From the sports pages of the San Antonio Express-News, June 3:
Astros’ fun summer of ’66 relived on Twitter
by Richard Oliver
By early June, Astros catcher John Bateman was at a crossroads in his 1966 season. In a bit of a slump, mirroring a Houston team that had slipped to third in the National League standings, the Killeen native found himself put on the bench by manager Grady Hatton.
"Riding the pines again," he posted on his Twitter account.
Or, rather, as longtime Astros fan Ken Webster imagines Bateman would have posted had the Internet and social media been around during the early years of the franchise's existence.
Webster, the award-winning artistic director of Hyde Park Theatre in Austin, earlier this spring created a Twitter account, @1966Astros, which uses Bateman as the voice to recreate the season.
"It was influenced by 'Ball Four,'" said Webster, 53, referring to the famous exposé of the sport written by pitcher Jim Bouton in recounting his 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and Astros.
"I thought I could offer a retelling of the 1966 season, the first season that I was really paying attention to baseball."
The longtime actor and director, inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame five years ago, was a youngster growing up in Houston when he first settled on Bateman as his favorite player.
"I guess I wanted to be a catcher," said Webster, who made his first trip to the Astrodome in 1965. "He was my home team's catcher." He laughed, adding, "(Bateman) was not the handsomest guy in the world, which is an understatement. But there was something charming about him."
Read more at the San Antonio Express-News
