The comforts of home
HELPING TO HEAL: Title run proves a tonic for storm-weary sports fans
Hurricane Harvey left wounds no baseball game can repair. Thousands lost their homes; dozens lost their lives. And yet, two months later, as Houston prepares to host the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of the World Series, fans still picking through the damp remains of flooded-out houses are looking to their beloved Astros for a sign of hope.
Like the Saints after Katrina, the Red Sox after the Boston Marathon bombing and the Yankees after 9/11, Astros players and coaches say they are on a mission to give storm-weary fans something to celebrate.
After rallying for an extra-innings win in Game 2, the team returns to Houston three wins away from the first championship in its history.
“I hope they can do it,” said Kevin Martinez, a 42-year-old lifelong fan. “After all that my wife and I have been through, we needed something to lift our spirits.”
He believes a World Series victory could do that, even if it can’t take away what happened in Au-
gust, when Harvey battered the region with record-setting rain. At first, the murky floodwaters came slowly up Martinez’s street, flowing out of Cedar Bayou in his Baytown neighborhood. Then it jumped the curb and into the yard. Soon it was trickling under the front door and then kept coming, inch by inch, until Martinez and his wife were swimming out a window and flagging down a stranger in a boat.
The emotions that came in the hours, days and weeks that followed were shared by hundreds of thousands across the region: Panic. Stress. Disappointment. Fatigue. Depression.
And now, hope? Because of baseball?
“Without a doubt,” said Dr. Asim Shah, the vice chair for community psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. “When a fan becomes emotionally invested in a team, sporting events can have a profound psychological impact.”
Worry to jubilation
Entire books were written about the role the New Orleans Saints played in helping that city recover following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a feel-good story that culminated in the team’s 2009 Super Bowl victory. National sports writers already are spinning a similar narrative in Houston — only, the Astros are playing for a championship two months after one of the worst storms in U.S. history, not four years.
The players know what a win would mean. Wednesday night, after Marwin Gonzalez hit a game-tying home run in the ninth inning, he emphatically pointed to the “Houston Strong” patch on his jersey — the one the team has been sporting since Harvey.
At that moment, 1,600 miles away in Baytown, where Martinez was hosting a watch party packed with neighbors also affected by the storm, he and his friends leaped out of their seats and screamed. The mood shifted after that, he said, from worry to jubilation.
The psychological effect is amplified when a team is playing for a championship so soon after collective tragedy, Shah said, and also by the fact that the ball club has never won a title in its 56-year history. Winning, Shah said, could fill hundreds of thousands of fans with a sense of accomplishment — as if they personally batted in the game-winning run.
That may seem irrational, but there is a scientific explanation.
“We know that, when fans are emotionally invested in a team, winning increases testosterone, and in turn, that increases dopamine,” Shah said. “Dopamine hits the reward center in the brain, and when that happens, you feel better about yourself. Your self-esteem actually improves.”
There also is a flip side, Shah said, one he confronts frequently as chief of psychiatry at Ben Taub Hospital and director of community behavioral health for Harris Health System: Cheering for a losing team — especially one that gets your hopes up only to dash them in the end — can take a negative toll. Testosterone drops. Dopamine drops. And fans walk away feeling bad about themselves.
Joining the bandwagon
After a disappointing loss, studies have shown that fans are more likely to eat unhealthy food, more likely to drink too much alcohol, and more likely to feel depressed or angry. Astros fans aren’t going to want to hear it — especially after Wednesday’s thrilling victory — but Shah is encouraging people to begin mentally preparing for a loss. Just in case.
“We need to acknowledge our feelings and control our feelings,” said Shah, who was at Minute Maid Park for an earlier playoff game and admits to hopping on the Astros bandwagon. “We need to remember that being angry, being sad, being upset, that’s all normal. But it doesn’t mean that we need to be destructive.”
Coping with defeat
Martinez is not ready to think about the possibility. Like most Astros fans, he has seen enough losses to know how that feels. He could teach a master’s class in how to cope after a crushing defeat: The 1986 National League Championship Series extrainnings failure, the 2005 World Series sweep, the first-round collapse in 2015.
This year feels different, he said, and not only because of the group of talented young players.
Two months after Harvey, the work to restore his home is only now beginning. He doesn’t know how long it will be before he and his wife can move out of the tiny apartment they’ve been renting since the storm. But he knows this: He has tickets to Game 4 on Saturday — a World Series game, in his hometown — and he’s hoping for a win.
“After what everyone in this town has been through,” Martinez said, “I feel like we deserve it.”