wesleywest

Wrong everything? What kind of purist bullshit is that? How about the dumb assholes that wound shit with 22-250’s cuz their shot was 3/4” off? Plenty of them to go around too. Not talking about Yaga. Just in general. Nothing wrong about shooting whatever caliber you want (obv within reason). Shit’s going to go wrong eventually. It’s those lonely nights driving back to camp after screwing it all up that turn your dumb asshole magnum shooters into good magnum shooters and hunters. The campfire caliber police never fail to respond to a call about ballistics.

Electronic Form 1 times are so quick these days that if you want to SBR a pistol you’d get the stamp in a month.

Yea their bolt guns are awesome. I think they bit off more than they can chew with the MDR but we’ll see. It was billed as a bullpup with none of the issues that make bullpups annoying, yet it has all of those issues. You’re right about the 7.62 recoil. Not fun to shoot.

Sort of a strange pickup. Desert Tech MDR. 300 Blackout with a 16” barrel but cuz it’s a bullpup it’s only 3-4” longer than my 7-8” barreled SBR’s when they have the same silencer on. The MDR has a horrible rep and has undergone numerous fixes so hopefully this one works.

I would just use 300 win mag for everything. People who say “that’s too much caliber for that animal” are weird and annoying. If it’s dead, it’s dead. I’ve killed a shiras moose with the win mag and that was more than fine. As far as guns and optics, there’s just too many to list. Most stuff these days is good and everybody has their favorite. I’m sure people will chime in with specific models and stuff. I’ve got a ton of guns, and all I’ve learned is that they’re all pretty similar. Spending a ton doesn’t really get you much performance, just strokes the ego. if you haven’t already, start putting in for tags and stuff across the West.

Random build. HK416 mg lower, Q 7” 300 Blackout Barrel and Handguard, EXPS3.0, M600DF, Troy Grip, MAWL, Trash Panda.

I have a similar 308 rig (12.5” barrel). Great for animals in Texas.

What caliber?

Ever heard of the B&T TP9? Worth checking out but it’s a few $100 more than the CMMG I think. If you’re in Houston I’ll do the transfer for free if you buy it online.

Little over $15. Have to sell it if I ever drop my FFL/SOT.

If you know, you know...

What’s your address? Looking for a new range.

During the rain delay dumbass.

Nope.

I’ve used the quads, PSQ-36’s, and PVS-31’s in White Phosphor. I’ve you afford, the fusion systems are the best (PSQ-20, PSQ-36). Can pinpoint people or pigs using thermal and still have ability to overlay your laser using the nv. I think ultimate night vision makes a cheaper version using a thermal and and 14 bridged together. The quads give much more FOV, but are heavy as shit.

