CELEBRATION
Astros’ first title is a triumph for team, city
This year, especially this year, Houston needed this. Reflecting on a historic season and its culimation.
LOS ANGELES — Say it once, softly and slowly. Say it again, a little bit louder. Now shout it for all to hear. The Houston Astros are 2017 World Series champions.
In the 56th season of Major League Baseball in Houston, there’s no need for the Astros or their fans to shrug their shoulders, drop their heads and mutter “Wait ’til next year.” Wednesday night, with Houston’s 5-1 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium in a historic Game 7 of the World Series, next year has arrived on the banks of Buffalo Bayou.
George Springer, the World Series Most Valuable Player, drove in three runs with a double and his fifth home run of the series, and five Astros pitchers, climaxed by four clutch innings from Charlie Morton, held the Dodgers to six hits to take the series, four games to three.
The long-awaited 27th out of Game 7, Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager’s groundout, came at 8:58 p.m. Pacific Time, and Houston’s team swarmed the field to celebrate the first World Series championship in franchise history.
Minutes later, in the storied hollow of Chavez Ravine, on a stage in front of the Astros’ first-base dugout, it was the Houston Astros, for the first time in franchise history, accepting the Commissioner’s Trophy as champions of Major League Baseball.
“You know what, Houston, we’re a championship city,” manager A.J. Hinch said from the awards podium. “This team loves playing in Houston, and we’re going to love bringing this World Series trophy back to Houston.”
The Astros’ orange jersey tops bore the logo the team has worn since Hurricane Harvey ravaged Houston in late August — the team’s star H
logo and the word “Strong.”
Houston Strong has been a beacon of resilience, and now, it’s a symbol of triumph.
“We take great pride in being there for Houston at that time,” Hinch said. “Obviously they responded by falling in love with this team. Our September was incredible, October was even better and (in) November, we’re pretty good.”
The Astros’ journey toward a championship began in failure — three consecutive 100-loss seasons from 2011, the final year the ballclub was owned by Drayton McLane, through 2013 as the Astros under new owner Jim Crane and general manager Jeff Luhnow disassembled and rebuilt the franchise.
They used new school metrics to develop old school talent — Jose Altuve’s tenacity, Carlos Correa’s grace, Springer’s power, Alex Bregman’s channeled ferocity, Marwin Gonzalez’s versatility and the arms of pitchers Dallas Keuchel and Lance McCullers, to mention a few.
The new ideas had skeptics, but there were believers, too: Sports Illustrated in the spring of 2014 heralded the Astros as “Your 2017 World Series Champs” for their innovative approach. A few months later, the Astros hired Hinch as manager, and another piece of the puzzle was in play — a former player, schooled in the basics of the game but also schooled in psychology — for a new type of baseball.
“We had some rough years, but we stuck to our plan,” Luhnow said. “We did it. We knew we had a plan that could get us here and we got it. World championship.” Everything goes right
Even with that, an awful lot had to go right for the Astros to emerge from 111-game losers in 2013 to 101-game winners in 2017.What if Justin Verlander had pondered another minute or two whether to accept a deadline-hour trade to Houston, when indecision would have rendered him ineligible for playoff triumphs that followed against the Red Sox and Yankees that helped carry the Astros to the World Series?
What if three 100-loss seasons in 2011-13 had soured Altuve, Keuchel and Gonzalez rather than tempered them into resilient, productive veterans? What if the Astros had passed in the draft on Correa as they did years ago on Derek Jeter?What if Bregman, whose knack for big plays at bat and in the field emerged during the playoffs, was howling at the moon in anything other than an Astros uniform? What would a young Houston clubhouse be without the veteran leadership of catcher Brian McCann and designated hitter Carlos Beltran, who left Houston after 2004 but returned to serve as quiet consigliere to Altuve, Correa and others?
And, yes, what of Hurricane Harvey?
As others recall this season, much will be said of how much the Astros meant to Houston, and Houston to the Astros.
“Man, we wore that patch and we wore it proudly,” said Lance McCullers’ who started Game 7. “The people of Houston were never far from our minds.”
The Astros now take their place among the relatively short list of Houston big league team champions, including the NBA Rockets (1994-95), Major League Soccer Dynamo (2005-06), WNBA Comets (1997-2000) and the original and revived Aeros hockey teams.
The 2017 team now has fulfilled the promise of the 1997-2005 teams led by Hall of Famers Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio, Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt that won four division titles, two wild cards and the 2005 National League pennant, and the 1980s teams of Mike Scott, Jose Cruz, J.R. Richard and Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan.
‘We won the Game 7’
From earlier years, Houston remains wall-to-wall with fans who remember the names of Roy Hofheinz and R.E. “Bob” Smith, who provided the imagination and money to bring the team to Houston in 1962. That generation watched Bob Aspromonte, Jim Wynn, Larry Dierker, Joe Morgan and others through clouds of mosquitoes that descended upon the late, unlamented Colt Stadium and, in 1965, gaped in wonder at their first glimpse inside the Astrodome, the Eighth Wonder of the World.
From fans to players, all now can take pride in the 2017 Astros, whether they wore the smoking pistol uniform of the original Colt .45s, the shooting star of the early Astrodome era, the wildly popular rainbows of the 1980s and the blue-and-gold and brick red uniforms that preceded the return of orange and blue as the team’s primary colors in 2012.
Appropriately, it was Altuve, who was there for the bad times, who fielded the grounder that led to the final out.
“I think this is the happiest moment in my life in baseball,” he said. “I always believed that we can make it. I thank God for the opportunity to be here. In a Game 7. And we won the Game 7. So I thank God for the opportunity to become World Series champions.”
Four years ago, the Astros were laughingstocks. Now they have beaten baseball’s royalty: the Boston Red Sox in five games, the New York Yankees in seven and the Dodgers in six.
They have, in the words of the team’s marketing slogan, earned it.
Only one thing remains to be said, and it can be spoken in any of the 145 languages spoken daily across America’s most diverse region.
The Houston Astros are 2017 World Series champions.
Say it.