After 55 years of heartache, the Astros' timing is finally right
Fifty-five years ago, the Houston Astros began life as the Colt .45s - an expansion team named after a pistol, playing in a temporary, uncovered stadium where mosquitoes and the deadly Texas sun made life miserable for everyone on the field.
Oh, how they've grown up.
On Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, the Astros finally vanquished their history of miserable postseasons to capture their elusive World Series championship.
It wasn't supposed to take this long. For 55 years, Houston baseball fans were treated to Hall of Famers plying their trade on the AstroTurf, wearing iconic uniforms that have only become more beloved over time. Stars came and went. But no title.
It should have happened in the 1970s, when Jimmy Wynn, Jose Cruz, Cesar Cedeno, and J.R. Richard proudly wore the Tequila Sunrise jerseys - and then Nolan Ryan joined them, and Joe Morgan came back, and they made the playoffs for the first time. But it was not to be. It was not to be in 1986 either, when the Astros lost an epic NLCS battle against the Mets.
Missed opportunities haunted this franchise - like the "Killer Bs," featuring Hall of Famers Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio plus All-Star Lance Berkman in the 1990s, who couldn't win a championship.
Bagwell and Biggio played their entire careers in Houston. They anchored teams wearing rainbow, metallic gold, and brick-and-sand jerseys. And those teams stumbled out of the playoffs during the '90s, each time falling in the division series. The Astros moved into a brand sparkling new ballpark with a train and a hill, but fans in Houston would wait until 2004, when Roger Clemens put off retirement and Carlos Beltran came in as a ringer, to see a playoff series win. In 2005, they reached the promised land of the World Series.
And still, that wasn't the right time, as the White Sox swept the Astros aside. That was the last of Bagwell; Biggio would be gone two years later.
The right time finally came this week, but only after the franchise reached the lowest of lows. The Astros undertook an intense tanking process to re-stock the farm system - a process that saw them bottom out with a 111-loss season in 2013. Their level of play was, to put it mildly, not good.
But the pain of those miserable losing years was mitigated by the understanding of what was coming. Carlos Correa was drafted first overall. Little Jose Altuve was signed out from under the nose of everybody in Venezuela. Dallas Keuchel, Alex Bregman, and George Springer were all drafted and developed into star talents. The system worked.
In 2015, the Astros snuck into the playoffs and stunned the baseball world by waltzing out of the Bronx with a wild-card victory. The division series didn't go as planned for those plucky young 'Stros, as one last bit of heartbreak came in Game 4 against Kansas City. Then injuries struck last year.
It just wasn't the right time.
In 2017, it was the right time for Houston. A team that finally clicked did it when a city needed it most: from the core group of young talent brought in during the losing years, to the veterans like Brian McCann and Charlie Morton who signed on (or waived a no-trade clause, in the case of McCann) to join the cause. Beltran returned to help finish what he started during that magical half-season in 2004. And who can forget Justin Verlander riding in on a white horse at the end of August as the missing piece of the puzzle.
After 55 years of hope and heartache, it finally clicked for one of baseball's most iconic expansion franchises.
The Houston Astros are, at last, world champions. It had to be worth the wait.
(Photos courtesy: Getty Images)