What was it like to receive a World Series trophy, visit the White House, unveil a world championship banner and receive your World Series ring? What was your favorite part? Everything that happens after winning a championship is amazing and something I wish everyone could experience … especially so many people in baseball who have never had the opportunity. My favorite part of all the events was the parade in Houston, because we shared it with our fans who waited 56 years for the first baseball championship in Texas. Let’s go back to the beginning with Houston. You presented a 21-page plan to owner Jim Crane, who hired you after that interview. Give us some of the headlines of that presentation. Would you change anything now? I’ve been asked many times by many people to see this so-called plan … and I believe I have the only copy somewhere in my files. At this point, it’s been built up to the point where it can only disappoint. The truth is any plan captures a point in time, and this one had my best thoughts from the outside in looking at the Astros as of November 2011. It appropriately served as a tool to have a series of deep conversations with Jim Crane and George Postolos about how to guide the Astros from 106 losses in 2011 to an eventual world championship and hopefully more than one. Much of what was in there focused on building the capabilities in amateur scouting, pro scouting, player development, sports medicine, economics and analytics that would give the Astros an advantage over other clubs over time. Much has changed since then, but many of the principles remain a focus for our baseball operations. Take us through how you built the Astros, stage by stage? One thing I want to clear up right away is that, at every stage of our process, we wanted to win as many games as possible while staying true to our primary objective – to build an organization that could compete for multiple championships as soon as possible. The idea that we would set an objective to pick high in the draft is just not true. I watched every game, most in person, during 2012 and 2013, and every loss pained me and those around me. I celebrated every win. We all did. The first stage (2012-13) was really focused on evaluating the existing talent in the organization both on and off the field and making necessary adjustments. Clearly, we had player talent in the organization despite the poor results and system rankings. Since I had been a scouting director for the prior nine seasons, I knew a lot about George Springer, Vince Velasquez, Mike Foltynewicz, Brett Wallace, Jarred Cosart, Dallas Keuchel, Jason Castro, J.D. Martinez, etc. I scouted all these players first hand. I had seen Altuve in rookie ball and followed his ascent to the big leagues. There were plenty of players I didn’t know much about … like Jonathan Villar, Jonathan Singleton, Paul Clemens, Jimmy Paredes, Domingo Santana, etc., and I needed to learn about them quickly. Also, we had a ton of scouting, coaching and front-office talent in the organization, and I needed to give everyone a chance to prove themselves. New leaders will often replace key people too quickly, and I didn’t want to do that … I knew there was institutional knowledge and exceptional people here that I just didn’t know well. We still have several scouts and coaches and front-office people that were here prior to 2012, and they have been essential to our recent success. The trades that were made the first and second year were all done with a purpose … we moved players that we believed were not likely to be around for the resurgence and who had more value to another team than to us in the short term. We moved Carlos Lee, Chris Johnson, J.A. Happ, Bud Norris, Wandy Rodriguez, Brett Myers and others. Good players in the middle or late stages of their careers who could help other teams with immediate needs. In exchange, we received younger players who our scouts believed could be a part of our resurgence or help us win games in the following years … and from those trades we received Chris Devenski, Brad Peacock, Derek Fisher (as a comp pick) and Max Stassi, who are on our current big-league roster, as well as Joe Musgrove, Matt Dominguez, Chris Carter, Josh Hader, L.J. Hoes and others that helped us win games during the down years or add to our prospect depth. The next stage was the transition stage (2014-15), where we started to feel much better, that our plan was working, and we could possibly accelerate the time frame. We signed free agents including Gregerson, Neshek and Rasmus. We picked up players on waivers like Will Harris, Tony Sipp and Collin McHugh that our scouts had identified, and all were good players. Top prospects had started arriving in Houston (Springer, Singleton, Cosart). Altuve kept getting better. Keuchel began to dominate. Plus, we knew we had more good players coming. The fun part of that stage was acquiring players that we believed made our big-league team better immediately, but it made me nervous to dip into our prospect depth to do so. We traded for Hank Conger and Evan Gattis during the 2014 offseason, and then traded for Carlos Gómez, Mike Fiers, Scott Kazmir and Oliver Pérez during the 2015 season to help get us to the playoffs. After our playoff run in 2015, we felt good about the next period where we expected to be competitive every year. That offseason, we made a big trade for Ken Giles to bolster our pen. 2016 was a disappointment after we got off to a terrible start and then clawed our way back into contention, only to see our two top starters go down late in the second half and fall a few games out of a playoff spot. After that, we aggressively pursued our top targets in the trade and free-agent market and landed Brian McCann, Josh Reddick, Charlie Morton and Carlos Beltrán to surround our core that we knew was ready to take the next step. What were your two best moves? I will let others be the judge of that, but candidates would include: — The summer ‘14 trade with the Marlins that brought us Jake Marisnik, Francis Martes, Colin Moran and a comp pick that turned out to be Daz Cameron. — The offseason trade after 2012 with Oakland that brought us Peacock, Stassi and Carter. — The trade on August 31st of last year that brought us Justin Verlander. — Signing Altuve to an extension during his sophomore year. — Trading for Gerrit Cole a few months ago. — Picking up Will Harris off of waivers. — Picking up McHugh off of waivers. — Drafting Carlos Correa. — Getting Marwin González in the Rule 5 hours after I was named GM. — The summer '13 trade with Baltimore that brought us Hader and the comp pick, which turned into Fisher. Two worst moves? Well, moves that have been appropriately criticized include releasing J.D. Martinez, trading Hader, Brett Phillips, Domingo Santana and Adrian Howser to Milwaukee, two of the three selections we made with our 1-1 picks, trading Villar to the Brewers … among others! Which particular analytics did you implement immediately after getting the job? In December of 2011 when I took over, the Astros didn’t have analytics capabilities. The first task was