Milo: He's baaaack

​In sandlot football growing up, we always had a saying after touchdowns that "losers walk," meaning the team that scored stays at that end of he field to kick off and the "losers" on defense have to march to the other end of the field to receive.

So it's probably appropriate that, due to the NBA calling a presser to announce the 2013 NBA All-Star Game's coming to Houston, the Astros had their scheduled lunchtime news conference today moved at the last second to a 10 a.m. brunch instead.

While the Rockets have been no great shakes lately, they haven't come close to the recent futility of the Astros. So in the battle of dueling pressers, the Astros had to move things to 10 a.m. Losers walk.

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​Fresh off its Friday afternoon debut performance, the Josh Hamilton Redemption Tour made its second appearance on Friday night inside Katy's Merrell Center. And if Nolan Ryan and/or Jon Daniels were paying attention to anything said, then they should seriously be thinking about just how much money, if any, they want to invest in Hamilton once his contract expires after the upcoming season.

It needs to be said that Josh Hamilton probably didn't have to make his appearance on Friday night. He was booked for KSBJ's "Born To Be Wild: The Man Journey Featuring Josh Hamilton" way before his most recent adventures with alcohol last Monday. And while the event, featuring a bad comic and a Christian rock band, was billed around Hamilton discussing how God has helped him navigate the evils of drugs and alcohol, it would have been understandable if he were to have bailed on the event while getting a better grip on his own personal demons.

But after making an appearance before the Metroplex media on Friday afternoon -- an event he likened to the Rangers signing of Yu Darvish -- Hamilton, with special guest Lance Berkman, stepped out before an adoring crowd of boys and men and kind of spoke about his problems while touting God.

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Hey Jim, while you're listening to fan suggestions, how about retiring J.R.'s jersey already?

​The word from on-high came earlier this week when the Houston Astros announced that Jim Crane had heard the voice of the fans and thus would not be changing the team's name. It's nice that Crane paid some attention to the people who buy tickets (though it does seem strange to see how many people complained, since it seems like everything I read said that people would no longer follow the team because it was being moved to the American League).

So since Crane's paying attention to the fans, here are a few more things he can do that should win over most of the baseball fans in the city.

20. Bulldoze Tal's Hill. And take that stupid choo-choo train with it.

19. You've said you're considering this, but just to reiterate, get rid of those ugly, boring, ugly uniforms the team's been wearing since 2000. The preferred option is to return to the classic late-1960s shooting star with dark blue caps and orange trim. Think of all of the cash you'll make with people buying the new merchandise.

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The Houston Hutts?

​Yesterday afternoon, Astros owner Jim Crane built up more good will with the Houston community in about eight minutes than the team on the field has in the last six years when he announced that the 2012 season will feature cheaper beer ($5 beers!), cheaper tickets and permission to bring your own food and water to the games.

However, before the cheers could even die down, Crane was asked about the possibility of the team changing its name from "Astros" to something else, and much to the chagrin of longtime fans of the team, he actually left that possibility open.

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Let's go back to the future and make these the new uniforms.

​I've written a lot of snark about Jim Crane in the months since he purchased the Astros. And let's be honest, I'll probably have a lot more snark in the days, months and years ahead. But let's be more honest, there's a lot that Crane has done with this team since assuming full control of the franchise that, as a Houston Astros fan, I'm very, very happy about.

I like what I've seen of Crane's philosophy, and it's something I've been advocating for this franchise for years. He knows that this squad is in sad shape. That it has gone about as low down as it can go. That it's going to take some time before the Astros are competitive again. That this is something that can't be fixed by throwing a lot of dollars at the likes of Prince Fielder (or Jack Cust).

The Astros yesterday announced a number of items which they're hoping will regenerate some interest in the franchise. No, they didn't announce any big free agent signings. They didn't name a new manager, or announce that they were bulldozing Tal's Hill. But they did announce some rather significant things.

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Yep, we're still stuck with this bozo.

​In case you missed the news last week, Bud Selig's contract to be the commissioner of Major League Baseball has been extended another two years -- this coming after Selig had announced several years ago that he was retiring at the end of his current contract, which in turn followed up on Selig having said way back when that he would retire at the end of his original contract.

This move was met with much acclaim by the baseball establishment, with many people saying he's the best commissioner the sport's ever had. There's some validity to this argument, of course. Attendance is at an all-time high. There hasn't been a work stoppage since the 1994 season.

Playoffs have been successfully expanded, 20 teams have brand-new taxpayer-funded palaces. And the launch of the MLB Network was one of the most successful launches of a professional sports television network ever -- the NFL Network, which has been around a lot longer, still has nowhere near the cable penetration of the MLB Network.

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Garth Boggs

​We interrupt your Texans-versus-Ravens coverage for some drunken quasi-karaoke video!

Let's face it, there's only so many different angles you can take with analysis of a football game over the course of seven days. I'm a little Texan-ed out at this point, and besides, I won't have anything more intelligent to say about the game at this point than Ben DuBose's stellar recipe for an upset from earlier today on this blog.

So let's head into the weekend on a high note (no pun intended) with Wade Boggs channeling Garth Brooks at some outdoor bar in the Florida Keys!

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A warm welcome

​The new minor league baseball team the Sugar Land Skeeters got a nice introduction to their hometown over the New Year's weekend when thieves broke into the stadium the team is building and stole $24,000 worth of copper.

Life in the big city, fellas.

Fox 26 reports that 46 copper reels went missing from Constellation Field sometime the night of December 30.

The thieves forced their way into a third-floor storage room to do the deed, which seems to imply that they knew where the stuff was stored, since it wasn't just lying around.

There's no security-cam footage, but police are trying to track down the perps.

2011: Penn State's horrible year

​You know how, in the series 24, the way a season unfolds? How just when you think there has been some sort of resolution to the bad guys being bottled up, right then and there a new (often worse) layer is introduced, and ultimately in like Hour 22 Jack Bauer winds up face to face with some nemesis who is the axis of all evil in the universe?

Well that was 2011 in sports. Jim Tressel, Will Lyles, Nevin Shapiro -- they came and went, and it felt like they were under control or even put to bed at some point during the year.

Then came the nuclear bomb -- Jerry Sandusky.

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​So let's continue our look back at the sporting year that was 2011 by taking a look at the Top 25 events to happen to the Houston Astros.

1. They finished with the worst record in team history, which was quite the accomplishment seeing as how the Astros were pretty damn bad for most of the 1970s.

2. It wasn't all bad. Drayton McLane finally found a sucker buyer for the team.

3. Of course, Drayton announced in May that the team was sold but the sale wasn't actually approved until November.

4. That long approval time had a bit to do with Jim Crane being a kind of rotten individual who paid out some large fines to the EEOC and to the Justice Department for items like discrimination, sexism and war profiteering.

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