56 – A Fan Letter to the Houston Astros

Scripture says there is a time for everything. But if you have been a Houston Astros fan, you'd probably relegated the idea of a World Series win into the deep recesses of your mind, hanging out with trig equations you will never touch again (apologies to those that do). That is, until this team came along.

I created this video as a thank you letter to the team and a love letter to my hometown. It was a cathartic way to channel all of the emotions from this amazing post-season.

And while the media may spin it how they want, how we tanked, were still profitable, uber sabermetrical (did I just make a word up?), and so forth. You still have to evaluate talent, make decisions, and still hope this concoction of guys figure it out, play together, stay healthy, and have a little bit of magic.

And love is not the easy thing....
The only baggage you can bring
Is all that you can't leave behind

And then along came Harvey, which ravaged Texas, and left the world with an indelible image of water becoming our roads and eventually, neighbors helping neighbors, which revealed the true spirit of the region. Manager A.J. Hinch addressed the crowd at Minute Maid after coming home from being displaced:  “Hello Houston, it's good to be home. I want to start out by thanking all of you for being here today. Very special for us to start the rebuild process of our great city.”

The rebuilding of the city is going to take a long time. It made me think of my own family and my parents. They, like so many others, were refugees who left pretty much everything they had at the time to rebuild their own lives in Houston.

I know it aches
How your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

At the end of the day, baseball is a still a game. A break in our daily routine from the reality that faces many of us. Many of us who are still rebuilding. But for one October and now November, the Astros gave us all the fruits of a rebuilding process that started years ago. They gave many of us a much needed break, a lot of hope, and a reason to cheer again.

I don't think it was lost on any, to see the same streets that were flooded to historical records yet again be flooded by a deluge of people, crying out for a much more joyful reason than a few weeks earlier. That's the power of sports; it's why I fell in love with the game.

There's a season for everything and Houston and the region is going through this one. The Astros have had 56 of them. And their first championship season couldn't have come at a better time.