not wear red.

​So we're watching the ALCS last night, a couple of days after watching Sunday Night Football on NBC, and it just gets to be too much.

We've had this feeling for a while, but now there's just no getting away from it.

Since when has it been such a goddamn favor for announcers to deign to bring themselves so low as to talk about the sports they're covering?

Joe Buck, Bob Costas, Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, Cris Collinsworth: sports fans these days are being subjected to a parade of TV guys who seem intent on leaving the impression they are soooo freakin' cool that they'd rather be doing anything than talking about the games they're covering.

Whether it's a sly tone of voice indicating "Isn't this silly?" or an outright display of disdain for having to actually talk about something like a sporting event when there are so many Important Things going on that these guys know all about, the Smugness Meter is off the charts these days.

We get it: It's just sports, It's not as important as politics, or as important as making sure everyone realizes you are properly aware of and sneerful about the latest bit of pop-culture idiocy to go viral.

But if you hate the gig so much, why not just leave it?

As you well know if you've been reading our sister blog Rocks Off (and Lord knows you should be), U2 is in town tonight.

The new tour requires something like 90 huge trucks to cart around the massive stage they use so as not to detract from the quiet beauty of their ballads. Or to keep the people in the cheap seats entertained, we're not sure.

At any rate, it's the biggest show at Reliant Stadium since Wrestlemania 25 came to town, unless you count the Texans' implosion against Jacksonville.

Wrestlemania knows how to put on a gargantuan, raucous show just as well as U2. But how do they compare? Thank God it's Wednesday, which means it's time for the Midweek Match-Up, where life's mysteries are reduced to convenient chart form.

Photos by Paul Knight / Click here for a full slideshow

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Hair Balls watched a game about a month ago between two old HISD rivals, and we noticed that the stands were a little empty and the game play was a little soft. We found an old Madison coach, Richard Blair, who told us that he thought Houston high school teams have been watered down while suburban schools -- particularly in Fort Bend County -- have grown.

So this weekend we decided to check out the best Fort Bend has to offer, the Hightower Hurricanes. Unfortunately, Hightower played perhaps the worst Fort Bend team, the Dulles Vikings. Hightower dominated, leading 35-0 at halftime and winning the game 38-12. But seeing Hightower play was worth the trip, and the school's band and drill team put on a great halftime performance.

So now we've seen games between teams from the Fort Bend, Houston, Katy, Spring and Spring Branch school districts, and with the season about half way finished, we decided to offer our take on the best these districts have to offer.
 

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Since Hair Balls started covering high school football, we've been itching to check out a six-man game, because after all, the supposedly big-time games in recent weeks have been somewhat of a letdown. But on Friday night, we found a true football mecca: the Rosehill Christian School.

Along a tree-lined, two-lane blacktop road that winds across the northern part of Harris County -- just outside Tomball -- past a Dollar General store and RV-parts store, past gas stations where gas is $2.13 a gallon, the Rosehill campus lights up out of nowhere. With its sprawling green areas surrounding a glassy retention pond in front of the school, the campus resembles a small-scale version of one of the mega-churches that have popped up along highways in the suburbs.

And the school is on the up. For example, when Hair Balls called Rosehill to find out where, exactly, the football game would be played, the receptionist told us, "On the athletic field, behind the gym, where all the cars are parked." She added, "We got lights. Wooo-hooo!"

Not bad for a school that's not even ten years old.

Photo courtesy KGOW

​A lot of local sports bloggers don't particularly like Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle; they think he tends to belittle their opinions and professionalism.

So a few of them cackled a bit recently over some postings about the Texans' Dunta Robinson, who got fined for wearing shoes with "Pay Me" written on them during a game.

On September 16, Alan Burge of the Examiner website wrote this:

Let's see ... doing the math to put it into a monetary perspective that most of us can understand, a $25,000 fine for someone making $9.96 million per year is the equivalent of $188 bucks for those who make $75,000 per year. Feel better now?

Two days later, Justice wrote this:

If you're out there doing the 9-to-5 thing, fighting traffic, trying to make ends meet and proud to be pulling down $75,000, that fine would be the equivalent of your boss docking you $188. That's not even enough money to take your family to a game at Reliant Stadium.

Photos by Liana Lopez

Photo courtesy UH

​Mack Rhoades has been on the job as the University of Houston athletic director for a little over five weeks. He's settling in. He's meeting his coaches and the support staff. He's meeting the players. He's touring the facilities.

And he's been thinking and analyzing and trying to work up a plan that will take a sports program that has long been absent from the national stage and turn it, once again, into a national program. It's going to take a lot of work.

"We want to build a program, not winning sports teams, but a winning program, so that we can win consistently," he said in an interview in his office last week.

