In wake of MLB season, I’ve got a confession: I dig the Astros

Saying farewell to the 2022 Major League Baseball season, let's start off with this: Did you ever find yourself throwing out a crazy opinion in a public setting and instantly regretting it? Like, the whole room goes silent? That's how it's been for the past six years at the 3-Dot Lounge, but it's time to come clean: The Houston Astros are welcome here any time.

They caught my eye in 2017, with all that style and panache, and I'm still a fan. Not like families passionately following the San Francisco Giants or San Francisco 49ers for generations; sportswriters adopt favorite teams or players until they're no longer a story, then it's on to the next thing. But the Astros have been a constant for me, right through the scandal that left them in a humiliated shambles.

People get a little jaded in this business, and that certainly applies to my 50 years of experience inside major-league locker rooms. You come to realize that cheating is part of the deal — routinely, every team. It tends to be a lot more subtle than steroid abuse or banging on trash cans, but as Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper said many years ago, “There isn't a player in this game who hasn't, at some time or another, done something he's not proud of.” The shenanigans date to 1951, when the New York Giants used a telescope to steal signs at the Polo Grounds, and realistically, “getting an edge” goes back to the game's invention.

When the Astros got nailed for their shameless thievery, they were portrayed as radical outliers on the scene. Dead wrong. I've heard countless insiders speak of rampant use of electronic surveillance and video rooms to illegally steal signs during that time. The Astros were the ones who got absurdly confident and took their practices into the realm of farce.

Still, I wasn't about to abandon what I'd enjoyed during the Astros' victory in the 2017 World Series. They had assembled a remarkable cast of endearing characters: Jose Altuve, appearing to be about 4 feet tall, absolutely fearsome with a bat in his hands. Josh Reddick, who looked to be straight off the set of “Justified.” George Springer with his leadoff homers and spectacular catches. The slashing cuts of Cuba's Yuli Gurriel at the plate. Two-way star Alex Bregman, who looks like the guy who shows you around Office Depot. And especially Carlos Correa, a magnificent shortstop who defiantly fought off the skeptics and helped keep the clubhouse spiritually united.

In the wake of the investigation and punishment, they showed up in the spring of 2020 exactly as before: Tough, sound and flat-out superior in the face of bitter hatred and scorn. I figured, OK, I'm a clueless codger with no principles whatsoever, but I was still on board. And now they are unquestionably the best team in baseball, with two of the most spectacularly appealing young players in the game, Yordan Alvarez and Jeremy Peña. As venerable broadcaster Bob Costas said during the World Series, writing it off to scandal “just doesn't add up. There's too much excellence there, too much evidence.”

Forgiveness is an admirable human quality, and lately I've noticed more than a few folks coming around to Costas' view. This is a grudge not worth holding.

• There was widespread rejoicing when it was announced that Dusty Baker would return as the Astros' manager next year. And I mean everywhere, including blues cats in Chicago, jazz saxophonists in Paris, stage actors in Manhattan, bikers in Mexico and painters in Argentina. Maybe you don't take all of that literally, but don't rush to inquire. If someone were to compile a list of Dusty's admirers, it would read like some sort of global fantasy.

“Good dude” is one of Baker's favorite ways of honoring friends, and when you think about it, that's what separates him from every manager who ever won a World Series. He is a dude.

Maybe Joe Maddon and Bob Brenly enter the conversation, but not nearly on Baker's level. Not when you consider his athletic history (three-sport high school star and “a great ballplayer,” recalled Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow); his triumphant passage through prostate cancer, an irregular heartbeat and a stroke; a panorama of musical taste that has found Carlos Santana, Buddy Guy, BB King, Elvin Bishop and John Lee Hooker visiting his home; his extensive knowledge of winemaking and solar energy; the fact that he played hurt and never hit the disabled list during a 19-year career; a “little mean streak,” as he says, making him a fierce enforcer when things get out of control; speaking Spanish to the 15 Latinoborn players on this year's World Series roster, and his undying refusal to “harden my heart” after so many years feeling the sting of racism.

“Definitely a dude,” said Steve Kettmann, whose Wellstone Books published “Kiss the Sky,” which famously reveals Dusty sharing a joint with Jimi Hendrix. “I'd even say he's a dude's dude.”

• A moment not captured on the Game 6 telecast, but relayed by USA Today's Bob Nightengale: “When Baker saw his son (Darren) for the first time on the field while standing on the MLB Network set, he jumped off and gave him an emotional embrace that lasted 15, maybe 20 seconds. When they dropped their arms, they looked at one another in the eyes, and both were misty.”

• Alvarez clinched the titlewinning game with a 450-foot blast to dead center field, and it raised the question: What's the longest homer ever struck in the World Series? I got some answers from Bill Jenkinson, a baseball historian known for his thorough research on such matters. (They say he's even walked off some of them.)

“You can always start by thinking about Babe Ruth's ‘Called Shot' homer on October 1, 1932 at Chicago's Wrigley Field,” Jenkinson wrote via email. “We know almost exactly where it landed. It returned to ground level beside a ticket booth beyond the center field wall, about 488 feet from home plate.

“Then there was Ruth's shot in Game 4 of the 1926 Series in St. Louis, clearing the pavilion roof in right-center field in St. Louis and landing across the street. There were some reports that the ball went through a car dealership window across Grand Avenue. If true, the ball flew about 520 feet. If not, it traveled at least 490 feet through the air.”

More examples among many Jenkinson detailed in the 450plus category, each before there was any kind of official measurement:

Barry Bonds' blast off the Angels' Troy Percival in Game 2 of the 2002 Series in Anaheim: 485 feet. This required a bit of guesswork, because so few people saw where it landed (probably a distant tunnel, a right-field area previously reached only by Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. in the regular season).

Frank Howard's blast into the rarely-reached second deck down the left-field line at Dodger Stadium, Game 4 of the 1963 Series: 475 feet.

The last of Reggie Jackson's three homers in Game 6 of the 1977 Series: 465 feet into the blackened desolation of the center-field pavilion at Yankee Stadium.

Mickey Mantle's epic trifecta: 490 feet (1960, Game 2 at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, to rightcenter); 480 feet (1964, Game 3 at Yankee Stadium, right-field upper deck); and 475 feet (1956, Game 4 at Yankee Stadium, right-center).