simply to catch up to most of the teams that were doing something. Fortunately for me, there were a number of third-party organizations that used analytics to evaluate players. So, the first few months, I relied heavily on those in combination with our internal scouting reports to make decisions. What are two or three new analytics that you have introduced over the past few seasons? We are doing what all other teams are doing as well now, and that is trying to make sense of all the new information being generated every day at ballparks across the country and world. Our knowledge continues to grow quickly as the information grows, and we closely guard any insights that we believe will lead to a competitive advantage. What are some of your favorite new wave statistics in evaluating pitchers? Position players? Which stats are so outdated that you won’t even look at them? I know it sounds bizarre, but we don’t look at most stats that the media and fans use because we have our own ways of measuring success and, more importantly, predicting what may or could happen in the future. Many of the new-age publicly available metrics are really good and way better than the traditional metrics. There are a ton of really smart people writing about and analyzing baseball. I will say that the idea of runs above replacement and wins above replacement is a concept that we do use and has great value. You reduced the size of your scouting department. Was that because technology and analytics are replacing them, or filling the role they were in? Player evaluation at all levels — amateur, international, pro — has been and will continue to be a core part of our success. Last summer, we changed the composition of our staff and the result was fewer people in the field with larger areas but more scouts based in Houston. Overall, our headcount is expected to remain roughly the same. We very much believe in having experienced, trained evaluators providing their expert opinion about what he or she sees in a player. This value will only increase with information and technology, not decrease. How do you weight scouting reports, analytics, information, make-up, character, off-field issues, tools and intellect in making player decisions? That is the key question and always has been. My first draft as scouting director in 2005, I struggled mightily with this issue. I had so much information coming at me from all sources, and it was my job to figure out the final answer for the organization. That is a huge responsibility, and there is no obvious answer. We all say it’s a blend, but that doesn’t really mean much because everyone has their own biases and unique blend, and they can’t all be right! (Shanna Lockwood-USA TODAY Sports) Who is the best talent evaluator (besides yourself) that you’ve ever worked with? I wish I were an elite talent evaluator. I have had success in large part because I’ve recognized that I’m not a good talent evaluator, but I’ve listened to those that are better. From my early days with the Cardinals, I trusted and learned from great scouts like Joe Rigoli, Chuck Fick, Mike Roberts, Aaron Looper and Joe Almaraz. Freddy McCallister was a great scout, and he taught me how to trust the scouts. Today, I trust our scouting director, Mike Elias, as one of the top evaluators in the game, and he has a number of great evaluators working for him (Ralph Bratton, Jim Stephenson and many more). If I had to take one scout's opinion across any venue (international tryout, pro game, college game, etc), I would take Charlie Gonzalez. Charlie’s advocacy for Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker led to us taking both in 2015 and, so far, both look like home runs for the Astros. How long did it take to get the José Altuve deal done? Years. We’ve tried every year for the past three to extend him beyond the years we had control. It’s been a top priority for myself and Jim Crane, and we were thrilled to get it done. He’s one of the greatest sports stories of our generation, and I’m glad he’s going to be an Astro for a long time. Are Carlos Correa and George Springer the next two on the totem pole? Will you try to retain Dallas Keuchel? If I could wave a magic wand and keep all three of those guys, plus others here for the foreseeable future and possibly for their entire careers, I would do it! It’s amazing to watch them. How did you handle the 50-game suspension to your top pitching prospect, Forrest Whitley? How much of a setback will that be in his career and timeline to the show? Forrest is a great athlete, an amazing pitcher and a really solid person who continues to mature. I believe in Forrest Whitley. His suspension is a minor speed bump, as long as he learns from it, and all indications are that he has and will not make off-the-field mistakes again. The future is bright for Forrest. Is it true that Kyle Tucker, Derek Fisher and Forrest Whitley were all off limits in the Gerrit Cole trade? Ha! I can’t disclose our negotiating stance! All I can say is that we gave up a ton of value to get Cole, and it was a fair deal for both sides. I’m also delighted that we have Tucker, Fisher and Whitley still in an Astros uniform because they are all going to be important for us in the future. How did the Cole trade come down, and did you celebrate when the Pirates said yes? Neal [Huntington] and I worked a long time and sorted through many iterations before finally landing on this deal. Premature reports that a deal had been done were not accurate and certainly don’t help things. The hardest part was calling Joe Musgrove after he had spent all weekend at our fan fest and telling him he was traded. After it was official, I went on a mini-vacation with my wife for her birthday and definitely celebrated! Twice now you have made deals (Ken Giles was the other) where you trade quantity for quality. Is that the “signature trade” for you? To acquire elite talent, you have to typically give up either a corresponding elite player or multiple pieces that could become elite down the road. I’m not afraid of the multi-player trade (one of my first was a nine-player trade with Toronto in 2012) as it allows you to find more common ground. I hope the signature trades for me are deals that are fair to both sides, help both sides accomplish their objectives and help us continue to win. When you were deciding between Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa to take with the first overall selection in 2012, what were some of the deciding factors? Both are elite talents, of course. We saw Buxton as a sure bet and Carlos as a higher upside play. We had Carlos ranked a tick ahead of Buxton, and we wanted the best player. The bonus was being able to create resources to get Lance McCullers and Rio Ruiz. How surprised were you that the Diamondbacks took Dansby Swanson, leaving you the opportunity to draft Alex Bregman? Not at all. Swanson was regarded by most as the top player in that draft for good reason. We felt Bregman was a better fit for us, and it worked out. Did you know that Charlie Morton was going to be this good, and what was the plan when you