With a 9-5 loss to the Kansas City Royals Saturday afternoon in Houston, the Astros brought to a close the 2004 Spring Training slate of games. They finished March and early April with a respectable 14-14-1 record, but ended the schedule with three consecutive losses, each of which was disappointing in various ways.

This afternoon it was, as broadcaster Milo Hamilton correctly pointed out, another bad day on defense that cost the Astros a victory. The offense swung the bats well, banging out fifteen hits against six Royals pitchers, and the Astros staked Wade Miller to a quick 3-0 lead in the first inning after Craig Biggio doubled to LF, Adam Everett stroked an RBI hit that way, and Jeff Bagwell smashed his first home run of the spring the opposite way, to RF; but Houston's defense failed Wade Miller in a big way in a dreadful third inning.

Miller, tuning up for a Friday start in Milwaukee, got two quick outs to open the third, but no middle infielder was around to catch a little pop fly from Matt Stairs that somehow fell in for a hit. From there, Miller lost command of his pitches and command of the game. He gave up a base hit to LCF on 0-2, a double to RF that narrowed the score to 3-1, a two-run single to RCF by Benito Santiago, a base hit to LF, and a crushing, three-run, Crawford Box homer to 3B Mendy Lopez. The inning was a nightmare of endless toil for Miller, who was up well over 80 pitches by the time it ended. We can and should fault Houston's shaky defense for Miller's troubles, but there was one other factor, present throughout the game, that Hamilton did not mention.

The Astros, unlike the Royals, simply did not take full enough advantage of the baserunners they had. At the end of that three-run first, Morgan Ensberg left Lance Berkman at 2B with a fly to RF. Houston scored its fourth run in the fourth off Jimmy Gobble but Jose Vizcaino left the bases loaded with a 1-3 tap out. Vizcaino also left runners at 1B and 3B with a 4-3 groundout to end the sixth. Jason Lane ended the seventh and left runners at 1B and 2B by lining out to LF after Houston had scored to make it 9-5. These four instances of not scoring more runs when they were there to be scored were incidents every bit as big as the failures of Houston's defense, and perhaps bigger. Adam Everett committed two errors Saturday, and it was he who perhpas should have caught the Stairs pop, but only the latter play was actually crucial. Everett's first-inning error cost no runs, and neither did his bad throw to 1B in the fourth with Dan Miceli on the mound for Houston. But those missed opportunites on offense were truly haunting.

Miller lasted only three innings. Miceli, Mike Gallo, Bobby Chouinard, Brad Lidge, Octavio Dotel, and Kirk Bullinger each got an inning of work, with Chouinard getting roughed up for three runs on three hits in the sixth, the key blow being a two-run double to LF by Ken Harvey that Mike Lamb probably should have been able to snag before it got down the line. The hit put the game out of reach for Houston. In effect, it ended their Spring Training, although it should be added that Gallo, Lidge, and Dotel all threw the ball very well for the Astros in their last appearances before the regular season starts.

The end of every Spring Training marks the beginning of the new season to come, and it is my hope that this Spring Training and the season about to unfold will mark another kind of end for Houston baseball history and a new kind of beginning. For much of the past three months, television coverage of the Astros, no matter what the specific content of the given story happens to be, has always ended with this thought: The Astros have never won a playoff series. That is an undeniable fact but, like so many facts, it misses the truth. The Astros of 1980 and 1986 lost playoff series, but they lost gloriously in two of the finest post-season series that have ever been played. As a lifelong fan of Houston baseball, I take immense pride in those series, and it is my deepest hope that these Astros of 2004 will not only add to that proud legacy, but also end forever the bitter experience of defeat that followers of Astros baseball have had to carry with them over some forty seasons, and begin for us a new era, one in which the Astros not only expect to win, but insist upon it as the raison d'etre of the franchise. There is much in Astros history that is deeply honorable, and there is more honor to come for all of us to see this year.

The end of this Spring Training, however, also marks the end of Astroday. This is the last column I will be able to write. I am going to be working on other writing projects over the coming months, and perhaps pursuing a job within the New Orleans city government as well. The list of people I should thank over the past four seasons is long; but, if I may, I will reduce that list to two: my readers, wonderful, supportive people from all over the world, and Ray Kerby who, as the creator of The Astros Daily, has given me tremendous space and the freedom to write whatever I saw fit since the day he invited me to join The Astros Daily in 2002. I offer him my heartfelt thanks.

The Astros belong to everyone, my friends. The new season will soon be yours.

Enjoy it.