The program building starts with infrastructure, particularly the infrastructure of the two aging facilities known as Robertson Stadium and Hofheinz Pavilion. For the school to compete on a national level -- Conference USA and the major conferences -- the school needs to level the playing field.

Photo by Paul Knight

Hair Balls traveled west of Houston this weekend to check out the Memorial High School Mustangs play the Westfield High School Mustangs. We chose Saturday's game because we were told that these two schools couldn't be more different. Memorial = ritzy. Westfield = eclectic.

The game also gave us our first opportunity to check out Spring Branch ISD's Tully Stadium, and our first question is, Why?, because only about 17 people showed up to watch the game. Actually, it was probably a decent-sized crowd, even if the bands and drill teams made up about 50 percent of attendance, but the enormous Tully looked and felt empty.

To be fair, a couple fans and a cop told us that on Fridays, more people come to the games, but even on Saturday, you'd expect a high school game to have a bit of electricity. These fans cheered, but it sounded more like parents clapping for their kids in the school play.

Photo by William Holtkamp

​According to the Houston Chronicle, Texans defensive back Dunta Robinson was fined by the team for wearing shoes that had the words "Pay Me Rick" written on them. This was part of Robinson voicing his continued displeasure at the Texans for not paying him what he thinks he is worth. The fine, according to the Chron, is for "conduct detrimental to the team."

Now if the Texans are fining people for conduct detrimental to the team, then the team should have made a lot of cash after that debacle against the Jets. For instance, here at Hair Balls, we learned (i.e., we made it up) that the following fines were leveled against various parties for "conduct detrimental to the team."

1. Gary Kubiak: For impersonating a head coach.

2. The Reliant Stadium groundskeepers: For causing Matt Schaub to injure an ankle by painting white lines on the field for him to step on.

3. Kyle Shanahan: For failing to devise a coherent offensive game plan as part of his offensive coordinator duties. However, his play-calling was offensive, so the fine is reduced on that account.

Photo courtesy UH

​"Everything just slowed down. It was in slow motion," Houston Cougar running back Bryce Beall told Hair Balls yesterday. "I just told myself, whatever you do, do not drop this ball. When it got in there I just made sure I grabbed it and held on tight and took it to the ground."

The ball was a pass from the hand of teammate Case Keenum that was deflected in the air by a defender from Oklahoma State. It was fourth-and-goal for the Cougars, there was a little over six minutes left in the game, and the Cougars were losing. Then there was a football that was seemingly hanging in mid-air in the middle of the end zone, and the only person in a position to catch the ball was Beall.

"I just kept telling myself you've got a chance to make a play. Whatever you do, do not drop this ball."

And make the play Beall did, putting the Cougars up 38-35 over the heavily-favored Oklahoma State Cowboys. Moments later, Cougar cornerback Jamal Robinson intercepted a Zac Robinson pass and waltzed into the end zone, clinching for the Cougars a 45-35 win that would move them into the top 25 of the AP Football rankings for the first time since 1991.

Photo by Danny Lopez

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Soccer fans in Houston have three main choices for watching the Dynamo play on the road -- the official watch party or one of the viewing parties held by the two fan clubs: the Texian Army or El Battallon.

What's a fan to do? We're here to help. We're going to rate and review each of the parties, using the best evidence available, or whatever else we come up with. Today: The official viewing party.

Some of the fondest memories I have of my dad are the times we spent together at the local watering hole. Not as an adult, but as a kid, we'd go to watch boxing fights or soccer matches that were on pay-per-view or closed circuit television (of course, we'd go to bars that favored our team).

He'd have a Miller Lite, I'd have a root beer; he'd watch the game, I'd watch the waitresses. All-in-all, we had some great times.

During road games, the Houston Dynamo hold viewing parties so other dads can take their boys out for some father-son time. The Dynamo throw their family-friendly soirees at local Hooter's restaurants around the Houston area (hmmm). And emceeing the event is the Dynamo Street Team.

Photo courtesy houstondynamo.com

​The Houston Dynamo are in the business of importing forwards these days. Currently, they employ forwards from the African nations of Ghana and Sierra Leone, and even their U.S. International hails from the far off island of Hawaii.

The Dynamo's newest signee, forward Luis Angel Landin, comes from just south of the border. Team owner Oscar De La Hoya has apparently made good on his promise to bring a Mexican national to the Dynamo. I guess the Dynamo don't buy American.

The Dynamo first set their eyes on the futbol player when he was a member of Mexican club Pachuca. Pachuca eliminated Houston in the semifinal round of the 2007 CONCACAF Champions Cup. It was then that Dynamo head coach Dominic Kinnear got a glimpse of Landin's talents.

