Unless you've had the good luck not to suffer through Milto Hamilton's constant plugging of sponsors through the airwaves, you're probably well-familiar with the Landry's Crawford Boxes at Minutemaid Park. They're named after a chain of overpriced local restaurants and the street that Minutemaid Park clogs like Louie Anderson's coronary arteries every so often.
The Crawford Boxes sit atop one of those charming manual scoreboards that are worth a good long day in the ER when someone flops over the railing or a fly ball lures an outfielder to make smacky-smacky with the wall.
Hey, at least Wrigley's got ivy over their brick.
The Crawford Boxes give you an excellent view of the field as well as a great place to hear the cannon-boom when a home run is scored.
They're also unusually close in, providing a 315-foot left field corner foul pole and not much more than that at its right end, where the oddball shape of the field helps singles turn into doubles, doubles into triples, and triples into happy little dwarves who sing all day as they work in the diamond mines.
They also make fly balls turn into home runs that, in other parks, are an easy out. Look at MLB.com spray charts for the Astros, and you'll find a buttload of "h" there for right-handed batters.
Case-in-point, last night's last dinger of the evening. Number ten in the program but number two in your hearts, Jose Vizcaino went the whole season without a long ball this year. Jose's one of my favorite MLB players, a utility man who can cover any positition on the club but Vice President of Marketing (I bet he'd be a whiz once he gets an MBA and a language tutor, though). He's a darn good shortstop, an excellent base stealer, and a role model for the younger players.
And now, he's got a home run this year. Thanks to those Crawford boxes.
Seat 1, Row 1, Section 100. Just. Barely. Over. The. Wall.
I watched that ball come in from four rows back. I know that Vizzy's not a power hitter, and by all rights this man shouldn't have anything but a goose-egg by that HR stat.
Oh well.
Speaking of balls flying around the Crawford Boxes, the Landry's Chicks come by every inning to harass us and make us perform like circus monkeys to their delight. They hold up WAVE signs and "GET LOUD" signs. When we, the public, dance to their tune, they give us presents.
And, like any other day in Crawford Boxville, they were tossing toys around once again. This time, they were bottle openers, koozies, and baseballs.
Sometimes, they toss magnets. Or stuffed stripey fishy toys. No stuffed stripey toy fish that Nardo might like. Darn.
When the Chicks tossed a baseball to me, I felt it and realized that Nardo wouldn't want it as a toy.
So I gave it to the nice elderly couple next to us that I'd casually reached my left arm across to snag the ball. It was theirs by rights, anyway, and I'm sure they'd get more fun out of it than Nardo would.
Bob got a bottle opener. He offered it as a gift, but Nardo doesn't like bottle openers, and my wife drinks Miller Lite from cans.
That's my thoughts on one small, weird piece of this city. Maybe if the entire city were just like the Crawford Boxes, only bigger, or maybe evn the world just like it... things would be... would be...
Pretty damn insane.
I guess a Crawford Boxes-sized Crawford Boxes are more than enough for this world.