Rookie’s first-game collar aside, long-term prognosis appears brighter for franchise
The Astros have been part of our world since 1962.
They’ve been to the World Series only once in 54 seasons.
On a night when a legendary franchise with 27 championship rings safely stored inside its jewelry box visited Minute Maid Park, your local ballclub had just 10 playoff seasons to its name. There are more community leaders billboards (12) inside your downtown baseball stadium than past postseason hopes. It’s a little much to ask one man to change all that, even if he is Alex Bregman. He’s only 22. He was drafted 13 months ago. He played just 62 games at Class AA and had the honor of being a Fresno Grizzlie for only 18 contests.
But if this huge Jim Crane-Jeff Luhnow experiment eventually strikes gold, we’ll remember Alex Bregman Day for years. Make that decades.
Just like Carlos Correa Day. Just like when George Springer finally brought hope back to these Astros.
Think it was a coincidence that Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte were back at the ballpark on the same day?
Figure the following was just a random act of Mother Nature? As I drove to the stadium Monday, lightning kept striking across a black sky. The dark clouds immediately parted, and bright sunshine coated Minute Maid’s roof as soon as I stared up at Bregman’s new home. No way, Jose. Because the 6-foot, 180-pound Bregman is the next huge piece. Altuve, Correa, Springer and the new kid, playing third base and hitting sixth.
“We had to be pretty bad for a few years to get to these players,”
manager A.J. Hinch said before his Astros fell 2-1 and Bregman went 0-for-4 in his MLB debut.
Four enormous faces are draped across the stadium’s exterior wall. (The Astros had to squeeze in 2015 American League Cy Young winner Dallas Keuchel.) One day soon, Bregman could be the fifth.
Big night for mom
“Oh my gosh. I don’t have words. It’s so special. … Hopefully, this is just the start of something really, really cool.”
That was Bregman’s mom, Jackie, describing what it was like to know her son would be known as an official major leaguer for the rest of his life.
It could have been an overhyped #AstrosTwitter the last few weeks, which has been on a sugar high ever since the No. 2 overall pick of the 2015 amateur draft got within a plane flight of a revived baseball town. Or the electric vibe inside Minute Maid as reporters stood around just waiting for Bregman to do something for the first time (pick up his glove, throw to first, eat Springer’s candy) and a legion of clicking cameras literally followed his every move.
“I really think the infatuation with what’s going to happen with him is greater on the outside than it is on the inside. I want him to get through (Monday),” Hinch said. “This is a kid that’s going to join our team. He’s not going to be our team.” Oh, really? Bregman vacuumed up his first grounder, then completed a baseball life circle by smoothly throwing out once-loved, nowbooed Carlos Beltran. His second chance came an inning later. Mark Teixeira bounced a roller down the third-base line. Bregman raced forward, gobbled up the offering like a pro’s pro, threw across his body without pausing, and looked like a younger version of Luis Valbuena (who now plays first, by the way).
It became even more Hollywood when the Astros’ new No. 2 — Derek Jeter was Bregman’s boyhood hardball hero — grabbed a bat.
Minute Maid stood as one, cheering the future and all the playoff flags that might follow. Bregman skied a shot to left field, and even his first out drew appreciative applause.
Houston almost instantly became the third-largest city in the country when Bregman lifted a neargrand slam to deep right field in the sixth.
“It’s awesome. It’s what you dream about. The team that they have here already is unbelievable.”
That was a kid from Albuquerque, N.M., describing what it’s like to suddenly be one of 25 Astros in a division and pennant race at the same time. And knowing he doesn’t have to carry Crane’s 2016 club — the hottest in MLB since May 1 — by himself.
Altuve, Correa, Springer and Bregman are all 26 or younger. Four-ninths of the Astros’ everyday lineup could be around for a long while.
“I’m here just to keep my mouth shut and try and help the team win games,” Bregman said. “That’s it. I don’t care where I play.”
Do Bill O’Brien’s Texans need a left fielder?
Gurriel coming soon
Bregman’s expected to soon make the grass in front of the Crawford Boxes his new bedroom. With the imminent addition of Cuban free agent Yulieski Gurriel (third base, mid-August), one of the best prospects in MLB will have to make another major transition while Altuve campaigns for an MVP award and the Astros attempt to pull a reverse-script story line against the Rangers.
There will be pressure, pressure and more pressure. Local expectations and national eyeballs. And while Correa and Springer look super-sharp in orange and blue, Jon Singleton, A.J. Reed and Colin Moran are recent reminders that hitting a small white object with a slender piece of wood is often the most difficult feat for an athletic human being to pull off.
“His sanctuary will be the three hours (after) the game starts,” Hinch said.
Barely a year after Correa went public, Bregman arrived in Houston on Monday.
If the Astros pull off this decade what the Yankees used to do — Champagne in the fall, championship October fading into November — Bregman Day will have been another memorable step on the way to a Series that ends the right way.
An experiment that has already featured 111 losses in one year began with titles and rings — multiple, plural — in mind.
Alex Bregman, starter for the world champion Astros?
Maybe one day, Houston.