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I'm an Astros fan. Don't tell me about "choking in the playoffs." The 'Stros have never won a single playoff series in their entire history.

I suppose there's another way to look at "choking": Assuming one team choked concurrently assumes the other team wasn't good enough to beat them in the first place. And, something else to ponder: Wouldn't one think a "choker" wouldn't be so quick to return even just next year for further use, misuse, or abuse, never mind the next ten "next years"? There's something to be said for that kind of persistence, even if the Braves - as I observed in my essay - are easy enough to dismiss as the Atlanta Automatons or the ballplayers in the gray flannel suits.

(Put it this way: As Leo Durocher once said of Jackie Robinson was applicable to the whole Brooklyn Dodgers of the late 1940s-early 1950s: He don't come to play. He come to beat you. He come to shove the bat right up your ass. The 1991-02 Atlanta Braves come to shove a suppository up the same orifice, but they can't understand why they have to do the job for you until they're the ones stuck in the men's room in the end.)

I'm still not sure there isn't something unkosher about a club with four potential Hall of Famers on it not cashing in more than one Series or five pennants for a run such as the Braves have had. But there is something staggering enough about a team winning eleven straight titles of any kind. Never been done elsewhere in any game. Not even the New York Yankees or the Montreal Canadiens. And I would not wish to hazard a guess as to which team in which game would get even close to that mark when.

P.S. The Astros' problems in all their postseason roadblocks: lack of bullpen depth. Their division winning teams have had solid lineups, fundamentally sound position play, yeoman starting rotations, workable benches (the 1980 team especially) but if you got past their starters and into the bullpen it was no contest. Still true today, and they have, arguably, a stronger lineup these past few seasons than they had in the 1980s.

Well don't worry about it this season...they ain't getting to the playoffs.

Magic # is 2 now with the Cards and 'Stros playing 3 at Busch this weekend.
It will be nice to see them clinch at home against the 'Stros...lol