signed him to that club-friendly, free-agent deal? Charlie’s club option was declined by the Phillies, and it seemed mostly due to his injury risk. We loved his stuff and felt like we could keep him healthy, or that it was at least worth the risk. Brandon Taubman here in the office was a huge advocate and presented a compelling case, including giving him the second year. Charlie has been terrific, and our medical staff deserves an assist for keeping him on the field. How far away is Kyle Tucker from the major leagues? Any chance we see him before the All-Star break? Kyle is going to be special. I can’t predict when he will make his debut, but I do see a guy who will be a regular in the middle of our lineup within a year or two. Will you try to extend Justin Verlander? Like I said, magic wand waved, Justin finishes his career here in Houston. Are you confident Ken Giles can learn from last postseason and be more effective this October? I am. Many of our young players learned from the experience in the Division Series against Kansas City in 2015, and that helped them in 2017. The postseason is brutal for closers, and most struggled at some point last year. Ken’s stuff is elite, and I believe he will channel his energies towards being an elite pitcher in the most important games. How important were Brian McCann and Carlos Beltrán to last year’s team in terms of leadership? Having good veteran players who have won before can really stabilize and focus the clubhouse. That’s what happened with these two. They have both been on great teams. They both expected the best from themselves and others around them. It was contagious, and it helped us win it all last year. How important is it for teams to have players like Marwin González that can play multiple positions? The last three World Series champions all had super utility players on the roster, as well as others who could play multiple positions. Flexibility in pitching roles and defensive roles is key to maximize the value of any roster, and we will continue to see more versatile players. Rank the tools in order of importance for position players. For pitchers. That’s a hard question to answer. For me, it’s combinations of tools that lead to run production or run prevention that matter. Tools in isolation are fun to discuss but don’t lead to major-league success. I tend to bias towards hitters who make consistent hard contact and make good swing decisions, and pitchers who have elite stuff and command of it. Your team has been one of the best at utilizing shifts. Why? Do you think we will see position-less baseball in the near future? Even going so far as shifting right and left fielders between batters? We have seen increasingly creative defensive alignments, and that will only increase. It’s because we have really good information about where the ball is likely to go and how we can best record an out. Not everyone is willing to try it, and it takes players and coaches getting used to it for it to become routine. That’s happened with the infield shift, but it took a while. Are you in favor of the pitch clock? I support MLB’s desire to speed the game up and make it more appealing to the next generation of fans. I’m fine with the clock as long as we don’t create additional injury risk for our players. What cities do you think deserve to be the next two for expansion? Oakland and Tampa need new stadiums as a first priority … they are both great cities and have good organizations, but they’ve been hamstrung by their stadiums. As far as expansion goes, a team in Mexico would be amazing. Montreal. London. Las Vegas. Many places that might work. How proud are you of hiring A.J. Hinch as manager? What are his best traits? Hiring A.J. was a home run for me and for the Astros. He’s smart, he has great instincts, and he soaks up information from those around him. Players like him but also respect him. He’s been the ideal manager for us. Describe your World Series ring, and how important was it for the Astros organization to step up and deliver after the hurricane? Our city suffered the worst storm in history in 2017, and it was devastating. To give our fans some hope and ultimately pride and joy was incredibly satisfying. The ring means so much to me — first championship for the franchise, first for me as a GM. … and it’s absolutely beautiful to boot. What is your team's biggest need right now? As with most teams, to stay healthy. We have great players in all spots. Our bullpen will continue to be discussed, and I’m sure at some point we will feel a need there, but most teams do over the course of the season. Who is the one prospect in your farm system that people aren’t talking about enough? Probably Yordan Alvarez. This guy is a monster. He’s going to crush baseballs. Five years from now, where is Jeff Luhnow and what is he doing? Sitting right here at Minute Maid Park answering questions from Jim Bowden at The Athletic about how we maintained success since the 2017 championship. If you could have any job in the world other than GM, what would it be? I’ve had other really cool jobs. I was an engineer, making stuff. I was a management consultant helping companies reach their goals. I was an entrepreneur who started two companies from scratch. One job I’d like to have in the future is either a minister (but I’d have to go to Divinity school first) or a college professor. But right now, I’m enjoying doing this. BACKGROUND INFORMATION High School: American High School in Mexico City, Webb School of California Colleges: University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University Majors: Economics and Mechanical Engineering undergraduate; Finance, Management, Marketing and Organizational Behavior in graduate school. How did you get into the front office? I was hired by Bill Dewitt Jr. in October of 2003 as vice president of baseball development for the St. Louis Cardinals. How far did you play baseball, what was your position, and give us a quick self-scouting report: JV baseball in ninth grade in Mexico. I was a better tennis player than baseball player, so I focused on tennis later in high school. I was a prospect as a future G.M., but didn’t know it at the time! Family: Wife Gina, daughter Elizabeth, a sophomore at Penn, son Jeffrey, a senior at Episcopal High School in Houston heading to college next fall, and son Henry, going to pre-school next year. FAVORITES Type of music: 1st Wave (Sirius/XM) Artist: The Cure Walk-up song: Blue Monday (New Order) Actor: Jim Carrey Actress: Emma Stone Comedian: Jay Mohr Book: Currently reading Truth Decay by Michael Rich from RAND website: www.WSJ.com Road city: Seattle Food: Steak and sushi What is your diet like?: Almost ZC Houston restaurant: Steak 48 TV shows: Seinfeld reruns. Curb. GOT. Walking Dead. Amazing Race. The Apprentice. Movies: Anything by Pedro Almodóvar Car: 2014 Audi S5 Hobbies: Writing, reading, current affairs, economics Non-baseball accomplishment: Two patents in my name Possession: Piece of the Berlin wall, piece of the Fabulous Forum floor Childhood memory: Church and lunch with family on Sundays in Mexico City

