BEST WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH
Astros exemplify how titles are never guaranteed due to nature of baseball
Even with the loss, the Astros’ trip to the World Series was a notable accomplishment. • Two years ago, the notable accomplishment was a monumental achievement.
• They won it all. It was glorious. Spectacular. Amazing.
These aren’t just adjectives. Unless you’ve spent the last 15 years in Boston, championship parades are infrequent.
When we say the best baseball team doesn’t always win the World Series, it isn’t an excuse for the best team not to win the World Series.
The nature of the sport makes it so.
A college football team could not beat an NFL team. The worst NBA team would run through the best college team.
A collegiate hockey champion that won the Frozen Four would finish frozen last in the NHL.
But MLB teams lose to college teams all the time in exhibition games.
The story of the Washington Nationals winning the 2019 World Series wasn’t about some hardscrabble underdog that prevailed because fate was on its side.
That the Astros were almost certainly the better team matters not. The Nats’ victory wasn’t a miracle. It was an upset but not
undeserved.
As special a team as the Astros were this season — best record in baseball — the Nationals outplayed them in the final week of the season, the final game of the season.
It hurts.
“Let’s be honest, there’s 28 other teams that would love to have our misery today,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “We play to get here. We play to have an opportunity to win it all. And I just told our team, it’s hard to put into words and remember all the good that happened because right now we feel as bad as you can possibly feel.
“I’m proud of these guys. I’m proud of the season. It’s impossible to call a season in which you reach Game 7 of the World Series and have the lead going into the seventh inning as not good. It was an incredible season for us.
“It feels really bad. This is going to sting for a really long time, and it should. But when the dust settles, we’ll be very proud of the season we had, albeit one win short.”
The disappointment is understandable, but this is a franchise that is on a roll.
If a few years ago you presented an Astros fan with the idea that the team would have a three-year run of a World Series title, a trip to the American League Championship Series and a World Series loss, that fan would have been ecstatic.
It would be better if the Astros had done it in progressive order — trip to the ALCS, loss in the World Series, championship.
Instead, the World Series win in 2017 was the first in order.
This year’s team, which lost the World Series to Washington in seven games, was better than that one but less accomplished. And 2017 was a better story. Hurricane Harvey devastated the city. The recovery period, as difficult as it was for many, coincided with the Astros’ playoff run.
Whether it was a distraction or diversion, the MLB postseason hit at the right time.
The Astros had never won a championship. The city rallied to combat the hurricane on lifesaving levels, then many were swept up into the Astros’ quest. It was magical.
Every game. Every series. Crazy us, thinking that since the 2019 entry was better than the 2017 team, a parade was inevitable.
Every round. Every series. That isn’t the nature of baseball. Plus, the Nationals had a lot to say about that.
The Dodgers put up a great fight in the 2017 World Series, which also went seven games. The Astros could easily have lost that one. Just as they could have won this one.
The memories from two years ago would be less meaningful had Los Angeles won the final game of the series.
The Nationals reveled in victory on the Minute Maid Park infield following their Game 7 win Wednesday, thanks to a handful of plays that separated the two teams.
As desperate as Houston fans were for a major sports champion, the 2017 victory got them excited about the future. Especially considering how young that team was.
But it wasn’t easy. It takes some luck to win a World Series. Good luck was not on the Astros’ side this postseason.
Fate sent several of the Astros’ hard-line drives directly to the Nationals’ gloves. Those screaming liners found grass in 2017. The Astros seemed to be clutch hitters then.
They weren’t better than they are now. They just won it all.
This year, they didn’t.