THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Fans find ‘a little bit of sunshine’ in Astros’ run to World Series to distract from Harvey cleanup
Carlos Perez awoke at 5 a.m. Friday in the guest bedroom he and his wife have been sharing for the past two months and then checked the running todo list on his phone. It seemed to have grown overnight.
He still needed to get a structural engineer out to his flooddamaged house in Cypress. He needed to stop by the bank to deposit the latest insurance check. He needed to pay the contractor for the new appliances they’d ordered to replace those destroyed in Hurricane Harvey. And he needed to meet with a FEMA inspector.
Just 14 hours until the first pitch, he thought.
Perez, 43, and his 42-yearold wife, Alice, are among thousands in the Houston region looking to the Astros and the World Series for hope as they piece their lives together after Harvey. “A little bit of sunshine,” Perez said of the playoffs run, “to distract us from the stress.”
The last time Perez had tickets to see the Astros in the World Series, it was for Game 5 back in 2005 — but it never happened. The Chicago White Sox swept Houston
in four straight games, and the worthless ticket went into a box of souvenirs.
He climbed out of bed Friday, slipped on a bright-orange shirt and Astros cap, then grabbed the pair of standing-room-only tickets he’d bought online for $1,100 — yet another charge to the credit card, he said — before heading to work.
“The tickets were worth the cost,” Perez said. “I wasn’t going to miss another World Series, especially after all that we’ve been through.”
Disasters can strain even the strongest of marriages. After weeks of juggling work and repairs and endless calls with insurance adjusters, Perez and his wife were “at each other’s throats.” They needed a break. They needed baseball.
He just had to get through one more day of juggling.
Perez left work early to meet the inspector at the house at 10 a.m., then he ran a couple errands before picking up Alice at work. They stopped off to take a look at the progress at their house — it could be a few more months before the work is done — then he double checked the todo list on his phone.
“It seems like it never it ends,” he said. “I scratch off one item, then we add two more.”
‘Nice to have some wins’
Two months earlier, a stranger had pulled his boat up to their front door and carried them to higher ground after Cypress Creek jumped its banks and filled their house with water. Now they were weaving through traffic, listening to sports talk radio as they headed downtown.
Thousands of others were making similar commutes, leaving behind moldy homes, extended-stay hotels and stacks of drywall for one night at Minute Maid Park. On Friday, the stadium became a shelter of a different sort, a haven from the post-storm trauma.
Arora Perez, who lives near the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, had watched the water creep into her neighborhood before evacuating. She and her mother, Ann Ellis, whose home had also flooded, stood on the third-level hours before the first pitch Friday, taking it all in. “It’s just so wonderful,” Ellis said.
Since the flood, Joe Madden and his family have been watching Astros games on a TV setup on the bare concrete of his halfgutted house in the Candlelight Oaks neighborhood. Madden sprung for World Series tickets after the Astros won the pennant: “It’s nice to have some wins,” he said as fans filtered into the park, “especially at a time when we took a big loss.”
Across the ballpark, fans carried signs and T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Houston Strong,” the city’s post-Harvey rallying cry.
Carlos and Alice Perez made their way through security near center field, then headed for the team shop. They’d lost most of their Astros gear in the flood — items collected over three decades of fandom — and have been on the hunt for replacements.
They stopped for a beer. They posed for a selfie near left field. They reminisced about all the great games they’ve seen over the years. They’re the kind of fans who’ve been to every Astros home opener since 1999, but they haven’t had much time for baseball since the flood.
They haven’t had much time for each other. “We needed this,” Alice said. Perez grabbed her hand. “Friday nights,” he said, “used to be our date night.”
An hour later, as the Astros charged onto the field at the start of Game 3 of the 2017 World Series, Perez stood behind his wife and wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her on the top of the head.
His cellphone was in his pocket, and for at least one night, he wasn’t thinking about his to-do list.