Think UTexas is going to take them.

Yours if you want them.

Two Diamond Club tickets available for the Sunday night game. Free. Need to pick them up from me in 77027. Rules: Poster must be a big contributor to this thread/last years shag thread. No guests, no lurkers. First to reply gets them.

If you live in Houston, I have a digital fingerprint reader at my shop. Once you come in and do it once, I’ll take your prints/photos and then you don’t even have to come in for future purchases. Everything is digitized and we send out the forms to you via DocuSign. Example: Guy who is a good customer of mine emailed me this morning wanting 3 cans. 30 min later had the forms e-signed ready to go and the cards printed without him having to leave his house. Easy.

I have an FFL/SOT and deal in Class 3, NFA, Machine Guns, etc. When it comes to regular non-NFA weapons, Uncle Sam has no idea who owns what and doesn’t care. It’s my responsibility to keep a record, and in the event that a gun is used in a crime, the ATF will trace the s/n. Other than that, there is no “database”.

With nearly one million revelers joyously drinking in their team’s first championship, the Astros’ World Series victory parade had wended through the sun-baked streets of downtown Houston to City Hall, where the next phase of the celebration would take place. On stage, the exhilarated Astros were joined by local politicians and a number of luminaries at the start of the official ceremony honoring the team. It was then that Rich Dauer, the club's first base coach, abruptly began to stagger, almost as if he was drunk. He stepped to the back of the stage with the other coaches as the players were being introduced to the crowd. Something clearly was not right. Manager A.J. Hinch immediately noticed a difference in Dauer’s color and in his state of mind that was alarming. At that point, even Dauer knew there was a problem. “I don’t really feel too good,” he told the team’s assistant hitting coach Alonzo Powell. Then, suddenly, Dauer became less responsive. Bench coach Alex Cora was anxiously looking on and started shouting to Dauer: “Are you OK? ARE YOU OK?” Very quickly, and almost entirely out of public view, a drama was unfolding that would determine whether the 65-year-old Dauer would live or die. Jeremiah Randall, the Astros’ head athletic trainer, had no idea Dauer’s life was in danger when he saw the EMTs descend from the stage, carrying the coach on a stretcher. The stage was so crowded, Randall and his assistant athletic trainers, Scott Barringer and Daniel Roberts, were standing below, off to the side. The three quickly conferred, trying to figure out how to get Dauer through the crowd, to an ambulance. Their initial conclusion was the same as everyone else’s who had noticed Dauer’s sluggishness that day; he was dehydrated, exhausted from the Astros’ long playoff run and exuberant celebration downtown. The trainers and EMTs found a golf cart and placed the stretcher with Dauer onto the back of the vehicle. Randall sat in the front and called the Astros’ head team physician, Dr. David Lintner. The two discussed whether Randall should take Dauer to a small, local emergency room or a larger facility. Lintner pushed for Houston Methodist, a hospital rated No. 1 in Texas and No. 19 nationally in the 2016-17 rankings by U.S. News and World Report, “just on the outside chance there was something bad going on.” First, Randall had to locate an ambulance. The nearest one was three blocks away, no easy distance to navigate through jam-packed streets. “There were a million people downtown,” Randall says. “You couldn’t get anywhere. The roads were all blocked off. There was just nowhere to go.” Traffic remained a major problem even as the group reached the ambulance and got Dauer inside. Randall estimates the ambulance did not move for 30 minutes. The driver made calls, trying to determine the fastest path to Houston Methodist. Randall studied traffic apps on his phone in between giving Dauer’s medical history to the EMTs and talking to Lintner and another team physician, Dr. James Muntz, who were helping prepare the hospital for Dauer’s arrival. The situation was growing more urgent. “If you’re dehydrated and they put an IV in, you respond to the painful stimuli of the needle,” Randall says. “He wasn’t responding.” Dauer’s wife, Chris, did not attend the parade; she had grown ill, perhaps from food poisoning, and returned to the hotel where she and Rich were staying. Hinch’s wife, Erin, called Chris with the first warning, saying, “I don’t want to worry you, but Rich doesn’t look good.” Randall followed shortly thereafter and said, “We’re taking him to the emergency room.” Chris gathered herself and headed to Houston Methodist. Trey Hillman, the Astros’ bench coach in 2015 and ‘16, was with his wife, Marie, preparing to watch the sunset from the back porch of their lake house in Burnet, Tex., when he got a text message from Astros hitting coach Dave Hudgens. “Pray for Richie,” Hudgens wrote. “He collapsed and was dehydrated at the parade.” Hillman, a close friend of Dauer’s who is now the manager of SK Wyverns in South Korea, immediately called Randall, with whom he had worked in 2011 for the Los Angeles Dodgers; Hillman was the team’s bench coach and Randall its physical therapist. Randall answered on the second ring. “Trey,” he told Hillman, “you