Five Big Questions: Steve “Psycho” Lyons
· Yahoo Sports
Steve Lyons is a baseball lifer, having played the game and commentated for decades. For Astros fans, “Psycho” as he’s affectionately called had a front row seat as part of the Fox Sports broadcast crew in 2005 when the Astros brought us their first pennant.
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We caught up with one of the more colorful and engaging personalities to ever grace the diamond and broadcast booth to talk modern day Astros and that magical ride from 2005:
Q: If you’re only a handful of games out of the wildcard race, it’s almost impossible to push the reset and blow this thing up, right?
A: I don’t think you can panic. There’s just too much baseball to be played. It’s funny when the dog days come around. To me the dog days are in mid-September when you see teams that you think are going to be there and they drop seven out of ten and fall out of the race. They go from second place down to fourth and ultimately miss the playoffs. It’s just way too early, we’re so far away from that point.
You see clubs that do it but I wouldn’t go that route. Every year it literally comes down to the final weekend, or final day of the season and one game. It’s going to happen again, just watch. You cannot overact in June.
Q: So many guys are in the process of coming off the IL, or just now returning. Does Joe Espada receive a reprieve of sorts or if they fail to reach the post-season, could he be on the hot seat even with the onslaught of injuries, is that even fair?
A: It’s not even close to being fair. I will tell you that in the clubhouse, you have to adopt a mentality that if guys get hurt, somebody else has to step up.
There’s a big difference between being hurt and being injured. Most guys are hurt and have to play through it. When you’re injured though, that’s a different story.
You just want to make sure you don’t continually have the same type of injuries over and over, and in terms of the manager, they have nothing to do with that.
If you even have four guys out, you’ll quickly become a Triple-A club and you’ll lose series after series when you are competing against big leaguers.
Q: Let’s talk about that 2005 team. You were there in the clubhouse with Phil Garner, and around that team when you were with Fox. What do you most recall about that team?
A: You know, when I think back to that, it’s so ironic because the White Sox weren’t predicted to do anything and Houston of course got off to that 15-30 start. They called the White Sox one dimensional and nobody thought they’d even reach the playoffs. They came together as a club, just as the Astros did and started playing better baseball week after week.
Q: That series was so evenly matched, I just cannot believe it resulted in a sweep. The four games were decided by six total runs. It’s just crazy. Were you surprised it wound up being a sweep?
A: Listen, if you look at those games, the White Sox could’ve been the ones getting swept. The games were all so close. It could’ve gone the other way. There are weird things in baseball and Houston not winning a game was one of them.
Q: You played with Roger Clemens in Boston. You know Roger. How much does it have to be killing him not to have a plaque in Cooperstown?
A: I have a tough time in general with the hall of fame. I understand what it’s supposed to represent, but when Pete Rose isn’t in the hall of fame, that’s a problem.
Outside of Ichiro, he’s the single greatest hitter in our lifetimes and no one else is even close. Pete Rose wasn’t even a great athlete. He just willed himself as a hitter to be great.
The steroids era was bad, it’s a black eye, but these guys should be in, especially if they have the numbers to be in. There are guys who did steroids who are in the hall of fame right now.
I know how competitive Roger is, and it’s got to be killing him on the inside. I love the guy but there’s a lot of smoke about if he did steroids or not.