I Want to Win (One Sixty-Two: Day 78)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Seventy-Eight: Roy Oswalt, Houston Astros

“I’m going to take my talents to South Beach,” LeBron James said. “I think it will give me the best opportunity to win, and win for multiple years.”

For a man with all the money he could ever need, the focus turns to winning. So as the fans in Cleveland fume, and some even turn to burning his No. 23 jersey, James leaves his hometown for the sunny skies of Miami, and the opportunity to play with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh under the tutelage of Pat Riley. It’s a winning combination, one that will likely bring these men some NBA titles.

Ho-hum. The rich get richer – again. What’s new?

We see it in sports all the time – players who’ve made more money than most of us could ever dream of choose a franchise with a tradition of winning over another that lacks said tradition. They search for the best chance to claim a title, and leave their old team without much hope. LeBron James did this last night, but he’s not the first. Nor will he be the last.

Roy Oswalt is 32 years old, and he’s in his 10th season pitching for the Houston Astros organization that drafted him. Oswalt has won 143 games for the Astros, one shy of the franchise record for career wins. Oswalt’s right arm helped lead Houston to its only World Series appearance in 2005, and to playoff appearances in ’04 and ‘01. But in 2010, the Astros are well on their way to their third losing season in the past four years. And Oswalt, who has earned approximately $75 million during his 10 years in Houston, is ready to leave the Astros behind.

It happens every year. Oswalt won’t be the only big-name baseball player traded this month – Seattle Mariners pitcher Cliff Lee could be traded as soon as today. But like LeBron James, who played seven seasons with the Cavaliers team that drafted him, Oswalt wants to win now. That means leaving behind the franchise that had been his home.

So if you’ve got a No. 44 Astros jersey, wear it today. Tomorrow, it might be out of date. Someday, after he retires, the Astros might bring Oswalt back and retire that number. But for now, in July of 2010, that number is about to be exchanged for Double-A prospects.

Oswalt wants to win. If he could shoot from the outside, the Miami Heat would love to have him. But he’ll settle instead for a pennant race. In a new town. It’s kind of like shopping in a mall – you feel no connection to the place, and there’s nothing there that feels like home. But you get what you want, and you go home with stuff.

Everyone wins, in a way. Except that no one establishes roots. And when there are no roots – when you don’t hang with a place long enough to live through the ups, downs and everything in between – it’s hard for you to ever become what the greatest of our athletes and coaches have been called:

A legend.