A Baseball Valentine

            With spring training about to get underway, there is a lot of buzz around the Houston Astros and whether they’ll repeat as World Series champions. As a long-suffering Houston sports fan, I’m looking forward to the upcoming Astros’ season. Normally I don’t pay attention to baseball until summer when TV is mostly reruns. This season I’ll be paying closer attention to the Astros and baseball in general.

            When fall arrived in Houston last year, the city was still in recovery from August’s devastating floods in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. Up and down the coast from Port Aransas to Port Arthur, people were still displaced from their homes. Baseball was the farthest thing from everyone’s minds. The Astros had mounted an incredible comeback after so many seasons in the basement. Even before spring training started, there was talk that this would be their year. That 2017 would be the year the Houston finally won a World Series.

            Three years before, Sports Illustrated made a bold prediction in their June 30, 2014 edition that the Astros would win it all in 2017. The edition even featured centerfielder George Springer in a rainbow Astros uniform on the cover. At the time, a Houston title was a pipe dream. As a beleaguered Houston sports fan of many years, the prospect seemed absurd. I remembered Houston’s last appearance in the 2005 World Series when the Astros were the National League champions. That year it was the White Sox in a sweep.

Before that, I remembered the chase for the 1986 pennant when the Astros lost in six to the New York Mets. My fondest memory of that era was when my mom brought me home a ticket stub autographed by Mike Scott. I remember one year I even got to go to an Astros/Padres game at the Astrodome with my cousins. If memory serves me correctly, they lost. Houston made it to the NLCS once before in 1980 but fell to the Phillies in five games.

Major League baseball in Houston was relatively new. Since 1888, the city had been home to the minor league Buffaloes, a farm team for the St. Louis Cardinals. In its last two years, the club served as a Triple-A affiliate for the Chicago Cubs. Ironically, the two would later be the Astros’ division rivals in the American League Central.  Attempts to bring Major League Baseball fell short when the Houston Sports Association tried and failed to start the Continental League to compete with National and American Leagues.

The Houston Sports Association was a team spearheaded by local business leaders George Kirksey, Craig Cullinan, and R.E. “Bob” Smith. They recruited county Judge Roy Hoffeinz to help with the effort. In 1960, after the Continental League folded, and the Buffs owner refused to sell the team to the HSA, hopes of Major League Baseball looked bleak.

Then, in October of that year, the National League granted Houston an expansion franchise. The Colt 45s and the New York Mets would start play in the 1962 season. Just a year before, the American League granted an expansion franchise to the Anaheim Angels and the Washington Senators. The only thing that stood in the Houston Sports Association’s way was the Buffs territorial rights. This time the HSA was successful, and the Buffs were now the farm team for the Colt 45s.

The Buffaloes played their last minor league season in Houston before shipping out to Oklahoma City where they became the 89ers and later the Dodgers. On opening day in 1962, the Houston Colt 45s made their debut at Colt Stadium. When the team moved into the Harris County Domed Stadium for the 1965 season, they were renamed the Houston Astros and the stadium was dubbed the Astrodome. The team played there until 1999 and started the 2000 season in Enron Field at Union Station.

In all that time, Houston had only attained success in their own division. Most of the time if the Astros made it into the playoffs, they usually never got beyond the wild card or divisional series. The years between those runs for the pennant were lackluster at best. I was ever hopeful that I would some day see the Astros finally win the pennant. Most years I found myself cheering for whoever the under dog was in the World Series.

The city of Houston was still riding high on the fact they had just hosted Super Bowl 51 in January. This time the city was better prepared and better organized than when they hosted the event in 2004. The last time Houston had seen a championship was the Comets dynastic championship run between 1997 and 2000 as the reigning WNBA champs. Before that, the Rockets won back to back championships in 1994 and 1995 but fell short for a third title in 1996.

The only baseball championship Houston had seen was the Rice Owls College World Series win in 2003. With the subsequent retirement of first baseman Jeff Bagwell in 2005, and Second baseman Craig Biggio in 2007, the Astros’ outlook was dim. It reminded me of the rebuilding years after the ’86 pennant run. Nolan Ryan and Jose Cruz were traded away in ’88. Mike Scott retired in ‘91 and Jim Deshaies departed the team the following year. Same thing happened after the 2005 pennant run, and in both cases, the teams were never the same.

Fast forward to the 2011 season when Jeff Luhnow was brought on board as general manager. The game had changed a lot since the 2005 World Series debacle. Scouting was no longer about how well the player played, or how his stats looked on paper. In 2003 Michael Lewis published Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The book proposed a more analytical approach to evaluating a player. This method proved successful for the Oakland A’s, who made it into the playoffs two years in a row in the early 2000s.

