HOUSTON — The Astros opened the postseason Tuesday in front of 34,011 fans in a park that seats 40,963, lost 6–3 to the White Sox, and then told their own fans that the problem was not the empty seats but the noise coming from the seats that were filled. The players were “extremely frustrated.” One said, “We need energy. We don’t need boos.” This is a sentence that has now been printed in a newspaper, and the fans who read it have no idea what is happening.

Here is the situation as the fans understand it: they came, they sat, they booed, and the booing was the wrong kind of booing. The players want support, and the fans gave the support they know how to give, which is the boo, because a baseball fan’s vocabulary is small and the boo is the loudest word in it. A fan at Daikin Park can cheer, which is quiet, or boo, which is the sound a fan makes when the team is losing and the fan still intends to be heard. The players have asked the fans to stop using the only loud word they have.

The Chicago Tribune counted the empty seats, 6,952 of them, which is a number that reads like a verdict. But the empty seats are not the complaint. The complaint is the energy, and energy is not a number. Energy is a feeling the players have, and the feeling is that the fans in the lower bowl are booing at the wrong time, in the wrong direction, with the wrong amount of commitment. The fans cannot fix this. The fans do not know what the correct boo looks like. No fan has ever been taught the correct boo.

"We want their support," one Astro said. The fans want to give it. The fans simply do not know which sound is the support. The fans have one sound, and it is the boo.

THE BOO: A FIELD GUIDE

  • Attendance: 34,011 of 40,963 seats. The empty seats are not the issue.
  • The issue: Energy, which is not measurable.
  • Fan vocabulary: Cheer (quiet), boo (loud).
  • Player request: Stop the loud one. Keep the quiet one.
  • Fan response: Confused silence, which is also not energy.

The Astros missed the playoffs last season and are now in the postseason in front of a half-empty park, and the players have discovered that a fan who shows up is not the same as a fan who performs. At press time, the fans were still in the lower bowl, still booing, still being told it was the wrong boo, and still not knowing what the right one was. The White Sox, who won, were not asked to explain their energy.