One True Outcome - An Introduction

Well, here's another wordy fanboy moron who wants us all to read his thoughts.

More or less, strawman.

Last summer, my wife and I got married and moved to the greater Houston area. Prior to that, I had spent the first 28 years of my life
in New England, and the first 26 of those in Connecticut. I do not pretend to have been a die-hard Astros fan. I was, like many southern New Englanders, a product of a family of divided loyalties, part-Sox (dad's side), part-Yanks (mom's side). Dad got to me first. And so from Roger Clemens and Mo Vaughn in my elementary school years through Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez in middle and high school and -- to an ironically lesser extent -- through the David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez World Series years in college, I was a classic, underdog-loving Red Sox fan in an era of Yankee dominance.

Then the Red Sox won, and ruined it. It wasn't us against the world anymore. It was the world against us. Combined with the trading of my childhood hero (Garciaparra), which was widely credited with sparking the breaking of the Curse of the Bambino, I had soured in my fandom. And it's not like I lived close enough to go to the games, anyway.

By that point, in 2004, I was already knee-deep in fantasy sports, like every other sports-loving 19-year old American college kid with a stable Internet connection and a less-than-consistent relationship with females. I knew the Moneyball philosophy inside and out before Michael Lewis did. And while all of those sabermetric developments are good for the game and giving us a more accurate understanding of how teams win, engaging with the sport solely through numbers takes you away from true fandom.

People rarely buy tickets to the New York Stock Exchange to see their portfolio in action.

Today, I chuckle when I look at the @astros Twitter mentions and it's a bunch of desk chair general managers from Eugene, Oregon and Rochester, New York asking if Altuve is going to be back in the lineup tonight. I was them once. And while it can be exciting, you aren't actually a fan of the sport of baseball when you do that. It's no different than playing a role-playing or deck-building game with baseball logos on the cards. There's a better way to be a fan.

In the spring of 2014, my wife-to-be and I were living in a small house in Windsor, Vermont. I had four fantasy teams going, merely out of habit at that point. As it was in my childhood home in Connecticut, I was too far from any MLB ballpark to regularly attend games, so fantasy kept me invested in a sport that was a big part of my childhood. (One benefit of fantasy baseball, it must be said: you gradually gain an encyclopedic knowledge of every team's players. I was at Minute Maid the other night, and when Omar Infante came up, I thought to myself "I owned him ten years ago when he was a mostly-failed shortstop prospect on the early Leyland Tigers teams". This is a feature, not a bug).

I then did something that has gotten greater men than me hauled into divorce proceedings: decided I would make a long-term decision on where to raise my family based on proximity to a Major League Baseball team.

We had two dueling columns of criteria: one was the type of stuff you absolutely should consider when deciding where to raise your family: cost of living, crime rates, climate, social culture, etc.
The second column was simply the desirability of the local professional sports market, weighted towards the baseball team. (I am also a basketball fan and a varsity high school basketball coach, but it is not my primary spectator sport.)

My wife and I ended up with four finalists, in order of preference: Houston, Denver, Phoenix and Minneapolis.

I began applying to teach at private schools from all four markets. I was hired surprisingly quickly by a Houston-area private school after a pleasant-enough Skype interview in late April of last year, and with that, our bags were packed. Goodbye Vermont, hello Texas.

Actual photograph from Windsor, VT. Could be December, or May.

Why the importance of baseball to such a life-altering choice? Well, I like baseball. It brings me pleasure. But also, I want my children -- male and/or female -- to have the experience I never had: an in-person connection to baseball played at the highest level. They don't have to love or play the sport themselves, but there are values in the game and the broader experience that I adhere to: patience, tolerance of failure, a balanced, strategic approach to problem solving. There is also tremendous ethnic and cultural diversity within the sport. An infield of Jon Singleton, Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and Jed Lowrie, with Dallas Keuchel throwing to Hank Conger, is a wonderful sociological snapshot. Also, the way fans from different backgrounds come together and find common ground with strangers is healthy. Tribal loyalty, easy as it is to mock in sports as merely rooting for laundry, is a force for good. It generally makes people happier and healthier. Fantasy baseball, on the other hand, is loyalty to one's own mind. I have that in large enough quantities already, to say the least.

So, like a new parent choosing the gender and traits of their child, I chose the Astros. They are my Gattaca. Their forward-thinking front office, collection of young talent, affordably priced downtown ballpark. Heck, the star player who was called up the same week I interviewed to come down here (George Springer) is another Connecticut kid who played at UConn with an ex-classmate of mine. It was too perfect. Plus, I could be stuck rooting for whatever Dave Stewart is doing to the Diamondbacks right now.

So that's the relatively short story of my background. What's this blog going to be?

Well, as a mission statement, it's a detailed, analytical real-time look at the rise of the Astros, as they sit on the doorstep of a sustained playoff contender for the next half-decade, at minimum. A rich, textured look at their rise to the inevitable true outcome (ringz!!) as it happens.

That's nice and all, but how is it any different than what else is out there? A bulleted list:

• One True Outcome is not a news wire. I am not intending to be the umpteenth source to post a blurb "Astros active Marisnick from DL; option Santana". Beat writers are paid to do it, and anyway, nobody needs a blog for that stuff in the age of social media.
• Posts will be lengthy more often than not. It's going to be a wordy blog. I'd rather post 4-6 times per week with something you can really dig into than 15-20 times a week with a blow-by-blow of the Astros transactions, box scores and every trade rumor Ken Rosenthal or Jon Heyman put in a notes column. 
• Along those lines, it probably won't be super "did you see that play Correa made?!?!" emotion-based fandom, at least as far as the posts go. It's not how I consume the game, and again, I think social media and some other blogs do a better job of presenting that angle.
• We'll stick to the Astros/MLB at least 90% of the time, but I reserve the right to go off-topic as I see fit. It won't be often, and obviously nobody is making you click our stuff. Use your discretion.
• I'll be Tweeting during games and randomly from @OTOAstros for those who wish to follow. @OTOAstros follows back, y'all.
• If anyone is interested in contributing, please let me know at OTOastros@gmail.com. Happy to incorporate other voices with thoughtful perspectives.

Thanks. Go 'stros!