Games: #10 (4/10, vs. Astros, L 2-8); #11 (4/11, vs. Astros, W 7-4); #12 (4/12, vs. Astros, L 7-0).

I was in Houston when Pittsburgh hosted them for the third series of this young season, for their first games after the deflating injury to Oneil Cruz. 

I was in and out of the first game and on a plane for the last game. But the magic happened at the very end of the middle game, and we were all in the right place at the right time.

Apparently the first time Korean teammates had homered in the same game in baseball history, Bae and Choi helped lead the Pirates to a walk off win. We saw it while out at dinner with my mother-in-law’s brother. The game was on at all because the pan-Asian restaurant where we were eating was located in Houston, and the Astros were hosting the Pirates. The game had been a back and forth affair, and it was in the end of the eighth.

This was the same visit that we went to see a minor league baseball game on Easter, at a church after my own heart, the Space Cowboys of Sugar Land Texas hosting the Rangers AAA affiliate from Round Rock. 

How to watch baseball without being bored is a primer in training your mind, is an instance of American meditation in action, is a singular act of resistance against the impact of capitalism on attention. Even as baseball adjusts its rules to make the game more engaging to those of us who watch more TikTok than ESPN, the fundamentals of the game are sound. Throw strikes, hit it where they ain’t, score more runs than the other guys, and other Yogi Berra-level insights. And so we ended up watching the AAA affiliate of the Astros, based in a suburb not far from where my wife grew up, in fact in the very town that most of their family friends—the fancier doctor and engineer types with Indian kids who also became doctors and engineers—lived.

There was an Easter egg hunt after the game. They had us sign waivers. And after the fact, it was clear why. So many crying children, and not a few shouting adults.

The uncle came after dinner the next day, stayed til Saturday, we left on Wednesday. But that was still enough time for me to get roped into an argument with him, at that same dinner, over goodness know what, politics but really his know-it-all-ness.

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