A Message to the Houston Astros: Please Shut Up!

For those of you who were living under a rock at the end of last week, Hurricane Ike ravaged a good chunk of Texas and parts of Louisiana when it made landfall. A Category Two storm, it brought flooding rains, high winds, and storm surges that overwhelmed sea walls in Galveston.

With all of this going on, the Houston Astros and Chicago Cubs pondered the fate of their weekend series, while Astros’ ownership and MLB dragged their feet.

The games ended up being scheduled for Sunday and Monday at Miller Park in Milwaukee. Immediately, the complaining began.

Cecil Cooper, the manager of the Astros, talked to Bud Selig about the situation, expressing his unhappiness that the series had to be played in Milwaukee. “I told him how frustrated I was at the situation”, he told mlb.com.

The manager wasn’t alone in his frustration. The players were obviously dissatisfied, wearing their road jerseys and using the visitor’s clubhouse at Miller Park in a protest that no one would acknowledge. They claimed it was a matter of convenience. I bet.

There were more than just non-verbal statements about the team’s sentiment. The players made it perfectly clear in media interviews.

“I can’t believe our home fans would cheer that lustfully for the Cubs”, Lance Berkman quipped. “I said ‘wait a minute. Why are our fans cheering for the Cubs?’”

Berkman also chided the higher-ups in baseball for making a decision based on more financial concerns. “I know the owners are trying to make money and that’s what they’re in this business for. Certainly, there’s going to be a much better gate here than there would be in more of a neutral site. I think that had something to do with it”, he told mlb.com.

Brad Ausmus moaned, “We came all the way up here to play in their backyard. I think that should be considered when you’re talking about competitive integrity and a neutral site.”

Mark Loretta complained that the fans were too hostile toward the Houston players. “They really didn’t seem to take into consideration our circumstances.”

With all of this being said, I have one thing to say to the Houston Astros players:

Shut up and play baseball.

Now, I am willing to grant that they were playing under some very unusual and difficult circumstances. Getting re-located because of a hurricane is never easy, and the players shouldn’t have been expected to be chipper. However, this does not give them an excuse for grousing about financial concerns and a lack of home-field advantage.

It sucks, but not one player came out and said, "Yeah, we have it rough in terms of baseball, but we realize that we flew here on a private jet and are getting paid to play a game we love, and meanwhile people are suffering back in Houston. We are playing for them."

No, instead we got complaints and uniform protests and a general sense of the Astros playing the victim card.

There is a perception of athletes as pampered brats who are paid to play a game by working stiffs who spend their hard-earned dollars to watch them do it. Fair or not, this stereotype is reinforced by this kind of complaining.

I, for one, am sick of hearing these Houston players say these things, the media run with it, and all the while not one person is saying anything about the real victims in all of this: the people of the Gulf Coast.

Drayton McLane brought this whole situation upon himself by refusing to move the series to Atlanta or Miami when they had the chance on Wednesday or Thursday. He could have flown the team out of Houston to a safe place, family in tow, and played the game at a true neutral site.

But instead, his bone-headed insistence on trying to play the games at Minute Maid Park cost the Astros the opportunity to have their pick of a neutral site.

And yet players like Lance Berkman say that the move was financially motivated. Yes, it sure was. Except that the person most motivated by the money was the owner of the Astros. Bud Selig tried to be reasonable and suggest alternatives, but McLane shut him down completely.

It burns me that none of the Astros players are expressing concern for the people of their city who are suffering right now. Instead, they are acting like petulant little children who were forced to go to grandma’s instead of sitting home and playing video games.

I’ve never been one to buy into the public’s theory of pampered athletes, but situations like this drive me closer to that edge.

This is not to say that I hold Major League Baseball blameless. I think that by them not stepping up on Wednesday with a contingency plan and telling the Astros, “Deal with this. We are playing in Atlanta Saturday and Sunday, and if you don’t like it, too bad,” they did everyone involved a disservice.

The games were not going to get played in Houston no matter what, so it should have fallen squarely on MLB, not a joint effort between Selig and McLane.

And in all of this, there is a bittersweet irony behind all the moaning and groaning. The Astros still got the game receipts. The Cubs fans that they so callously mocked and used as objects of scorn are in reality helping the team put money in the coffers, and the Astros’ treatment of them in this media blitz is unacceptable.

These players and coaches seem to be playing the victim card, wringing their hands in frustration that their home games were taken away from them and given instead to the opposing team.

The fact that they are doing this while others are suffering real tragedies and real losses, losses bigger than the gate receipts to a Sunday matinee against a first-place team, is appalling.

The Astros should be ashamed of themselves, and should instead count their blessings and focus on finishing their season.

Shame on them.