need to get down here.” Trey, accompanied by Marie, rushed out and made the 45-minute drive home to Liberty Hill, Tex., northwest of Austin. They showered and changed, then got back in the car and reached Houston Methodist in approximately three hours. Powell, the Astros’ assistant hitting coach, also was far outside Houston when he received word that Dauer’s condition was serious. Powell, who was about to be named the San Francisco Giants’ hitting coach, had left the celebration early and started the 16-hour drive home to Peoria, Az., with his wife, Jana. He needed to fly to San Francisco for a potential news conference that would take place in three days. “I thought the Giants would understand if I was a little late—Richie is a little more important than a news conference,” says Alonzo, who wound up doing a conference call on the appointed day instead. Jana had been a brain injury rehab nurse before becoming a school nurse about seven years ago, a change she had made to spend more time with Alonzo. She had sat on one side of Dauer during the parade, while Randall had sat on the other. When Jana saw the EMTs take Dauer away on the stretcher, she immediately thought to call Chris Dauer. But Jana’s phone battery had run out of juice after she used it to videotape the parade and celebration; she could not charge it until she and Alonzo got into their truck for the ride home. As soon as the phone had power, Jana saw a text from Chris asking her to call. “Richie collapsed,” the text said. “I’m on my way to the hospital.” Jana called, told Chris she knew about Richie, and apologized for her inability to phone earlier. At the time, Chris, like most everyone else, thought Rich only was suffering from dehydration. Chris, as Jana remembers, did not seem the least bit concerned. She agreed to keep Jana updated, and about 90 minutes into the Powells’ drive, Jana’s phone rang again. The news was unsettling. The Powells immediately turned around and headed back to Houston. Hours earlier, on the fire truck, Jana had noticed Dauer was not himself. He was quiet, wearing sunglasses, holding up his phone as if videotaping the parade. But Jana noticed his phone wasn’t even on. “I could see the signs then, but just shrugged it off, thinking it was exhaustion,” she says. Recalling the parade ride, Randall also asks himself, “How did I not know something was not right with him?” Randall says his conversations with Dauer on the fire truck were normal, but others later informed him of odd interactions they had with Dauer that day. Yet, even if Randall had been aware of those interactions, he is not sure he would have interpreted them as a sign of a medical issue. Dauer, as an infielder with the Baltimore Orioles from 1976 to ‘85, earned the nickname “Wacko” from Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer. The Astros also knew his quirky, colorful side. “He’s just kind of this off-the-wall character. It’s just him,” Randall says. “Sometimes you have a weird conversation and you don’t think anything of it. I think that’s what some people thought that day: ‘It’s Richie. It’s Wacko.’ After the fact, we were all like, ‘Dang, we should have seen this.’” Once Dauer arrived at Houston Methodist, Dr. Muntz—the team physician who specializes in internal bleeding—sprang into action. Muntz did not attend the parade and had raced to Houston Methodist, a five-minute drive from his home, after learning of Dauer’s collapse. The moment Dauer arrived, Muntz sensed trouble. Dauer was wild-eyed. He had gone into respiratory arrest, requiring the insertion of a breathing tube. His body was in a posture that indicated severe brain damage. “He was unresponsive,” Muntz says, “just a disaster.” Dauer underwent an immediate CAT scan, and the results showed what Muntz feared: “Blood everywhere” around his brain. Adding to the predicament: Due to a heart condition, Dauer was taking Xarelto, a blood thinner that is difficult to reverse. Undaunted, Muntz made a snap decision. “We have some fancy reversal agents, super-expensive,” Muntz says. “I said, ‘Just give them to him.'” Muntz cut through any delays, at one point snapping at the staff, “No more questions! He goes to the operating room.” Muntz also called two neurosurgeons and said, “If you can’t get here in five minutes, I’m calling someone else.” One already was at the hospital. The other, Dr. David Cech, arrived within four minutes, with Dauer’s surgery just getting underway. Cech had been across the street, catching up on paperwork in an office building connected to Houston Methodist by a sky bridge. “They called me and said, ‘Listen, we need you to come over here and operate on this guy,” Cech recalls. “I just zoomed across the street on the sky bridge.” By the time he got there Dauer was in a coma, “almost brain dead,” said Cech. Cech made a question-mark shaped incision on the side of Dauer’s head, removed a piece of bone, then removed all of the blood. The procedure, lasting about three hours, was especially painstaking due to the time it took for the reversal agents to stop Dauer’s bleeding. His brain had shifted about a centimeter from the right to the left, pushing against the brain stem. Cech and his team relieved the pressure on the stem by pushing the brain back toward the right side. The Powells arrived at the hospital while Dauer was still in surgery. Jana