‘DAD WOULD HAVE LOVED THIS’
World Series title helps fan fulfill family’s dreams
Charles Rice has the pennant his father bought him at his first Astros game.
It’s a classic — bright orange, with big block letters and a cartoon Astrodome — in an early ’90s aesthetic.
They played the Cubs that day, and Rice’s father, who died five years ago after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, wrote down everything that happened, right on the back of the fabric triangle.
“Charles went to his first Astros game today,” Rice recited Friday morning, as he leaned against the orange barricade strung up at the corner of Walker and Smith. “The Astros lost to the Cubs. Go figure. Charles ate popcorn and had a Sprite. He got an Astros starter jacket. His Uncle Joe and cousin Jennifer were there.”
Each memory from the day lives on thanks to the detailed account. And now, it hangs above Rice’s desk at his home in Los Angeles.
It hasn’t been easy, retaining the fandom that was instilled in him that day from more than a thousand miles away. But this year, Rice flew to 16 Astros home games and found seats at five of the World Series games. And he dropped an “Earn History” flag at his father’s grave marker while he was in town for games 3, 4 and 5.
“Going back and forth, the travel, it’s a lot,” said Rice, who flew in from L.A. early Friday morning and made it to downtown by 8 a.m. to grab a prime spot. He’ll be back in the air at 7 a.m. Saturday, returning home to Los Angeles. “I’m tired. My bank account is depleted, and I don’t regret any of it.”
But standing in the front row at the Astros’ first World Series game this season is where the 5-year-old boy from Meyerland who first pinned up that pennant all those years ago would hope his future self would be. And while the younger version of him would likely imagine his father at his side for this landmark moment, Rice feels like his dad is here somewhere. He has to be. “There was a moment, in Dodger Stadium, when Marwin Gonzalez hit the home run off Kenley Jansen,” Rice said, flashing back to the eighth inning of Game 2.
He’d been sitting in the stands next to his friend, waiting for a key moment. And when Gonzalez walked toward the plate, he felt something that told him to hold on, and keep the faith.
“I looked up, and I did a little prayer in my head, and I said, ‘Dad, if you’re watching this game and you have any sway up there, make something happen,’ ” he said.
It sounds cheesy, he said. And he’s not the guy to rest his faith in something that sounds cheesy. But what happened next gave him goose bumps.
“Dodger Stadium is outside, and it was hot as all get-out there,” he said. “And I felt this breeze, a warm breeze. And I turned to my friend and said, ‘Boom. It happened, it’s going to happen.’ And I don’t know, but it felt like it was my dad. In my head, I want to believe he was right there with me. And that’s why this team is special to me.”
There were rough years, before his father died, that included more bad days than good. He fell ill when Rice was a kid, and by the time he’d grown into early adulthood, Rice and his family made the decision to put his father in an assisted living home. It wasn’t easy.
But there was one trick Rice knew would get his father up and out of the home.
“The only thing that would motivate him to get out at the end was to watch Astros baseball,” he said. “That was the only thing that could get him out of the house.”
Sometimes, not even the Astros could do that, he said, just moments after Craig Biggio rolled by in the parade.
Clad in an orange Josh Reddick jersey, Rice has several favorites on the young Astros team. But it was Biggio rolling by that turned his eyelids pink as he fought back tears.
“I remember when Biggio had his final game. His retirement game. My dad was supposed to go to that with me,” Rice said.
He was in college then, and flew home for the weekend to attend that final game with his dad and best friend. But when he got to the hospital, his father, Larry, said he was too sick to go. Instead, he handed what should be his ticket to Rice’s friend and said the pair should go together.
It was the same friend Rice was with during Game 2, when he felt the zephyr that must have come from his father.
“I remember crying in the stadium then,” Rice said. “And after Game 7, when we won, I only got emotional when my buddy — the same guy — said, ‘You know your dad would have loved this.’”
Rice smiled. He scuffed the sole of his orange-and-blue shoes against the asphalt of the city street, littered with confetti.
“He would have loved it,” he said again. “And I think he did. I don’t know where he is, but I think he saw this today, and I’m sure my dad is celebrating up there somewhere.”