Luhnow employed these methods at the Cardinals’ front office and was brought on board by new owner Jim Crane. The following years were not the best seasons for the Astros, but the tides soon turned. Ben Reiter, who authored the article Astro-Matic: Houston’s Grand Experiment in 2014, claimed that if the farm team continued to produce quality players, the Astros would be on track to win a World Series by 2017.

At the time, it didn’t seem possible to me that Houston could really win the pennant. The idea that measuring a player’s success by looking beyond their physical prowess and statistics blew my mind. After a string of bad seasons, I still had my doubts. Then, I kept up with the Astros as much as I could over the 2017 season. I’d seen this before as a Houston fan. Season starts out great, then they run out of gas. In July, ahead of the All-Star Game, Houston reached 60 wins, a rare milestone only achieved by five other teams in more than thirty years. Then there was the post All-Star slump, but my doubt slowly faded.

Houston’s prospects to win it all started to look good. Then disaster struck in August when Harvey inundated much of Houston and the surrounding area with as much as five feet of water in some places. In the spirit of giving, Astros players pitched in and helped the relief effort. With Houston still under water, the team played their first post-hurricane series versus the Texas Rangers at Tropicana Stadium in St. Petersburg many miles from home.

Astros president Reid Ryan approached the Rangers about switching places with the Rangers for their two series. Houston would go to Arlington for the August series, and the Rangers would come to Minute Maid in September. The Rangers’ front office wanted both series played in Arlington. The backlash on social media was almost instantaneous and the Rangers lost face. With Houston still in recovery mode, the Astros’ next series would be against the Mets. The games were tentatively set to be played in Florida, but mayor Sylvester Turner insisted the team return home and help Houston begin rebuilding.

The Astros’ prospects for the post-season looked questionable toward the end of August. Then, everything came together. Justin Verlander was traded from Detroit and Carlos Correa and Lance McCullers came off the disabled list. In September, Houston won the American League West division title. As the month rolled on toward October, the Astros reached another milestone whe

n they became the third team in the league to reach a hundred wins. This was the first time since 1998 that the Astros had a season of over a hundred wins.

With the start of the playoffs, Houston looked to be in the driver’s seat. First up with be the AL East division winners Boston Red Sox. I had a feeling this would be a tough matchup, but the Astros came out swinging in game one. Game two put Houston in the win column again and it appeared the Red Sox would be swept. The series moved back to Boston where the Red Sox handily won game three. I was disappointed, but game three was even tighter and the Astros won the next game to move on to the American League Championship Series.

While Cleveland and New York duked it out, I asked around at work at who they liked out of the two. We talked about who would be the easier opponent in the ALCS. The consensus was that Cleveland was the easier team to beat. The Indians proved that to be true when they lost the series to the Yankees in five games. I knew that New York would be a lot harder to beat than Boston. This was the team who’d won many titles in the past, and they would not go down without a fight. At that point, I thought the Astros’ hopes were lost, but deep down I had a feeling they could pull this off.

Ever since the first home game after Harvey, the Astros sported Houston Strong patches on their uniforms. Now was their chance to prove that to the world. If we could overcome Hurricane Harvey, then the New York Yankees would be nothing. The Astros won the first two games of the series at home. I hoped this would be a sign of things to come, but I was doubtful when the Yankees won the next three in New York. When the series returned to Houston, the Yankees appeared to be headed to another World Series with only two games left.

Then Verlander and Morton shut down New York in the last two games of the series and Houston won the American League title. I was stunned because I never expected them to beat the mighty Yankees. Now Houston faced the other hundred-win team in the league – the Los Angeles Dodgers. This would be a match for the ages.

The Dodgers had not reached the World Series since 1988 when they faced the Athletics who were led by rookies Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire.  This was Houston’s second appearance in the World Series and their first as an American League team. The last time Houston and Los Angeles faced off in the postseason was in 1981, when the Dodgers won the Fall Classic. There was a lot at stake here besides bragging rights and the title. The Astros had given Houston something to be hopeful for after losing so much.

I was beside myself when Houston made it to the World Series. As the series heated up and Houston went back and forth between winning and losing, I started to ask myself if they could do it. Again, I turned to the people at work and even they had their doubts. The Astros turned the corner in game five of the World Series. The ensuing five-hour slug fest was a see-saw game that the Astros 13-12 in extra innings. The series returned to Los Angeles where the Astros won the last two games and clinched the World Series title.

I admit I was emotional when I came home from work that night and found out they’d won. After many years of watching the Astros go home empty handed at the end of the season, they finally won. There wasn’t any rioting in the streets, but plenty of people leaving Minute Maid Park were jubilant that the Astros had finally won. The absurd prospect of that June 2014 Sports Illustrated article didn’t seem so far-fetched now. Probably my favorite moment was the victory parade and how it felt like the entire city came out to congratulate the Astros.