The Astros: An Appreciation

You may have noticed that in the photo that’s accompanied my column for the past seven or eight years, I am wearing an Astros hat.

This is no accident. I love the Houston Astros. The Astros won the World Series Saturday – and I haven’t stopped smiling since.

I suppose every fan has a story about how their fandom came into existence and how it’s grown over the years.

Here’s mine: In the fall of 1986 I started listening in sometimes when my brother would have the Astros games playing on the radio out in the barn/shop where he would work on welding projects and other things.

I was nine years old. The Astros made it to the playoffs that year on the strength of pitching greats Mike Scott and Nolan Ryan and great hitters like Billy Hatcher and Kevin Bass and Billy Doran. I was hooked.

The next spring I walked the third-of-a-mile over to my grandma’s house to read the Astros boxscores every day in the Austin newspaper.

I got my own radio and starting listening to the Astros games on KULM 98.3 FM out of Columbus and was introduced to the amazing descriptions of the game by the great Milo Hamilton. I’d open up the window to the house so I could hear the radio and while I would listen on this summer evenings, I’d throw baseball after baseball up on the roof and have it roll down and catch it in an old hand-me-down Montgomery Ward baseball glove I still have.

Sometimes the games were broadcast on television on Channel 20, which we were able to get a semi-decent picture of if we turned our antenna just right.

In 1988, after two years of learning about baseball from the Astros, I talked my parents into letting me play Little League baseball.

Eventually I convinced my parents to subscribe to the Houston Chronicle, which back then did have home delivery in this area.

New stars emerged for the Astros, and I read daily about the exploits of Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell and Ken Caminiti.

I started collecting baseball cards and would beg to go to the old card shop on Travis St, called “Home Run Baseball Cards” were I would agonize over purchases.

By far my favorite Astro back then was Nolan Ryan, and I saved up money to buy a lot of his newer cards, and would gaze longingly at the more expensive cards from his earlier playing days.

I died a little when he left the Astros for the Rangers after the 1988 season.

Back then La Grange Middle School had a promotion that could get you free Astros tickets if you got straight As during the fourth six weeks. I never tried so hard in school as during that grading period.

We’d usually go to one or two games a summer. We’d sit in out in the outfield seats at the Astrodome (I think kids tickets were $1 back then), dreaming of catching a home run ball.

My brother-in-law Kenny took me to a few games over the years and taught me to properly keep a scorecard.

For a while my older sister Wanda actually lived withing walking distance of the Astrodome in Houston. I cannot describe to you the thrill of walking to an Astros game.

I loved the Astrodome, and was not terribly excited when they built Minute Maid Park, that is until I went inside for the first time. I love everything about it now. That wide concourses, great views throughout, the stately old Union Station Depot building the stadium is built into.

It’s at this point that I must say that all that reading about the Astros in the Houston and Austin newspapers when I was a kid certainly influenced my decision to go into journalism - specifically sports journalism.

I thought that heaven might be something like getting paid to cover an Astros game.

And over the years I did get to cover several Astros games, including Roger Clemens first start with the team in 2004 and the epic NLCS series against the Cardinals that fall. I even interviewed Biggio after one of the games. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I even covered a game three years ago when La Grange’s Homer Bailey outdueled Justin Verlander.

But over the years a World Series championship still eluded them.

Then they got bad – really bad, losing 100 games or more each season in 2011, 2012, and 2013. That made it easy to get cheap tickets though.

We took our kids to one of their first Astros games on April 2, 2013 – the game in which the Rangers’ Yu Darvish came within one out of a perfect game. There were so few people that for the final few innings we snuck down from the upper deck and watched him lose it on the final out from empty expensive seats. The Astros had a young player in that game named Jose Altuve – the shortest player in the major leagues – who over the years has become my favorite all-time Astros.

A 16-year-old Altuve famously showed up at a tryout in his native Venezuela only to be turned away because the scouts thought he was lying about his age. He came back the next day with his birth certificate, and the rest is history.

Since 2015 the Astros have been really good, and I tell my kids to appreciate this because during the first 17 years of my being an Astros fan they didn’t even win a single playoff series.

In 2017 they won the World Series only to have much of the joy of that experience negated by their cheating scandal.

But now the Astros are baseball’s best, again, a team filled with lovable young players, admirable veterans and the oldest manager in baseball. They are an international team that is a good representation of Houston, one of the most diverse cities in America.

It’s a great time to be an Astros fan.

Always has been. Jeff Wick is the editor of The Fayette County Record. He’d love to see more letters to the editor next week about the Astros than about the election. You can reach him at jeff@fayette countyrecord.com