Dear Astros: Stop complaining and shut your mouths

Not another word, Houston Astros. Not another word about Bud Selig or that trip to Milwaukee or the injustice of it all. And not another word from your fans or media, either. Shut up -- every single one of you. Shut your stupid mouths.

While the Astros were in Milwaukee two weeks ago playing "home" games against the Chicago Cubs, games that marked beginning of the end of Houston's playoff run, people back home in Texas were dying.

Hugging it out would have been a better option than constant complaining. (AP)

Hurricane Ike tore into Texas like it had a score to settle, leaving 26 Texans dead and tens of thousands homeless. But the Astros, and their fans and their media, have bitched for weeks about that awful, unfair road trip to Milwaukee. After Ike took a chunk out of Minute Maid Park, Selig considered several sites before moving Houston's two-game series with Chicago to Milwaukee. Chicago is just 80 miles away, and those Houston "home" games had a very Wrigley feel, but there were no realistic alternatives, what with threats of rain in Atlanta and Arlington. Milwaukee was dry. Milwaukee was available. Milwaukee was it.

And then Chicago threw one no-hitter and nearly threw another Sept. 14-15, ending the Astros' 14-1 run and starting them on a 2-7 slide out of wild-card contention.

Meanwhile, back in Texas, people were dying. Other people, luckier people, were scrambling to find pets and family photographs and underwear and move to shelters. So stop the bitching about Bud. While 20,000 people in Galveston were homeless, the Astros were flying first-class to Milwaukee and staying in a fabulous hotel.

While most people in Houston were wondering when they could return to work, and schools were closed for weeks -- indeed, some schools are still closed -- the Astros were reporting for duty at the manicured grounds of Miller Park, where they played baseball for more money than most of us can comprehend.

While people in Houston were standing in line for hours for ice or milk or any scrap of food that would get them through another day without power, the Astros were eating five-star room service or nibbling on the free clubhouse spread. Or maybe they were using their $85 daily meals allowance to dine in one of Milwaukee's finer restaurants. That was the dilemma they faced that weekend: How to spend their per diem, or whether to pocket it.

That's not the way the Astros or their fans or their media apologists see it, of course. They see a trip to Milwaukee to play the Cubs as cruel and unusual punishment, as if Houston had no chance to beat Chicago in Milwaukee. Yes, there was the issue of playing those games so soon after Ike ... but dadgum, Astros. Two games had already been postponed. It's mid-September, not mid-May. Are you going to finish the season or not? Yes? Then here's what you can do: Go to Milwaukee and play ball.

What they can't do is walk around the clubhouse in shirts reading, "Bud killed us." Think about the logistics of that. It's not like that shirt existed a month ago. One of the Astros, LaTroy Hawkins, had 60 shirts specially made, then hung one in every locker. Several Astros wore them, because people are sheep, and LaTroy Hawkins is the shepherd.

So while Selig was "killing" the Astros by forcing them to fly first class and sleep in a great bed and eat great meals and play a children's game in a beautiful stadium in Milwaukee, Hurricane Ike was "killing" 61 people around the Southwest and causing more than $30 billion in damage to Texas.

The remnants of Ike tore into the Midwest, snapping trees and leaving millions of us without power, some for a week. It was so bad in Cincinnati that the power company hired off-duty cops to stand guard after blacked-out customers threatened violence.

And really, it wasn't bad here at all. By the time we got Ike, it was a kitty cat compared to the furious tiger that tore into Texas. Two weeks later, a quarter of a million people in Houston are still without running water.

The thing is, the Astros -- and their fans and media -- have been classy about Ike relief. The team has donated $1 million. Outfielder Carlos Lee, himself a rancher, donated $25,000 and 300 bales of hay for local livestock. The media has written great things about these causes. Hundreds if not thousands of fans, I am sure, have given time or money or both.

But that nobility is undermined by the unseemly sniping about Selig. State Sen. John Whitmire told the Houston Chronicle "it is outrageous that Commissioner Selig would have the Houston Astros play in a venue which benefits the Chicago team." Pitcher Doug Brocail said "to make us go up and play at North Wrigley like we had to on no sleep, it was absolutely ridiculous."

Chronicle writers have been just as obtuse. One of them went on ESPN last week and ripped Selig and even other media members who have defended Selig. Another wrote on Saturday, hours before the Astros were officially eliminated, "the Astros would like the cause of death listed on their autopsy report -- if it comes to that -- to be short, if not sweet: commissioner Bud Selig. (Astros owner) Drayton McLane's friend was no friend to the Astros once Hurricane Ike tore through Greater Houston."

Never mind that McLane set the whole Chicago trip in motion by holding out for the regularly scheduled home games on Sept. 12-13, refusing to concede that Ike was coming, and coming hard, and that Minute Maid Park would be unplayable when it was done. McLane wanted his gate receipts, so instead of moving the games to any of a number of feasible neutral options, he held out. He gambled. He lost.

But the blame went to Bud, from players and fans and media, so much so that Selig took out a full-page ad in last Sunday's Chronicle to explain the Milwaukee decision. That was classy, but unnecessary.

Playing the Cubs in Milwaukee because of Ike wasn't "outrageous" or "ridiculous," and it damn sure wasn't an example of baseball "killing" the Astros. So leave out all of that "autopsy" talk.

Look out the window, you idiots. See what Ike did to your city. Then shut the hell up.