All Ranges of Emotion Wednesday Night

The Astros won their fourth game in a row and fifth of the last six on Wednesday night. For the second night in a row a rally allowed them to overcome a lead by the Florida Marlins providing the win.

There were a number of stars on the field and fans were very happy with the result.

But I have some strong things to say about some Astros "fans." It is not complimentary.

Wednesday was our third game to use "Live Chat" through our http://foxsportshouston.com web site. We started bringing it in to allow fans a direct conduit to at least one of the telecasters (me) and to offer opinions, ask questions and essentially be part of our telecast.

The vast majority of those who take part do a great job. They provide just what we had hoped.

But then there is that small minority. It is the societal fringe that exists in any public forum that thinks it is funny to use their keyboard to demonstrate poor taste, spew obscenities, pornography and last night racism.

Because there have always been people like that radio stations have had to use delays on all talk shows. Responsible web sites must use moderators to screen all forum contributors and Fox Sports Houston uses a screener to keep the filth and personal attacks off the site. They don't ever make the chat line.

Last night my screener was an intern..a young black male graduate of Texas Southern. He was sitting right next to me in the press box. A shot of our location made the telecast. And then the racists came out.

He had to read some of the worst attacks and... I won't stoop to using an obscenity here myself--but you know what I mean. I felt awful. I also felt ashamed that Astros baseball has people like that who are watching.

They knew who was screening the submissions. They knew he would see them. What kind of people do we have in Houston? This isn't urging people to be politically correct. This is imploring people to be civilized. (I know this isn't just Houston, it can happen anywhere, but Houston is what I am concerned with and I don't like it at all.)

I suspect that in some ways those writers bothered me more than they did our intern (who I am intentionally not naming). After all he has had to live his life dealing with racism. I have not. Maybe it doesn't bother him any more than the sexually obscene submissions using my name do me. I ignore them and move on. Still, there is no place for either in what is supposed to be a public forum.

Sad to say the forum can never be fully public as long as we have people like that who try to spoil things for the good fans.