QUIET TIME
Astros won’t have to hear boos for a while after Game 7 loss
SAN DIEGO — The Astros spent this odyssey of a season as baseball's biggest villains.
When Aledmys Diaz flied out with a runner on first to end Game 7 of the AL Championship Series, the bad guys finally lost.
Ridiculed, roasted and ripped all year long after the revelation of the franchise's sign-stealing tactics in previous seasons, the Astros still summoned enough October heart and poise to reach the verge of another World Series. Manager
Dusty Baker's club even came agonizingly close to matching the biggest playoff comeback in baseball history in a wild ALCS.
“The legacy of this group is that these guys are ballplayers, and these guys are men,” said Baker, who took over the team in January. “They've been through a whole bunch other than on the ballfield, and these guys can forget whatever problems that they've had that's out there and come together as a group. These guys will be forever friends.”
Houston fell behind early and never caught up in a 4-2 loss to Tampa Bay in Game 7 on Saturday night, coming up short of an astonishing series comeback after three consecutive victories.
If fans are allowed back in most stadiums in 2021, this tarnished franchise probably won't hear the end of 2020 anytime soon — but the Astros who return next season plan to greet the condemnation with mental toughness.
“I think we showed the kind of team we are,” said Lance McCullers Jr., who pitched four-hit ball into the fourth inning as the Game 7 starter.
“We weren't on a revenge tour,” McCullers added. “That's not what this was. This was just a bunch of guys coming together and wanting to play damn good baseball and wanting to go to another World Series. That's what this was. We fell short of our goal, but a lot of growth and a lot of impressive people stepped up.”
After winning two of the previous three AL pennants and the 2017 World Series championship, the Astros played the entire season under a large, dark cloud after the revelations of the scope of the team's scheme to steal signs with a center-field camera and relay them to batters, partly by banging a trash can.
The Astros' wild year began in January with the firings of manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow. But several Astros veterans from those tainted seasons remain on the team, and the players weren't sanctioned.
They reported to spring training in February only to face widespread condemnation from their fellow major leaguers as the team that every other team loved to hate.