Astros are lousy, but I can talk more about that next week. This week, I wanna talk about Darryl Kile. Kile's death early Saturday chilled me to the core of my soul. Literally: Yesterday I wrote a John Hudek page for this website, had an excellent Thai dinner, and saw Attack of the Clones (finally). But at no point during an otherwise fine day did the cruel reality of Darryl Kile's shocking death leave my mind. A common phrase these days is that someone "has issues," something that they hold within them unresolved. Well, then; Ken Caminiti has issues with the introduction of chemicals into his body. Barry Bonds has issues with the role of the media in his life. And I have an issue with death. I am not much older than Darryl Kile was, yet some choices I have made in my system of faiths have left me terrified of what is of course inevitable: my own passing from this Earth. So I need Kile's sudden and unexpected death like I need a hole in the head. I, for one, can think of no reason why someone like Darryl Kile, supremely talented, loved, even good looking for Chrissakes, should be dead on this windy Monday eve. It confuses me. It has, quite simply, made me more frightened. But I have time (I think), and I'll work it out (I hope). It has done more than just frighten yours truly, the Astroman, of course. Unlike Craig Biggio, or Jeff Bagwell, I didn't know Kile personally. And unlike ESPN, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, or the Houston Chronicle, I would not try to paint a portrait of the beautiful person Darryl Kile was. The tears in Biggio's eyes Saturday night said more than any journalist or any webmaster could possibly hope to, anyway. If you're reading this, I can only say that grief--an understanding of a tragedy having occurred--grips us all, but no way around it: I'm a fan, and I don't know whether Darryl Kile was a beautiful person or not. Last night there was a post on the SABR boards suggesting that steroids may have played a role in DK's death. At first I was very angry having read this, and I began composing a heated reply in my head. But I stopped midway through, because it occurred to me that I would look pretty stupid if I fired off an angry reply defending Kile's abstention from the 'roids if in two weeks, the full autopsy found that Kile was in fact using. Hunter Thompson said that "history is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit." Well, so are people. But if I can't talk about Kile's beauty as a person, I can talk about the beauty of his curveball. The fact that Kile isn't around to throw that overhand yacker of his makes the world an inferior place. I'll say it again, 'coz this is the essay boiled down, reduced: Daryl Kile's curveball made the world a better place. Beauty is a hard thing to find, so you should latch onto it wherever you find it. I've missed some opportunities, but not with Kile's 12 to 6 bender: his curveball made you laugh, not because there was anything inately funny about it, but rather because it seemed so unfair that the hitter's job was to hit this thing, and all they could do was get all buckly-kneed, and walk away, shaking their heads. DK had the best curveball of his generation. He and it will be missed. I was at an Astro spring training game in '93. Kile's no-hitter was five months away, but I had no way of knowing that, and neither did the kind and matronly lady sitting next to me at Osceola County Stadium, a peroxide blonde with a permanent wave as I remember. Anyway, she was wearing a white cloth visor over her machined curls, and scribbled in black sharpie across the tops, sides, and back of the thing were a gaggle of signatures affixed by the Astro spring-training invitees. I remember seeing Al Osuna's name, and also remember asking the woman whether Mark Portugal's name was anywhere signed. Not sure why I was all over Portugal, because his 18 - 4 season, too, was in the future. But the mother said, no, she didn't like Portugal, he was a meanie or something, and he was the only major-leaguer from the year before she hadn't asked to sign. And by the way, could I guess her favorite Astro? As a matter of fact, I could, for Darryl Kile's was the largest signature of them all, emblazoned across the front of the thing in the largest possible letters: "Darryl Kile # 57." Boy, that woman loved the Astros, and loved Darryl Kile, and he was kind enough to nurture that. I never forgot that woman, and thought of her again, in 1997 when Darryl took the money and run. You see, baseball is a business, and its practicioners are not heroes, right? Darryl Kile was a good person, I'm assuming, yet he turned his back on the organization that nurtured his talent, that let him develop his gift. It had developed, and he sold himself to the highest bidder, which of course is the system. This most certainly was not Darryl Kile's fault, but I remember thinking about that peroxide blonde woman, and what must have her reaction have been? I kept in mind that the Astros would not have hesitated to release Kile if he had never gained the ability to throw strikes in the majors, but I still could not get past DK's arrogance. Yes, arrogance is what it was when he signed with the Rockies. Conventional wisdom is sometimes common knowledge, and conventional wisdom said that Kile and his amazing curveball would not fare very well in the thin, mile-high air. In retrospect, we know they did not, and I found myself asking why Kile did not heed those who tried to warn him. A major leaguer has handlers, and usually they're well-paid, and usually they know what they're doing. I find it hard to believe that no-one had given Kile advice that basically said: stay away from Colorado, dude. My bet is, he received that advice, but chose to ignore it, assuming that the rules didn't apply to him, possessing an arrogance enough to believe that his talent was so overwhelming that it was not subject to physical laws, and that therefore the act of leaving the organization that nurtured him was nothing but an act of self-improvement. In fairness, it would have been nearly impossible for Kile to have done other than move on to Colorado; after all, there was one thing that Darryl Kile did better than anyone else on the planet. You or I cannot understand what that must be like, and how it must change the way you look at the world. No man is perfect, and we should certainly not expect--it is unfair to expect-- baseball players of all people to be so. But in the swath of warm press that surrounds the man and his legacy now, it is worth remembering that even the recently-passed can be served best by "less bullshit, more history." Kile's talent cut through the former, and will be remembered by the latter. Even the fact that we have to grapple with the cold and tragic reality of a life lived only halfway cannot change that.