Originally posted by shortcircuit
Are you nuts??? First of all, they didn't even have to move the game at all. There was already one common open day, and they could have played another game (or two) today and not delayed the season a bit, which was Bud's claim that he needed to do, which was a lie. Even you know the advantage to having a home field crowd and Houston was hot as hell at t ...[text shortened]... dent established in the Bay Area earthquake during the World Series. He sold out...period.
I agree in that there was no reason to not play today, and I do hate the way Selig handled the situation, but I don't know why he would try to help the Brewers get in. He has no part in their operations now. Considering the way the Brewers were playing at the time, it looked like they wouldn't get in regardless of what happened with Houston (they weren't the only team behind the Brewers, by the way, the Phillies and Cards were also within a couple of games). The only reason they got in was because the Mets bullpen is awful, and CC is magic.
Milwaukee was the absolute worst place to play those games. Arizona would have been possible as well (I didn't know Arlington didn't have a dome).
I personally don't get the hype behind Zambrano, because he had a lot of bad starts during the year, but Houston was unlucky enough to get him after an injury, so he had like, 20 days rest or some ridiculously high number like that. Even a remotely talented pitcher could do magic with that much time watching Days of Our Lives.
Again, Milwaukee was the absolute worst thing to do with those games, and I don't know why Selig moved them there, but he did, and the season is done. Milwaukee shouldn't be in the playoffs but they are.
Houston was literally hit by the perfect storm of bad circumstance in this case. A stupid league president (Selig screws up a lot), bad timing by whoever leads the Astros, then having to play the Cubs on little sleep. Stupidity in motion all around.
As a lot of people have said about the Mets and other teams that faltered, they should have won more games when they had the chance, so they wouldn't be put into that sort of position. If they hadn't had slumped from April to early August, they'd be in. Not that that excuses Selig.
Wasn't Houston still 2 or 3 games back at that point? I'm pretty sure that was the weekend we (the Crew) got swept by the Phillies, and we were ahead of them by 4 games at the beginning of that series. Not sure if I have my weekends in order here.
PS: I hate the Cubs, and would've been perfectly happy to see you guys beat them twice (we were only like, 4 games behind them for the division league). 🙂