This is what happens when you rebuild a roster with youth.

The wives of Houston Astros players have, for several years, put on a charity gala to benefit the Houston Area Women’s Center. A minor brouhaha has erupted over the past few days when it was learned that the Wives Gala would not be held this year, which will have a negative impact on the Women’s Center. Two Astros blogs are even protesting it by going dark for a day.

There have been a few competing explanations for this. One was a change in focus of Astros charities under the new ownership group, but today there came a statement from the Astros Vice President of Community Relations on that which gets to the point a bit more directly:

There was no event canceled because there was no event planned because the wives group no longer had any wives in it,” Vaillancourt said. “This change is not at all a reflection on the value of the Women’s Center. We really respect and appreciate everything that the Women’s Center does.”

In other news, the Astros will not be growing playoff beards due to their lack of ability to grow facial hair and will have no champagne showers because the only guy of age on that team when they broke camp just got signed by the Mets.

UPDATE: My knowledge of how any team spends its charity money is pretty low. As I imagine it is on the part of most fans and even team bloggers. For that reason I can’t weigh in with any sort of authority on how the Astros handle their philanthropic pursuits and can’t criticize or endorse bloggers’ decision to boycott coverage of the team for a day. Heck, I can think of reasons to boycott the Astros based sheerly on the basis of watching them closely being cruel and unusual punishment.

That said, if there is a change in the Astros’ charitable direction, it’s probably worth noting that there are still some pretty major charitable acts being led by and or joined by the Astros. I don’t think most of us on the outside are in a great position to judge how well a team is doing in this regard, whether it’s making good choices or bad ones or any of that.