"He's good in front of goal, good two feet, decent balance, all-in-all good forward," the Dynamo boss tells Hair Balls.

​TP-ing the dean's house, frat brothers hazing pledges, people getting some strange after the football team's upset victory. These are some of the most sacred and time-honored college traditions, and Houston Community College would like its pupils to live them.

Now HCC can't guarantee that you'll get paddled by the Kappa Omega Kappa boys. They won't even guarantee that you'll get lucky. They do, however, hope to provide students with that huge upset victory.

How? HCC is looking into creating an athletics program. Currently, the six member colleges host their own intramural and club-level sports. A little known fact, however, is that HCC is a member of the National Junior College Athletics Association. With that membership, HCC could develop intercollegiate sports programs to compete in Region 14.

"I think within the next two to three years, we will be a member of that conference," said Dr. William Harmon, president of HCC Central College. "The problem is that we need someone to coordinate all of these activities, not only for intramurals and club sports, but someone who would be responsible for the development of athletics. So we would need someone, who for lack of a better title, who would be an athletics director."

Photo by William Holtkamp

​Stop me if you've heard this one before.

"We obviously weren't ready to play and that starts with me," Gary Kubiak said Sunday. "You play that poorly, that starts with the coach. I didn't have them ready to go."

Yeah, that sounds pretty damn familiar to me. Take any Houston Texans loss since Gary Kubiak has been coach, especially a loss where the team looked bad -- particularly Pittsburgh and Oakland last season -- and you'll see where Gary Kubiak has made much the same statement. It's all his fault. He didn't have his team ready to go.

It makes you wonder just what it is that Kubiak does during the week. Hell, it makes you wonder just what it is that Kubiak has been doing since this season's schedule came out. It shouldn't take a genius to figure out the New York Jets, the team with last season's leading rusher in the AFC, Thomas Jones, would try running the football. Especially since the Jets were starting a rookie quarterback. Yet the Texans ended up not being able to stop the run. And seeing as how Mark Sanchez was a rookie, you might also have thought that the Texans defense would try to mix things up a bit and throw some different looks at Sanchez. But the Texans just seemed to go with basic vanilla looks that Sanchez was easily able to dissect.  

Yes, Frank Bush is the defensive coordinator. And he's supposedly the one making the calls on the defense. But he was hired by Kubiak to implement Kubiak's preferred defensive plan. And if that's Kubiak's preferred defensive plan, then the Texans are in trouble.  

​I admit, there will be Tuesday mornings when it will be difficult to write this item each week. Luckily, today isn't one of them.

In Week Two of the college-football season, Notre Dame continued effortlessly along its well-planned path to the BCS title, while UT stumbled badly.

It remains to be seen if the Longhorns can recover from this week's debacle. Once again, we offer five reasons why ND will be a champion and UT won't.

1. UT struggled mightily against Wyoming. Wyoming! Or it might have been Montana. Whichever team has the bucking cowboy on its helmets. For more than 20 minutes -- all of the first quarter and almost half of the second -- the Longhorns could manage a meager single field goal against a pathetic Wyoming team. The halftime score was 13-10, for crying out loud. (In UT's defense, they were ahead.) We think even Louisiana-Monroe could hang more than 13 points on Wyoming in a half.

2. Notre Dame, on the other hand, took the winningest team in NCAA football history down to the wire. In their stadium, no less. No team has won more games than Michigan, and the Big House holds 110,000 or so screaming fans, making it the most hostile environment in Ann Arbor. Despite such daunting odds, the Irish led at times until several questionable calls -- by Big Ten officials -- finally allowed the Wolverines to escape with a victory. That's the kind of thing that gets noticed in the polls.

Photo by Paul Knight

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Hair Balls traveled to HISD's Barnett Stadium on Friday to check out the James Madison Marlins play the Jake Yates Lions, a refreshing change of pace from last week's Battle of the Super Suburbs.

Madison and Yates are apparently old rivals, and we went to the game with high expectations. But after walking around the stadium that stayed fairly quiet and empty through the first couple of quarters, we started wondering, What happened to the Madison/Yates rivalry?

"The names -- Yates versus Madison -- still bring some people out," Tony Gatlin, who graduated from Madison in 1985, told Hair Balls. "But it doesn't really compare. The games back then really meant something to us, the players, and the schools."

​In all of three hours, the hot topic of the 2009 Texans season might have transitioned from whether they can make the playoffs to whether they can lure Bill Cowher, Mike Shanahan or Jon Gruden as head coach come January.

Remember the Texans' dynamic offense? The league's third-best unit a year ago couldn't score a single point against a New York defense that ranked 16th in the league in 2008.

