A Night in AAA-Minor

Tonight the batters' lightning didn't strike for the Astros' farm team like it did for the big league club yesterday. The Round Rock Express launched their first season in Triple-A ball, that level of launch and landing pad for major leaguers coming up or falling back. Minor-league baseball has been in the Austin area since 2000 at the fine Dell Diamond ballpark at left, but this is the first year we get to watch the prospects and players on the way to the Show, or hoping to get a leg back up.

The Express outfield actually fielded more major-league seasons of experience tonight than the Astros started yesterday in their outfield. That would indicate these guys might be on their way down, rather than up. The player introductions, which seemed to go on forever, included plenty of details about which major-league clubs each Express player had played on during seasons past. The local paper noted a typical example of an up-again, down-again player, Trenidad Hubbard:

The oldest player on the team, Hubbard was drafted by Houston in 1986, when teammate Taylor Buchholz was 4. Hubbard has played for 17 minor-league teams, six major-league teams, and one Mexican team. The center fielder showed he's still got it; in Round Rock's exhibition against Houston, he threw out Willy Taveras at home plate.

The movie Bull Durham is the best film to describe life in the minors, where people like the Durham Bulls' Crash Davis have "been to the Show" before returning to the bushes, still hoping to get back. But you have to hustle to get to the show. If you don't you could get an earful like this (click on the console to play the clip):

We sat, Abby and I, and Ron Wilcox and his wife Sue, along the first base-side, just like at the Astros game. But our $11 tickets got us a hundred feet closer to the action on the field. Triple-A is the best value in baseball: Major-league talent at minor-league prices. Everybody on the field is just one phone call away from the big bucks of the big leagues. Or a spiral down, of course. One Express worker grinned when we talked about the AAA upgrade the team has gotten. "Yeah," she said, "this year we don't have to sell them on the AA-level player: 'No drunks coming down from the majors, folks. Just kids moving up.' "

Tonight the game began like the Astros's win did yesterday, becoming a 1-0 squeaker that Round Rock led after five innings. The Express' Ezequiel Astacio had allowed only three base runners, but in the sixth he collapsed, giving up a homer, a double and two singles that were all hit at the right times in the right places. Omaha's Royals batted around and the Express lost its sixth straight home opener. (Last year's Double-A team, relocated as the Corpus Christi Hooks, did no better, losing to a walkoff homer down in San Antonio.) The Express had its chances, but couldn't put the hits together.

The Austin area might be honing its taste for baseball. The facility is first-rate, as good or better than lots of major league parks, but on a smaller scale. (Hey, Minute Maid Park in Houston didn't even have cup holders for its first three seasons. It's not about the baseball, but the beverages!) But tonight's opener only drew 9,620 -- the Dell Diamond holds more than 11,000 -- and lots of those seats were empty after the pitching meltdown. The Express is going to a run-challenged team this year, by the scouts' accounts. They managed eight hits but only the one run. Like the Spurs, they have to survive on their defense.