GRAND UNVEILING
In home opener, Astros give fans a moment to remember as World Series flag is unfurled
The black curtain covering the 2017 World Series banner didn’t want to let go.
Instead of falling gracefully Monday night to unveil the hard-won banner to a ballpark full of Astros fans, it hung on until someone climbed up a ladder and poked it with a long stick.
Astros fans didn’t want to let go of World Series glory, either. They showed up by the thousands to the team’s home opener Monday against the Baltimore Orioles — proud, loud and ready to help the Astros defend their title.
Game time was after 6 p.m., but the 42,675 fans who were lucky enough to get tickets to the sellout started flowing into the park by early afternoon.
They waited in the sun to go through security lines. They loaded up on beer and hot dogs, chicken tenders and giant sodas. Fans wearing Astros jerseys swarmed the official team store to buy more jerseys.
And Jamie Gonzalez stared down at the sidewalk until he found the engraved brick that bore his name outside the center-field exit. He and his best friend, Luis Luna, grinned down at it and pulled out their phones.
“That’s awesome,” Gonzalez said, putting his bottle of Bud-
weiser down to kneel for a photo with the brick that bore his family’s name.
The engraved brick was a Christmas gift from his wife, Valerie. Monday’s game was the Corpus Christi fan’s first home opener, but Gonzalez said he’s been an Astros fan since “Day One.”
Luna, too, has been going to games since the Astrodome days, back when he was kid. He was gushing with excitement Monday.
“I’m just excited to see how good we’re going to be.”
Before a single pitch was thrown, fans got one more chance to celebrate the team’s first World Series victory.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have been waiting for this moment for 56 loooonng years,” an announcer intoned with gravity as a team of Clydesdales clomped past first base, pulling the 2017 World Series trophy for all to admire. By the time the curtain finally unveiled the banner, the orange-clad crowd was nearing a let’s-play-ball frenzy.
Herag Frankian, 35, sat with a group of friends on the top row of section 405, which required scaling three escalators and then 76 shallow steps to perch nosebleed-high above third base.
His friends will attest: Frankian, a longtime, long-suffering Astros backer, predicted last year’s World Series victory five years ago. Still, he won’t take any victories for granted this season, and he knows better than to expect a repeat of 2017.
“I’ve been a Houston fan my whole life, so I have zero expectations,” Frankian said. “I do feel good, but I don’t feel great.”
He shrugged. “It’s the Houston in me.”
Still, it was a good night to be an Astros fan. The Astros are defending World Series champs and expected to be an even stronger team this season.
Fans showed up in T-shirts that said “Hard-Earned Hardware” and “October Proven.” The old-school fans pulled out their old Nolan Ryan and Craig Biggio jerseys, but thousands more wore jerseys with ALTUVE on the back, or CORREA, or SPRINGER.
Kenny Johnson, 53, wore a homemade crown that held a replica of the World Series trophy. As he stood in a crowded ballpark corridor, people turned to stare at him.
“That is a sweet crown,” said a man with long hair and two beers.
“That’s what’s up,” said another.
Johnson said his friend Charles Tucker made the oneof-a-kind crown using slender wooden dowels and gold spray paint. Tucker was planning to wear the crown during the game, but he let Johnson wear it for a while before the game started: “He was getting too much attention.”
Chris Walton wasn’t hard to spot in the fifth row, just past third base. He wore a giant orange foam cowboy hat and an orange plastic chain around his neck that held the license plate from his own Jeep. The specialty plate, which he ordered just after the World Series last year, reads “EARNT.”
Walton, 35, is a longtime Astros fan. So is his wife, Angela.
“She made sure I was a baseball fan before we could date,” Walton said. “One of our first dates together was to an Astros game, and now we’ve been married for 14 years.”
The Waltons splurged on season tickets this year and hope to go to a couple of games a week. They know what’s at stake this season.
“Expectations are so much higher this year than they ever were last year,” Walton said.
“Last year, if they’d have (just) made the playoffs, I’d have been happy. This year? Unnhh. If they don’t go to the championship series and go at least six games with the Yankees, it’s a loss.”
But Walton, who stuck with the Astros during the lean years, knows how to support his team.
“I will totally be here, and I will lose my voice every single day if I have to,” he said. “Whatever it takes.”