Remember the Texans' "new and improved" defense -- the one that added first- and second-round draft picks Brian Cushing and Connor Barwin, along with the signing of Antonio Smith at defensive end? It was shredded for 462 yards and 24 points by a rookie QB (Mark Sanchez) making his first-ever start, on the road.

It's not as if the Jets' supporting cast is extremely talented, either -- it's largely the same group that ranked 16th in the NFL in offense.

As a result, it'd be difficult to find a more embarrassing performance in Texans history than the 24-7 loss to the Jets on Sunday at Reliant Stadium -- one that brought choruses of boos before even the first half had ended.

Photo courtesy UH

​"If we play as good as we can play," Houston Cougars head coach Kevin Sumlin said last week, "I think everybody will be happy."

Saturday, the Houston Cougars played as good as they could play, and they pulled off the upset of the college football weekend, defeating the then fifth-ranked Oklahoma State Cowboys by the score of 45-35.

Junior quarterback Case Keenum seemed to treat the Oklahoma State defense like a cat treats a mouse, playing with his various toys and just doing whatever he wanted as he was 32-for-46 for 366 yards and three touchdowns. He also ran for another touchdown, and he appeared to be in total command the entire game.

Photo courtesy EDSBS

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Not to be outdone, someone sent in this bit of Texana. It's no photoshop; our check of a license-plate database shows it belongs to the Darby family of Tuscula, Texas (pop. 715!! And the place Colt McCoy went to high school!).

We've called them, but haven't heard back. We've also called DPS to see if they realize what they have wrought, but they, too, have chosen to ignore us.

The dead birds are a nice touch, though.

​I can't put it off any longer. The Texans season starts on Sunday. So I guess I better get my act together and get my thoughts about the upcoming season on the record before kickoff. So here goes.

1. Some good news: The offense returns many of the key players that made the offense the third best in the NFL in yards per game at 382.1.

2. Some bad news: The offense returns many of the key players that made the offense reek when it came to scoring actual points as the team was only 17th in scoring (22.9 points per game) and was able to get a TD only 45.9 percent of the time when in the red zone.

3. Some more good news: Matt Schaub is back at quarterback, and the team does seem to respond well to him when he's in the game. He's good at finding all of his receivers and keeping them all in the game, which helps to keep the defense off-balance.

4. Some bad news: Matt Schaub is back at quarterback. This guy is so brittle that he hurt his ankle running out of bounds and when he was touched by nobody. The guy has missed 10 games in his two years in Houston, and there's nothing to indicate that he'll be able to make it through all 16 games this season.

​The NFL season opens tonight. We've already given you our astute and accurate take on the Houston Texans. (9-7, if you must know.) But what about the rest of the league? Do you actually want to sit through all the games, or learn what will happen in the next few grafs?

We thought so.

So here is how the season will shake out.

AFC South -- Peyton Manning learns what life is like on the downside of your career. It involves many sacks, or throwing the ball to the stands in order to avoid a sack. It also involves much scowling at your offensive line as you wonder where all the good guys went. Unfortunately for the Texans, it also still involves a division championship. Among other teams, Leonard Nimoy's Unsolved Mysteries series is revived, with the opening episode titled In Search of Vince Young's Career.

AFC North -- There are, you might be surprised to learn, four teams in this division. Only two matter, though, and Baltimore and Pittsburgh will engage in a series of 10-6 games in which the TD is a pick-six. We're going to go with Baltimore this year.

​I've read that there are companies out there that employ people who do nothing but Quality Control. These people are supposed to make sure that the best product comes out while catching the errors. I'm not sure if Drayton McLane has such a person working for the Astros, but if he does, that person must be somehow related to Creed Bratton because there's just no other way to explain some of the things to have happened to the Astros over the past several years.

After all, would a real person in charge of Quality Control allow the Astros to trade for Miguel Tejada on the day before The Mitchell Report was due to be released, especially one knowing of all of the rumors surrounding Tejada?

Would a Quality Control person allow for such a trade without first verifying all of the information surrounding Tejada, especially the basic stuff? Like his age?

And what decent Quality Control person would sign off on the contracts for Kaz Matsui, Mike Hampton, and Russ Ortiz -- that old risk/reward balancing thing would definitely come out on the risk side. And what about that whole fiasco with Shaun Chacon? Did anybody bother to look into the guy's history and ask just why it was he'd been with so many teams?

Then there's the latest. As discovered by The Astros Dugout's Lisa Gray yesterday, the Astros have quietly changed the birth date of reliever Jose Valverde so that he, too, is older than what the Astros have chose to allow the fans to believe -- Brian McTaggart with MLB.com got Ed Wade to confirm this, and Wade made it sound like this was just a simple paperwork error.