LOS ANGELES - When the management of the Astros needed someone to stand near home plate and speak to the crowd at Houston's Minute Maid Stadium on the afternoon of Sept. 2, before the team's first home game since Hurricane Harvey made landfall and ravaged the region, the choice was obvious. A few minutes before first pitch, A.J. Hinch, the manager with an uncommon gift for connecting with people, took the microphone and after a short pause told his fellow Houstonians, "It's good to be home." The speech, short and heartfelt, ended: "Stay strong. Be strong."
"We needed someone to come out and address the crowd, and I started thinking, 'Who is the best person to connect the players to the fans?' It was clearly A.J.," Astros President Reid Ryan said. "He nailed it."
On Thursday, when Hinch and the Astros returned again to Houston for the final time in 2017 — two months to the day since their emotional return after Harvey — they were bringing the World Series trophy with them. With a 5-1 victory over Los Angeles in Game 7 of the World Series on Wednesday at Dodger Stadium, the Astros secured the first championship in the franchise's history and fulfilled their promise to their wounded city.
They never promised a championship. But they promised to play as hard as they could, for as long as they could, in order to try to make it happen. And on that count, they delivered. Facing elimination for the third time in two weeks, the Astros staved it off for the third time, and this time it made them champions. And as they screamed and danced and sprayed champagne late Wednesday, a celebration for themselves and their teammates, they felt an immeasurable sense of pride in delivering a title to Houston.
"That word on our chest means a lot," said center fielder George Springer, the World Series MVP, standing on a stage at the center of Dodger Stadium's infield, with HOUSTON across his jersey, "means a lot to us."
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The Astros' march to the title was remarkable in many ways. In an era of unprecedented home run and strikeout rates, the Astros' exceptional offense managed the rare feat of leading the majors in slugging percentage while striking out at the lowest rate. In the playoffs, they conquered the teams with the three largest payrolls in the game — the Red Sox, Yankees and Dodgers. They fulfilled the cover-story prophecy of a 2014 issue of Sports Illustrated, which, near the middle of what would become a 92-loss season, proclaimed the Astros "Your 2017 World Series Champs."
They also validated one of the most extreme tank jobs the sport has ever seen — deeper than even that of the 2016 champion Chicago Cubs — a four-year stretch from 2011-14 in which they traded veterans, shed payroll and lost an average of 104 games. They also hoarded the resulting high draft picks from all that losing — draft picks that helped form the youthful core of the 2017 champs: Carlos Correa, Lance McCullers Jr. and Alex Bregman, as well as the trade chips that brought them ace Justin Verlander this August.
"As a baseball fan," said Brian McCann, a catcher in his 13th big league season, "the view I get and the talent I get to watch every night — we're going to look back in five, 10, 15 years and it's going to be, 'I can't believe all those guys were on the same team.' That's the kind of talent I got to witness every night."
