Yeah, we blew it. On our January 2014 Bum Steer Awards cover, David Dewhurst, the Houston Texans, and the Astros–who all took the magazine’s top honors for Bum Steers of the Year–are shown running away from “Steerzilla,” which is demolishing the Astrodome. Pretty funny cover, and pretty spot on, except that the baseball players are shown wearing the Astros uniform that was retired in 2012. And not only that, but several of the players featured weren’t even on the Astros roster last year.
Seeing as how this is exactly the sort of goof we relish mocking in the Bum Steers issue, the whole thing seems almost intentional, as if we were trying to make the point that the Astros barely even fielded a team last year; or that, because of a lousy deal with Comcast, few fans could even see their games (several of which received a 0.00 Nielsen rating); or that they had actually ceased to exist once they’d decamped from the National League. Alas, it wasn’t intentional. We just blew it. And for no good reason either, seeing as how a number of the folks who saw the cover before it went to press are Astros fans and/or live in Houston. So in the spirit of the season, we hereby award a bum steer to ourselves for this spectacular oversight. We earned it. Oh, how we earned it.
