Longtime Astros, Red Sox fans recall losing ruts before win streaks
There aren’t too many teams who have dominated Major League Baseball more than the Boston Red Sox and Astros in recent memory. The latter is now playing in its fifth straight American League Championship Series, and the former has won four World Series since 2004.
It wasn’t always this way. At Game 2 of the ALCS Saturday, fans of both teams remembered the dog days when the Astros were strangers to the playoffs, and the 86 years that the Red Sox struggled under the “Curse of the Bambino.”
“We just enjoyed watching the Astros and enjoyed watching baseball, and when they were losing and losing it didn’t really matter,” said Emma Kahanek, 63, of Pearland. “If you’re a true fan, you’ll be with them forever.”
The Astros, founded in 1962 as the Houston Colt .45’s, waited 18 years for their first playoff appearance in 1980, and didn’t make their first World Series until 2005, when they lost to the Chicago White Sox.
Twelve of their 15 playoff appearances came since the Killer B’s era of the late 1990s, when Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio powered the team. Half of those belong to the current core led by Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa.
“You just have to be patient,” said Randy Davis, 69. His grandson, who is 7, has come to every Astros opening day for the last five years and doesn’t know a losing team.
“They might be a little bit spoiled; they haven’t had to go through what we went through,” Davis said.
Longtime Red Sox fans were even more familiar with losing, suffering a World Series drought
“I sit there on Facebook and I think today’s generation are the most spoiled people on the planet, honest to God.” Ted Guglielmo
that lasted between 1918 and 2004 and was second only to the Chicago Cubs in terms of length. The past 20 years, though, have been kind to Boston, with 12 championships among the Red Sox, New England Patriots, Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins.
“I sit there on Facebook and I think today’s generation are the most spoiled people on the planet, honest to God,” said Ted Guglielmo, 55, who recently moved to Houston from western Massachusetts. “If they don’t win a World Series, it’s like the end of the world.”
Despite the years without a playoff win, lifelong Astros fans still look back on the team’s early years with fondness, and appreciate the winning seasons all the more.
“My brothers always liked the Astros so we always watched them,” said Gracie Fletcher, 65, who grew up in Corpus Christi. “We would make the trip all the way up to the Astrodome when Nolan Ryan was pitching, and it was always this big thing.”
Cindy Morgan, 63, was raised by a mother “who’d watch the Astros even when they’d lose 100 games.” She died in 2015, two years before the team would claim its first and only World Series title.
“We think she had something to do with it. We still get tearyeyed when things happen,” Morgan said.
Still, the sustained success of recent years hasn’t led to overconfidence for every young fan. Randy Davis’ 7-year-old grandson, Davis, doesn’t expect the Astros to win the World Series this year.
“They’re losing 9-3 right now!” he said, when asked about it in the sixth inning of Saturday’s game.