It's that time.

Lock and load.

The Michael Derry Show is on the air. I grew up two hours southeast of Houston.

For those of you in Louisiana, you will recognize the name Orange, Texas.

It's, I've always said it's more southwest Louisiana than southeast Texas.

It's more southwest Louisiana than it is southeast Texas.

If you drive I-10 from California to Florida or back, it will take you through the easternmost little town on the way out of Texas into Louisiana or in reverse on the border, and that is orange, known for chemical plants, which my dad worked at as a maintenance

work. So we didn't have any professional sports teams close by. We rooted for the Houston teams.

My parents rooted for the Cowboys, as many people do. I hated the Cowboys. I think partly to be

a contrarian and, yeah, probably partly to be a contrarian.

And yeah, probably mostly to be a contrarian.

I followed the Houston Oilers of Dan Pastorini,

bum Phillips, Earl Campbell, Elvin Bithay fame.

And I followed the Houston Astros and I followed the Houston Rockets.

And although we didn't get the rockets on local television.

So we had some lean years.

Houston didn't.

I was a sports fanatic.

I mean, probably some of you as adults are still this way, but I worked washing cars and cutting grass so I could buy a sporting news subscription

because I wanted to get all the box scores.

I kept score at area league games when our teams weren't playing.

I lived for the score book.

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