J.P. Heath should know better by now.
At least I would have guessed he would have. Before I get to the task at hand, which is making fun of J.P.
, I’ll provide a little breakdown. For those who don’t know, J.P.
is the Voice of the Rice Owls. From football seasons in the press box at Rice Stadium to basketball games at Tudor Fieldhouse to beautiful days at Reckling Park watching the former College World Series champion Owls, he is simply fabulous at what he does. In my humble opinion, Rice is lucky to have him.
I’ll be among those listening when he starts another athletic year calling games with Nate Griffin and Bob Schlanger when the Owls host Sam Houston Aug. 31. Prior to his days calling games in the Bayou City, J.
P. was a familiar voice around Lufkin. Working for the radio station, some of his duties included calling games for area teams, including Lufkin, Diboll and Angelina College, among others.
If you’ve heard any of his broadcasts, you haven’t been disappointed. The homework he puts in is top notch. By the time the broadcast starts, he has been on site for a minimum of a couple of hours.
That doesn’t include the endless hours he spends in the offseason to help put together a top-notch broadcast. In case it isn’t pretty clear, he is good at his job. Really good.
But I must admit, I’m at least slightly biased. From a personal standpoint, he’s also one of my best friends and has been for at least two decades. When he lived in town, we’d have multiple lunches a week at what he affectionately called a “third-rate taco joint.
” For the record, they’re no longer in business here in Lufkin, so he probably had a point. We’ve spent countless hours in cars going all across Texas. Just a few of the stops have taken us to Edinburg, San Marcos, Commerce, Georgetown and all kinds of places in between.
J.P. was the one who splurged on Astros/Rangers tickets for myself and the family to help my daughters get their minds off of things when their mom died eight years ago.
When the Astros won the World Series the next year, J.P. was in my driveway about an hour later with a championship T-shirt.
With that being said, he’s most certainly a better friend and human being than he is a broadcaster. And quite honestly, that’s saying a lot. But after 350 words of bragging on him, enough is enough.
It’s time to get down to the original point, which is making fun of J.P. When it comes to sports, he’s an admitted glutton for punishment.
There is no better testament to this fact than what has become our annual tradition of heading up to Arlington to see the Rangers and Astros face off every season. And by “face off,” I mean watch the Astros bash the Rangers into submission. J.
P. is a lifelong Rangers fan. He was rooting them on when they just missed on a title in 2011.
He watched the game with his dad when they finally brought the title home last year. Don’t let him know, but even I got a little emotional talking to him that night. But that’s a column for another day.
I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum as the resident Astros’ fan in the friendship. We agree on most things in life, but when it comes to baseball teams, we couldn’t be further apart. We’ve been to more games together than we can mention, but our current tradition just dates back to 2022 when we decided we’d make a two-day trip to catch the Astros in Arlington.
A night game followed by a day game led to the perfect guys’ trip. Well, as it turns out, at least perfect for one of us. A Rangers’ fielding gaffe opened the door for Houston and Kyle Tucker drilled a two-run homer that capped a four-run eighth inning in a 4-3 Houston win.
It was early, but Dusty Baker called it “the victory of the year.” That might be saying something for a team that eventually took home the World Series. I seem to remember on the way back to the hotel, J.
P., an admitted optimist in life and a pessimist in sports, mentioning how it could always get worse. He couldn’t have been more correct.
About 15 hours later, both teams outdid themselves. Baseball has been around long enough that when someone says something has never happened before, they’re probably wrong. But that day, we witnessed a true first.
It started when Luis Garcia threw an immaculate inning and Phil Maton duplicated the feat about an hour later. An immaculate inning is when a pitcher strikes out all three batters in an inning on nine pitches. It was the first time on record that there were two immaculate innings on the same date, let alone in the same game or by the same team.
History indeed. As we walked back to car after the game, I couldn’t help myself. “Same time next year?” And with that, a new tradition was born.
A year later, we decided we’d make it a one-game trip with our friend Doug along for the ride. Surely for J.P.
, it couldn’t get any worse. It did. The day started with us crawling through a fence in a parking lot to get to the stadium in what at least looked like a fishy situation.
It didn’t get any better for J.P. from there.
Jose Abreu hit two homers and drove in seven runs in Houston’s 12-3 win that clinched a sweep. Yes. The same Abreu who was released by the Astros earlier this season.
For the series, Houston outscored Texas 39-10, outhit them 50-22 and smacked 16 homers along the way. After two hours of relentless taunting on the way home, I left J.P.
with a familiar question. “Same time next year?” (As a disclaimer, I probably should note that the Rangers would win a World Series title just a few months later, but that doesn’t go along with this column). That brings us back to a couple of weeks ago when we made the annual trip back to Arlington.
What else could possibly go wrong? This time around, Framber Valdez missed a no-hitter by a single pitch. The following day, Houston capped off a relatively routine win over the Rangers. Three years.
Five games. Five Astros wins. It was once again time for my yearly question.
Same time next year? “No doubt,” was J.P.’s reply.
I couldn’t tell if J.P.’s permanent smile was the one someone makes right before snapping, one of happiness or one of someone who just made a mile walk in 102-degree weather.
Since I’m still here to write this, everything turned out fine. With all that being said, I’d still advise you to give J.P.
a listen as Rice kicks off its athletic schedule here in the next week. Rice fan or not, you won’t be disappointed. Calling Rice games is his specialty.
It should be. It certainly isn’t picking baseball games..
