Astros Fans
The Chron E-Board endorsed Harris County Treasurer Carla Wyatt’s opponent MAGA candidate Marc Cowart. This is not a surprise to me and should not be a surprise to you. In her interview with the E-Board, Treasurer Wyatt had some head scratching remarks. See this from the E-Board take:
The incumbent has set a low bar.
Since she first took office in 2023, Wyatt has been twice arrested for drunken driving, twice violated bond conditions, and was charged with burglary of a vehicle, though a grand jury declined to indict her.
Most recently she was cited after causing a four-vehicle crash on Interstate 45. Dash camera video of the incident makes it look like she’s an automotive pinball bouncing against cars.
In meeting with the editorial board, she seemed to have no concern about how she was threatening the safety of other drivers on the road or putting herself at risk.
“Car accidents happen every day,” Wyatt said.
She seemed oblivious to all of these criminal charges.
When we asked about the car crash, Wyatt told us: “I haven’t seen what you’re describing.” It felt reminiscent of reports that she once told an officer that she thought she was “in heaven” before being arrested on DWI charges.
Wyatt also told us that, in spite of all of this, she is still getting behind the wheel of her car. That makes us worry for her wellbeing — and everyone else’s.
Overall, she demonstrated an uncanny calm and, admittedly, professional demeanor when talking about her time as treasurer with the editorial board, which felt discordant with her record.
That composure, however, was punctuated with bizarre and defensive claims. For example, she implied that, perhaps, she was only getting in trouble with the law because police were tracking her.
“How do you know where I am?” she said. “Who is following me, and why?”
She also asserted without prompting that she wasn’t stealing funds.
“There’s no embezzlement,” she said. “Nobody’s in shackles for stealing money, and I do not have a stash of money underneath my mattress because I don’t steal money.”
We never said she did.
Here is the entire endorsement read: For Harris County Treasurer: Marc Cowart | Endorsement.
I don’t know what to say, other than I am not surprised. Head scratching for sure.
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My Beatles wall calendars for the month of October have one color photo of the four after they received their Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) medals in October of 1965. The other calendar has the four also from 1965.
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The featured photo of Astros fans heading to the exits early in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series last week is an intro to this story from Chron.com here:
In the first game of the Houston Astros‘ postseason series against the Chicago White Sox, thousands of empty seats greeted fans and TV viewers as Daikin Park hosted an eventual sweep by the road team.
Maybe the 4 p.m. CT start time was a factor, but a three-year attendance decline, along with historical precedent, suggests the problem runs a tad deeper.
In 2023, the Astros had their highest annual attendance since opening the opening of their new ballpark in 2000. One year after winning the 2022 World Series, more than 3 million fans walked through the turnstiles of what was then called Minute Maid Park. That 2023 team saw a 90-win Astros club come just one game short of returning to the World Series.
In the three seasons since, total attendance has fallen by 580,229, or about 19 percent. On average, 7,163 fewer fans are attending per game than in 2023, and the 9.4 percent decline in 2026 is the steepest since 2012, when the Astros were in the midst of a three-year stretch (2011-13) of losing more than 100 games per season.
However, the 2026 campaign’s ending put an exclamation point on an already visible problem. Daikin Park averaged 35,013 fans over the two games between the Astros and White Sox, leaving the venue at just 85 percent capacity during home playoff games.
Here is the entire read: Astros attendance has fallen almost 20% in three years. What happened?
Fan attendance at Daikin Park is not going to get any better in the foreseeable future. Like it or not, we must retool, and that will take longer than the offseason. Fans like to follow a winner and right now, we don’t have that winning culture. That is what it is today.