Powell, drawing on her expertise with brain injuries, spoke with Chris but could provide only so much comfort. “I was trying to be there for Chris, but trying to be realistic—this was not good,” Jana recalls. “I was trying to prepare her for the worst. But she was in shock. She really wasn’t comprehending anything that night.” After the surgery, Chris asked Jana to join her in speaking with Cech. The conversation, as Jana recalls, was chilling. “He was trying to explain to her that this was really bad, that if he made it through the night, he wouldn’t be the same—he said he’ll never be the same,” Jana says. “He said he wouldn’t know the extent of the brain damage until Richie woke up. All Chris said to the doctor was, ‘Is he going to be OK? All I want to know is if he is going to be OK.’” Says Chris: “I was kind of numb. I prayed. I said, ‘God, please don’t take my husband now.’ I went into the bathroom stall and prayed. But I felt I needed to be really strong through the whole thing. There was a part of me that thought, Maybe he’s not going to make it. But another part thought, No, he’s going to make it.” The chances of significant brain damage were indeed high—“most of these people end up vegetative, in a nursing home,” Cech says. But Cech also recalls telling Chris he was cautiously optimistic because the surgery had gone well. Dauer underwent a second CAT scan about an hour after the surgery to make sure the blood was gone and his brain was back in the proper position. The scan looked good. The pressure on Dauer’s brain stem had eased. Cech returned to the waiting room and found two security guards outside, allowing privacy for the growing contingent of Astros personnel—Hinch, his coaches and team staff members, along with some of their wives and Hinch’s daughters, Haley and Kaitlin. The bond between Hinch and Dauer dated to 2001 when Hinch was a Kansas City Royals catcher and Dauer was the team’s third base coach. Hinch, as the San Diego Padres’ assistant GM, had helped hire Dauer as the team’s Double A manager in 2013, then added him to his coaching staff after becoming Astros manager entering ‘15. Game 7 of the World Series was perhaps the culmination of their friendship. Two days later, Hinch found himself at Houston Methodist, not sure Dauer would survive. “I just couldn’t believe what was happening,” Hinch says. “I couldn’t comprehend it.” Randall, who was part of the contingent in the waiting room, had Dauer’s belongings, including his cell phone. Few outside of the Astros’ family knew Dauer’s life was in jeopardy, but everyone connected to him knew the Astros had just won the Series. In those terrifying moments when Dauer laid unconscious, about to undergo surgery, Randall gained a greater appreciation of the longtime coach’s popularity within the baseball world. “His phone just lit up,” Randall recalls, “all these people reaching out to Richie to say congrats.” The doctors advised Chris to have family members get to the hospital as quickly as possible. One of the Dauers’ daughters, Casey, arrived in Houston from Atlanta before Rich was out of surgery. Two others, Kelsey and Katie, arrived the next morning from Cincinnati. By that time, their father already was defying the odds. Dauer was responsive, stunning Chris, Casey and Trey and Marie Hillman, all of whom were by his side. Photo courtesy of the Dauer family In a group text shared among baseball people, Randall called Dauer’s progress, “nothing short of a miracle.” Dauer followed nurses’ commands, moving his left arm and leg. His right side was more problematic initially, but he gave a nurse a thumbs-up with his left hand as she explained where he was, what had happened. The doctors gave Dauer a “sedation vacation,” allowing his system to slowly awaken so they could check his responsiveness, get his limbs moving. They also removed Dauer’s breathing tube three days following surgery after initially saying he might need it for a week or more. “The magnitude of what he had wrong was intimidating, astonishing,” says Lintner, the Astros’ head physician. “The pace of his recovery was just as astonishing.” During her time as a brain injury rehab nurse, Jana Powell had seen hundreds of similar cases, but never a recovery quite like Dauer’s. She remembers thinking, There is no way this is possible. Yes, people recover, but they have developmental issues, mental issues. Dauer, though, was completely alert. “I never repeated my name and the date so many times in my life,” he says. “Every question was, ‘What’s your name? Where are you? Who is the president?' I knew all that. There was never any time when I was out of it, never any time I couldn’t function. If it was up to me, I would have left (the hospital) as soon as I opened my eyes.” He wasn’t kidding. Lintner recalls Dauer, with his wife and daughters present, “fussing about” two days after surgery, saying he needed to get up and walk around, go home. “Do I hear complaining? Are you really giving these people a hard time?” Lintner asked. “What? I feel great,” Dauer replied. Lintner then asked Dauer if he knew how close he had come to dying. “He really didn’t,” Lintner says. “He has always been healthy and active. The whole concept of a brush with death was completely foreign to him. I got one of his daughters to take a picture of the back of his head where he had the procedure. There were still monitors going under his scalp, into his skull. He saw those and quieted down a bit.” Says Hillman, “Even in talking to Richie now, I know he knows what happened. But I’m not sure he can fully grasp the severity of it. We were seeing things he wasn’t seeing. In his mind it was, ‘Hey, I’m OK, get this tube out of my throat. I’ll just be fine. I need to tell you guys what is going on here.’ It was very typical Richie.” Days after surgery Dauer was out of bed and enjoying visits from Astros players George Springer, Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and many others. At one point, he texted friends a video of himself walking around the hospital, saying, “I’m already up to 50 percent of my jogging to first-base speed.” Eight days after surgery, in another text, he said, “I get my last drain out of my head today. Who would have thought my brain needed drains?” Fluid in Dauer’s lungs lengthened his stay, but he was released on Nov. 15, exactly two weeks after the Astros completed their Series triumph and 12 days after he entered the hospital. Jake Kucherka, one of the team’s clubhouse attendants, helped Dauer get to his offseason home in Atlanta, sharing driving responsibilities with Chris on the two-day ride. Once home, Dauer visited a neurosurgeon, Dr. Daniel Barrow, who told him, “I’m amazed I’m even talking to you.” Barrow told Dauer he could resume his normal workouts. Dauer will continue to receive periodic checkups, but says his brain is “perfectly fine.” His sense of humor certainly is intact. Lintner chuckles about a video Dauer sent of himself doing housework with the caption, “Get me out of here!” Muntz cherishes a text Dauer sent him on Dec. 5, barely more than a month after undergoing surgery: “Hey Dr. Muntz, we’re doing well. My workouts are up to 50 minutes on elliptical and treadmill. I lifted light weights today and just left Taco Bell with a seven-layer burrito! Life is good!” To which Muntz replied, jokingly, “If the subdural didn’t kill you, the burrito will.” Dauer even offers a punchline in his story about asking Chris what God had in store for him. “I figured it out,” he says. “Fortunately for the fans of New York, I didn’t get the Yankees’ managing job.” But he and Chris, both Christian believers, talk about the role of divine intervention in his recovery. Hillman echoes their thoughts, attributing Dauer’s healing to “the miracle of medicine and the miracle of God’s grace.” Chris refers to Deuteronomy 31:8: “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave nor forsake you.” She mentions the good fortune of Randall standing nearby at City Hall to help Rich immediately, Muntz making the necessary snap decisions at Houston Methodist, Cech doing paperwork across the street on a day he otherwise might not have been at the hospital, Hillman making the three-hour drive to Houston and helping in any way he could. “I think you could see God before us,” Chris says. Photo courtesy of the Dauer family. Dauer, who had already decided to retire, recalls nothing about what happened on stage; his last memory is of riding on a fire truck in the parade. Hinch later informed him of an exchange they had just before Dauer began deteriorating. “A.J. said he turned to me and said, ‘You don’t look good. Are you OK?’” Dauer says. “Apparently, I said I was fine, like all old-school baseball players do.” Clearly, he was not fine. The night before, he had slipped on a wet floor and hit the side of his head. He never thought he was seriously injured, never had a headache, never considered missing the parade. But Dauer had suffered an acute subdural hematoma, a collection of blood outside the brain. Before undergoing surgery, his chances of survival—according to what doctors told Chris and friends gathered at Houston Methodist—were 3 percent. And even if he survived, his chances of avoiding significant brain damage were slim. Dauer, grateful to all who helped him, frequently calls Randall for the names of people he does not recall meeting but wants to thank. It bothers him that his trauma perhaps diminished the Astros’ joy as the franchise celebrated its first World Series title. But Alonzo Powell, the team’s former assistant hitting coach, says the way the Astros responded to Dauer typified their season. The team started out close, grew closer after Hurricane Harvey ravaged Houston and rallied one last time around Dauer. Muntz calls Dauer’s case the most fascinating he has seen in his 30 years in sports; every second counted, every step of the way. Randall credits the ambulance driver for skillfully shaving minutes off the trip to Houston Methodist. Rich, like Chris, marvels at how “all the miracles lined up” at the hospital. Lintner says, “If any of the dominos had fallen differently, we’d be having a very different conversation.”

I'd try to go to an outdoor range. The concussion/blast that you feel in an indoor range for a first timer will be pretty brutal, especially if there's a bunch of people shooting. That concussion can lead to developing some bad habits when it comes to flinching/trigger pull.

Crazy that Crane is being so generous with the rings. It’s awesome though. I was around him a lot with my last job. Truly a mean, miserable, asshole with Cal Ripken-like consistency.

Beautiful evening at MMP. So good to be back. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk