why lance berkman will always be a houston astro

So Spring Training is upon us again. I'm excited that baseball has returned, even if my Astros are promising to once again be an underwhelming on-the-field product. Last year they achieved both the worst record in the league and the the worst record in franchise history, losing over a hundred games. Things aren't looking up very much for this season, as the team is in full-blown rebuilding mode.

Both the 2011 and 2010 baseball seasons saw my Astros trade away my two favorite players on the team: Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn last season, Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman the year before. This is a new experience for me. Sure, there's been players I loved who I've had to watch go to other teams, but for most of my childhood and young adulthood the Houston Astros revolved around two players who played their whole careers in Houston: Jeff Bagwell (who should be a Hall of Famer by now but isn't) and Craig Biggio (who will almost certainly be elected to the Hall of Fame next year)

Bagwell and Biggio were the Astros for fifteen years. Heck, Bagwell and Biggio still are the Astros to a lot of people and probably always will be the Astros. Their careers are so intertwined with the history of the Houston franchise that the only real debate we can have is which one of the two is the most important player in Astros history - the second, of course, would be the second most important.

For a while, it seemed like Berkman and Oswalt were headed down the same trajectory. The Astros were perennial contenders, they reached their first World Series in 2005, and the future seemed fairly bright.

Then the team got old. Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens left for New York. Bagwell's shoulder finally gave out. Biggio continued to play until 2007 and reached the 3,000 hit milestone but his best years were behind him. And a minor league system that had been neglected and gutted for too long finally stopped producing major league level talent. 2008 was the most recently Houston has been within shouting distance of contention and Hurricane Ike took care of that.

In 2010, the Astros were spiraling downward and news broke that Roy Oswalt had requested a trade. As a fan, this was a jolt to my system. We had lost big names before, to be sure, but none had ever asked to be traded (at least not as far as the public knows). So when Oswalt was finally shipped to the Phillies, I wasn’t sure how to feel. Should I be glad that reality was being embraced and we might be getting some pieces to prepare for the future? Should I be angry that my favorite Astro had betrayed the team by asking for a divorce? Should I just be sad that the franchise had come to this point? I felt a little of all of that.

The much bigger shock came when Berkman got traded. First of all, he was shipped to the Yankees – really, the image of Lance Berkman as a New York Yankee made no sense at all: the loudmouthed wise guy from Texas wearing pinstripes? Come on! But he also got dropped in what appeared to be little more than a salary dump, not a deal for elite prospects. Big Puma deserved better.

The following season, Berkman signed with the St. Louis Cardinals, and the rest is history. He regained All Star form, helped the team reach the playoffs on the last day, and drove in the tying run in Game 6 of the World Series, doing his part for one of the most impressive rallies in MLB history. Now he has one more World Series championship ring than the Astros do as a franchise.

Meanwhile, the most frustrating things about being an Astros fan right now is that the team doesn’t have much of an identity. Who’s our franchise player now: Carlos Lee? Wandy Rodriguez? Maybe even Wesley Wright? For the most part it’s an anonymous squad, and while some of the young guys are bound to make names for themselves, no one has done so yet. Even worse, we’re losing our league identity next season, just to pour salt in an open wound.

I am just now learning how spoiled I was as an Astros fan in the late nineties and early aughts. We had two cornerstone players who both put up the big numbers and played with integrity and professionalism. Berkman was cut from the same cloth, except with a Rice-educated quick wit to accompany his elite level of play.

Sadly, the days of the franchise player are essentially over. This summer Albert Pujols bolted from my nemesis Cardinals to the Angels, and I was surprised at how sad this made me. While I’m glad our rival lost a key player, I’m sad that St. Louis fans don’t get to have the experience of watching their cornerstone player continue his march toward baseball immortality wearing their colors.

Meanwhile, Lance Berkman is currently a St. Louis Cardinal. However, he will always be a Houston Astro.

This isn’t true for every great who left the team. Roy Oswalt? No. Hunter Pence or Michael Bourn? Probably not. Billy Wagner? Andy Pettitte? Jeff Kent? Nope, nope, nope. Roger Clemens? No way in hell.

In spite of his new team affiliation, Berkman didn’t chase the money or price himself out of the pay scale. Berkman didn’t strain his relationship with the media or the fans (or, for that matter, with team management). After winning with St. Louis, he made an appearance in Houston and referred to the Astros as “we,” expressed regret the championship didn’t happened with Houston, and voiced a fan’s opinion toward the abhorrent move to the American League.

With free agency and the valuing of young prospects and all sorts of dynamics shifting the landscape of sports, Lance Berkman may represent the 21st Century version of the “franchise player” – identifying with the team even when forces conspire against playing on it.

And I think sometimes life in general is becoming more like this. I now have friends and family spread out all other the US, and indeed all over the world. While I’d much rather have them close by, I still feel connected and wish them the best in their endeavors. It’s a sad irony that as the world “becomes smaller,” the physical distances between people who care about each other seem to grow greater. Intimacy and depth become and challenge, and new effort must be put into maintaining the friendship.

Lance Berkman is like that distant friend, living in a new city but still one of our own. Best of luck on the rest of your career, Big Puma.