Joe Holley - Hurricane Season: The Unforgettable Story of the 2017 Houston Astros and the Resilience of a City

Yeah, this is a rainy day in ol Houston

BLUES MUSICIAN SAM LIGHTNIN HOPKINS, 1961

I n downtown Houston on a balmy November night, thousands of loud, exuberant baseball fans are surging along Texas Avenue and into the hulking monolith called Minute Maid Park, home of the newly crowned American League champion Houston Astros. Clad in orange jerseys and blue caps and carrying homemade signs scrawled over in SharpieALTUVE: MVP, HOUSTON STRONGmany are taking a break from long hours replacing drywall or laying hardwood floors or trying to sponge away mold. Just weeks earlier, a brutal hurricane dropped more than 50 inches of torrential rain on greater Houston over a four-day period. The storm, with the quaint name of Harvey, would destroy or damage tens of thousands of homes and upend the lives of countless people in the nations fourth-largest city.

Tonight, however, these fans are pouring into Minute Maid Park to a different kind of history being made. They will stay on their feet until the last out. The roar theyre generating inside the closed-roof stadium is as loud as Hurricane Harvey thunder. Theyre here, theyre loud, theyre readyeven though the seventh and deciding game of the 2017 World Series is unfolding before their eyes, not in Minute Maid Park but in Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, 1,500 miles away.

In their one and only prior appearance in the World Series, the Astros had been swept by the Chicago White Sox in four games in 2005. Now, for the first time in the 56-year history of the franchise, the Astros are nine innings away from a world championship. If few fans could make the trip to LA to watch their heroes take on the National League champion Dodgers, they cant get much closer than watching the game on El Grande, the 54-foot-tall, 124-foot-wide high-definition screen in center field. Perhaps they imagine the racket they are making can somehow carry westward on a mighty wind and Altuve and Correa and Springer and Bregman and all the other Astros they have cheered all season can take heart from Major League Baseballs loudest fanatics, their noise magnified by a retractable roof Astros players always want closed. The players insist they feed off the noise.

As baseball fansand maybe even non-baseball fans caught up in the Astros splendid storyknow by now, the Astros defeated the Dodgers in seven games, the final one played in the storied hollow of Chavez Ravine in front of 54,000 hostile fans. No one left either stadium that nightNovember 1, 2017until Jos Altuve, the Astros mighty-mite second basemanthe American Leagues Most Valuable Playerfielded a routine ground ball and threw to first base 3 hours and 37 minutes after Play Ball.

For the Astros, the combination of a magnificently played series, a 101-victory regular season, and a crippling natural disaster back home was so incredible it might have given the schmaltziest Hollywood screenwriter pause, but those fans filling Minute Maid saw it. They believed. It happened. And the fourth-largest city in the nation, a city still reeling in the wake of disaster, could smile, could celebrate, could ask bleary-eyed coworkers the next morning, How bout them Astros?!

This season, this team, and this World Series has left Astros fans addled, the Houston Chronicle reported the morning after the championship. From Beaumont to Corpus, Brenham to Fairfield, they awoke Thursday morning and pinched themselves. We won the World Series. The Houston Independent School District closed Friday for a victory parade downtown. With an expected attendance of 750,000, it will likely surpass those that celebrated the end of World War II.

The Astros first-ever World Series victory is a baseball story, to be sure, but its so much more than that. Its the story of a major American citya city (and a state) that the rest of the nation doesnt always love or understandwinning Americans hearts because of its grace and goodwill in response to pain and hardship. Houston has endured its share of storms and hurricanes over the years, but nothing like Hurricane Harvey and the ensuing flood, the costliest natural disaster in American history.

Its the story of a team of likeable, refreshingly good-natured guys who each wore a Houston Strong patch on their jerseys and meant it. When Houston was down, they picked the city up and carried it. They brought hope during a dark time. It took a special mix of personality and panache to do what they did.

Sportswriter Richard Justice described the Astros as a nearly perfect mix of youth and experience, passion and resolve. Dave Sheinin of the Washington Post was impressed by what he described as the deep sense of humanity they all seem to possess, from pitcher Charlie Mortons self-discovery to Carlos Beltrns quiet leadership to Altuves infectious joy to George Springers profound grasp of this teams role in its citys recovery.

In their close and intimate connection to the Bayou City, the modern-day Astros resembled storied teams of old. They were a modern-day version of the 50s-era Brooklyn Dodgers, when Duke Snider and Carl Furillo and Gil Hodges strolled along Flatbush Avenue, stopped in for a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk at the corner deli and chatted with shop owners. Houston may be a massive, diverse metropolis disguised as a sprawling suburb, but it likes its local heroes when theyre familiar, accessible, open, and hardworkingguys like Bum Phillips or Earl Campbell, Nolan Ryan or Craig Biggio. These Astros certainly qualified, whether it was third baseman Alex Bregman hanging out with fans at Pluckers Wing Bar or pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. helping rescue dogs who have been thrown a curveball by life. Bregman, McCullers, and all their teammates had shared their citys trauma during Harvey.