So, one of the things I like to do when everyone goes to bed (it is almost 11 pm here but I am a night owl) is watch old baseball games on my TV hooked up to Youtube.

I am watching game 2 of the 1980 NLCS - Philadelphia-Houston, because I have read that it was one of the very greatest postseason series ever.

Game was interesting, Steve Carlton on the mound for the Phillies but without his best stuff. Ken Forsch pitching well for Houston, which made them about even. Phillies won game 1.

I always liked Bill Virdon as a manager, he and Bob Lemon were the only mentally sane Yankees managers over a 20 year period really. Maybe longer.

Anyway, game 2, Nolan Ryan on the mound for Houston, down 2-1 in the 6th (don't tell me who wins).

I never saw this series, as I was in my third year of college, saw only the last game of the 3-game sweep by the Royals of the Yankees while at a bar, missed the rest of the season really. For you young-uns, this was before every student had a TV in their room or the internet.

So one thing that strikes me is that the series LOOKS like a miss-match. Except for Ryan, and Cesar Cedeno, and a Joe Morgan well past his prime, there are no well-known Astros really. I haven't even heard of 3 or 4 of their starting players.

The Phillies are nearly an all-star team by contrast- Rose, Bowa, Schmidt, Maddox, Luzinski, Boone.

Are these Astros remembered as a great Cinderella team? Am I reading back into the history too much? Were these better known players back then?

Anyway, apparently the series of close,hard-fought games is supposed to start in the late innings of this game I think. Looking forward to it.

Astros load the bases top of the 7th, a strike out of, I think Art Howe (he was seen as a big hitter then?) stops them after they tie the score. Then Dave Schmidt strikes out Mike Schmidt with two men on in the bottom of the 7th. Then Tug McGraw comes on to pitch against Joe Morgan to start the 8th, Morgan doubles. Got to love it.

Worst, absolutely WORST announcer team EVER: Keith Jackson who seemed drunk announcing game 1 - he got which team was batting wrong, said incoherent things...Howard Cosell, more interested in talking about the 1950s Pirates and getting cameramen to show the lovely wives of the players watching the game, and Don Drysdale who keeps trying to remind the other two that there is an actual game going on, but whose insights are boring compared with the commentary of Tom Seaver or Jim Palmer in some previous seasons' playoffs and World Series. But at least he takes over the play by play at times when the other two are not paying attention.

I was only 10 at the time, so what I remember more was the Dodgers winning 3 straight the final series of the season against the Astros to force a 1-game playoff ... which they promptly lost.

In looking at the Astros pitching staff, I have to think they were a difficult team to face. You might see a fireballer like Ryan or Richard one day, a knuckleballer like Niekro the next, and a guy like Forsch (who let you put in play) another. Probably hard to get in a rhythm against them, I'd think.

As for their lineup, I mean guys like Cruz and Puhl and Cabell were solid hitters, but I agree they were far from a star-driven team. They must have made the most of the sum of their parts and generally ridden the pitching staff.

This is what I remember about the 1980 Astros.

There was a lot of excitement when they signed nolan ryan, the plan was JR Richard would pitch a first game of a series then Joe Nierko (knukleballer) then nolan Ryan. But when Jr Richard has his stroke it seemed to derail them for a while.

People who were tired of the Dodgers and the reds winning every yea took a liking to them and they really weren't a Cinderella team.

Other tidbits about them Joe Morgan had to change his shoes if he got on base, (rule was passed the next year banning this practice).

Catcher Luis pujols was the first Pujols in the majors.

OF Terry Puhl was the first to have a start-o-matic rating of 1 e0.
They also had a pitcher who did not give up a hit on his card( Forget his name right now)

WIS: If you join a progressive that start in 1980 and you draft JR Richard in the first round and Tom Seaver in the second round a "living breathing commish" will accuse of you being in it for just one season.

And that all I have to say about that.

Yeah as you both point out, the starting pitching was world class, at least until that horrible stroke that hit the brilliant Richard.

I was wondering about Morgan changing his shoes on base. It was kind of funny to see. I have to watch the 75-76 Series again, as I don't remember him doing that back then. I was not insulting the Astros, on the contrary, they seem like an exciting team to watch. Just noting that they were up against a team that at least on paper looked like one for the ages really, and which of course ended up winning it all that year.

But they came close to beating them after dispatching the Dodgers. Anyway, fun series to watch.

Thanks both for the insights and memories.

I am now up to watching the fifth and last game. What a Series !

A few things to notice about it - and if you ave never seen it, go on Youtube and watch it, amazing baseball, and just plain weird sometimes -

Whole species go extinct, continents drift apart, the Ents from the Lord of the Rings finish whole conversations, in the time it take Joe Niekro to throw a pitch.

But the gem he threw - 10 shutout innings of as good a team as the Phillies were in 1980 - in game 3 should be remembered as one of the great postseason performances.

The seven great innings pitched by Vern Ruhle in game 4 got lost in the chaos of that game, but he pitched very well. Steve Carlton was not really Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan has not seemed his best either. Too bad and we never get a straight up match between those two at their best, which would have been history.

There are some all-time greats - the guy with the most hits, ever, one of the best left-handed pitchers of all time, and up to that time maybe the best after Koufax, the guy with the most strikeouts lifetime and the one in fourth place, who was in second place when he retired (Ryan and Carlton), the greatest third baseman of all time, the probably best second baseman of all time (Schmidt and Morgan), plus a cast of characters like Tug McGraw, (too bad Sparky Lyle was hurt for this series, I did not remember the two of them ever beingi n the same bullpen except maybe on one of my teams here), Garry Maddox, as good a fielding center fielder as you could want, Larry Bowa, Jose Cruz, Art Howe, Cesar Cedeno before he got hurt in game two, and two idiosyncratic managers in Dallas Green and Bill Virdon,.

The throw by Leonard in the 9th inning of game 4 cost the Astros the pennant - he threw to third when Pete Rose singled, hoping to catch Lonnie Smith (!!) going to third, allowing Rose to go to second from which he scored the go ahead run. The next batter, Mike Schmidt bounced (Astroturf) one over the pitcher's head, and Joe Morgan (weird to watch Morgan and Rose on two different teams, they were reunited a few years later for another World Series team), looked toward third to try to throw Rose out and by the time he realized his mistake, Schmidt was on first. Had Rose been on first - which he would have been had Leonard thrown to second as we learn in Little League, that is a double play ball, since Morgan takes it right behind the base, had only to step on it and throw Schmidt out to end the inning. The Astros scored what would then have been the winning run in the bottom of the inning to win the NL Pennant, but in this case it only tied the game, sending it to extra innings. Too bad. The Houston fans' enthusiasm for their largely no-name team won me over somehow, as I had the impression of Houston fans as somewhat programmed and not spontaneous, more interested in football than baseball, etc. Perhaps I have read "Ball Four" too often, as Bouton gives this impression about Astrodome crowds.

Heck of a series, can't wait to see what happens next. The best part? All of this is a month before Ronald Reagan got elected. It wasn't too late yet. And the commercials ! The Youtube version is from a Kalamazoo TV station and the commercials make me nostalgic for a sillier, homier, less slick and practiced and decidedly less digital America, though you already see the first signs of it coming in a few ads.