Game 1 of the Astros-Twins AL Division Series was two days ago … and here I am just now posting about my trip to Houston to soak in all the thrills and magic of the baseball playoffs. All I can say is, if you’re a baseball fan – or even if you’re not – and you’ve never gone to a playoff game – one involving your team or any other – you’re missing something truly glorious.
Saturday was a very long day for me, but it was worth every moment. I left Arlington at 9 a.m. and walked back through our front door 17 hours later at about 2 a.m. – dragging but ecstatic because the Astros, my team of teams, had held on to defeat the Twins 6-4 in front of me and an announced 43,023 other fans at Minute Maid Park. (I even managed to get up at 8:15 for church!). I saw a bunch of empty upper-deck seats way down the left-field line and the stadium holds a little over 41,000, so don’t ask me how they come up with these figures.
I attended the game with my childhood friend Paul Sweitzer, who’d never been to an Astros playoff game during a lifetime as, like me, a diehard fan of the team that first took the field in 1962 as the Houston Colt .45s. We’d both spent our earliest years in Houston and became best friends in elementary school at St. Matthew Lutheran before my family moved to Conroe in December 1971 when we were in sixth grade.
After Paul finished eighth grade at St. Matthew, his family moved to La Grange (think Best Little Whorehouse in Texas), where he went to high school before graduating from the University of Texas and going to law school at Texas Tech in Lubbock. I took an entirely different path, considering UT (because I wanted to be in the Longhorn Band) before settling on Texas A&M, a journalism degree and a newspaper career, which ended a year ago in favor of a PR/communications job at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
When I found out early last week that my college buddy Gerald had two extra tickets to Game 1 of the ALDS, I didn’t have to think long about his offer. Of course, I first asked Kay if she’d like to go with me. She did, but we decided it would be best if she didn’t because our 19-year-old would need transportation to and from work at Barnes & Noble that day. I could’ve asked any one of several other friends to go to Houston with me, but I settled quickly on Paul – partly because we almost never see each other (he lives in College Station, three hours away from us) but also because it was high time he got to see an Astros playoff game in person.
So, with the Astros having won the AL West and getting a first-round bye, and knowing we wouldn’t find out until the wild-card round ended what time Saturday’s game would be, we made plans for me to drive to College Station and pick up Paul, then drive to Houston (about 90 more minutes). It turned out to be a 3:45 p.m. start, so I decided to leave at 9 a.m., which would put me at Paul’s about noon.
Everything worked out great. We even got to spend time visiting before the game with Gerald and his sister Doris, who were seated below us but not far from our upper-deck seats just on the third-base side of home plate. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a chance to see my Conroe friend David, who was there with his sister and is part of an ongoing Astros friends group text I started a couple of years ago.
I won’t go into all the game details, but the Astros grabbed momentum quickly when second baseman Jose Altuve crushed Twins starter Bailey Ober’s first pitch to left field for a 1-0 lead. Houston built a 5-0 cushion that seemed insurmountable after Justin Verlander settled into a groove, but reliever Hector Neris gave up back-to-back three-run and solo bombs in the seventh, causing me to drop a couple of s-bombs and putting the Astros’ victory in jeopardy at 5-4.
But Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez, who always seems to step up in the playoffs, hit his second homer of the game in the bottom half of the inning, pushing the lead to 6-4, which relievers Bryan Abreu and Ryan Pressly salvaged for the final two innings.
Speaking of coming through in the playoffs, that’s what Carlos Correa continues to do. After Minnesota – led by the Astros star-turned-Twin – jumped on Framber Valdez and Pablo Lopez shut down the Houston bats for seven innings Sunday night in a 6-2 Twins win, the Astros are in a serious fight for survival. They’ve been a stellar road team all season and will need to muster that mojo starting Tuesday in Game 3 against Twins ace Sonny Gray.
If not, this series might not make it back to Houston for a Game 5. A series loss to Minnesota would end the Astros’ streak of AL Championship Series appearances at six.
So far, these playoffs have been full of surprises. Please, please, please, dear baseball gods, don’t let the Astros fall into that category. Count me as one of the Texans embracing the prospect of an Astros-Rangers AL Championship Series, which would be great for our state and for a rivalry that has grown more intense by the year since the Astros joined the American League in 2013.
In a postseason of shockers so far, the Rangers have been among the biggest stunners, sweeping Tampa on the road in the wild-card round and taking the first two from the host Orioles, the AL’s best team. Texas comes home with three chances to win one game and close out Baltimore to advance to the ALCS.
The Astros have a lot of work to do if they’re going to punch their ticket to a potentially marvelous and intriguing Lone Star Showdown. So let’s do this, guys. You’re the better team in this series. Show your former teammate Correa and his new teammates who you are, why you’re here, and what you’re made of.
Borrowing a cheer from my wife’s alma mater, TCU, “Give ’em hell, Astros!” And while we’re at it, one from my school: “BTHO the Twins!” 🙂
A Life of Words 
One thought on “Seeing an Astros playoff victory in person with a dear friend: Priceless. But our team has a lot more work to do.”