Astros have the bang; Dodgers’ season ends with a whimper
On the ground floor of Dodger Stadium, inside a makeshift room set up for press briefings, a television relayed the joy emanating from the field outside. Astros manager A.J. Hinch climbed onto a stage and declared Houston a city of champions. George Springer, the World Series MVP, stood next to a Chevy truck. Carlos Correa proposed to his girlfriend.
The images flickered across the screen in the moments immediately after a 5-1 defeat ended the Dodgers’ season in Game 7 of the World Series. After a historic regular season and an idyllic path to their first National League pennant since 1988, the campaign of this group ended with a thud, with a disastrous start by hired gun Yu Darvish and a maddening performance by the offense. The combination allowed the Astros to dance and spray champagne inside the Dodgers’ ballpark, long after the majority of the 54,124 fans had filed toward the exits.
Inside the press room, an MLB official signaled to a staffer: When Dodgers manager Dave Roberts enters the room, “kill the TVs.” On cue, Roberts entered and slumped into a chair. He sighed and waited for questions.
George Springer blasted another one no one could touch. All the relief arms kept holding on. Orange covered the field in a stadium of silenced blue. And it was finally done.
For Houston. After 55 seasons of always falling short.
In the year of chaos and destruction, recovery and absolute joy. Just two months after Hurricane Harvey flooded the city and Houston’s baseball team couldn’t play the grand old game at its own ballpark.
The 2017 Astros are World Series champions.
Really: They won it all. How sweet, crazy and beautiful it is.
“Going through Boston, going through New York, coming through Los Angeles and winning the World Series, it’s pretty unbelievable,” said manager A.J. Hinch, whose ridiculously fun, endlessly thrilling team downed the 104-win Dodgers 5-1 in Game 7 on Wednesday night.
It took 56 years for a franchise that began in 1962 to finally reach the pinnacle and feel all this before 54,124 at Dodger Stadium.
The tears. The full circle.
It takes 1980, ’86, 2004, ’05 and ’15 to truly understand what 2017 means to everyone who’s lived through, suffered with and been lifted by the orange and blue.
“This is for everybody that’s ever won this uniform,” said president Reid Ryan, as the tears flowed. “I was born here. I watched my dad [Nolan] play here .... The Astros’ DNA is in me. And seeing these guys accomplish something that no one’s ever been able to accomplish … I’m just so happy for them.”
In 1998, the Astros won a franchise-best 102 games, added an untouchable Randy Johnson at the trade deadline, then only won a single playoff game.
Even when the local nine made the World Series for the first time in 2005, they were blanked 4-0 by the White Sox.
So when these Astros did it this year, in the year of all years, they did it right.
The first team to ever beat the Red Sox and Yankees in the same playoffs; fighting off two elimination games just to reach the World Series. Then the Hollywood magic of Game 2 and the historic insanity of 5 hours and 17 minutes in Game 5 at Minute Maid Park. Finally, taking the first World Series Game 7 at Dodger Stadium by overcoming mighty Los Angeles, which featured the highest price tag in baseball and entered the postseason as the best team in the game.
The Dodgers only lost one playoff contest before the World Series. Then Clayton Kershaw and Co. ran into the gutsy, resilient team that refused to go away.
Hinch’s club walked into West Palm Beach, Fla., in February privately believing it could win the whole thing. After watching their city flooded by Harvey and knowing they were playing for so much more than themselves, these Astros came and took it for the first time.
Dating to spring training, the Astros played 210 games this year. On the final day of baseball in 2017 and the first day of November, they gave Houston its first major pro sports championship since the Rockets won it all in 1994-95.
Did you start counting outs the second it was 5-0 in the second inning of Game 7 and L.A. starter Yu Darvish was already done? You surely weren’t alone. This wasn’t the Cubs and the drought that lasted 108 years. But this was the Astros, and it was a long, long time coming. For a city that’s struggled so often to win the real, big thing, taking the title in 2017, the Year of Harvey, only made the dream that more real.
“I just wanted to be the last team standing,” Hinch said. “This trophy, this championship vibe that we’ve got going back to Houston will forever be a championship city.”
I could go on and on about a massive on-the-field rebuild and the lean, cheap years.
I already devoted too many stories to the hard pain of the 100-loss seasons and the fact that this club was a franchise-worst 51-111 just four years ago.
That was the past and that time is now gone.
This is 2017, when Houston’s baseball team is the best in the world, hoists a trophy filled with flags on an international stage, and features some of the best and brightest names in the game.
Even when the Dodgers forced a Game 7 in their own park, the Astros were strong, driven and cool enough to take it.
In a season when they won 101, took the AL West by 21 games, and then claimed 11 more in the playoffs for the greatest year in Astros history.
In a season when baseball returned to Houston after the flood waters that just kept rising and rising, and the greatest natural disaster in our city’s history.
September turned to October. October then kept stretching and stretching. And as the ALDS gave way to rallying from down 3-2 to overcome the Yankees in the ALCS, then erasing the Dodgers in the full seven in the World Series, a city slowly getting its life back fell so deeply in love with its baseball team.
Then on the first day of November, Houston’s recovery reached its highest peak and its baseball team was better than every other in the game.
You could truly believe in this club. They weren’t going to let you down.
After 56 years, you can finally say it, Houston: Your Astros are world champions.