This post season feels like a euphoric dream.
It’s the day after Game 7. I just witnessed my team winning the World Series on the road in Dodger Stadium. I feel like I have been put through the gauntlet of true sports fandom. I am on a high, I feel hungover and my body released a month’s worth or anxious tension as I have followed my team through the ALDS, ALCS and ….now… one of the best World Series in history.
Is this really what happiness feels like????
My whole life, I always feel like I have come up just shy of fully achieving what I really wanted. I’ve had many great achievements but never fully won it all. The Astros are a team I’ve stayed invested in for so many years. They are the best and worst relationship I’ve ever had. Every February like clockwork, they were there for me as spring training brought the simplest of joys and memories to me. The season has always been filled with highs and lows and fireworks alike, but through it all I always felt like I was with my family in a sea of fans while watching someone we truly cared about attempting to receive their goals. By fall, my relationship with the team has always been filled with heartache. The heartache of being “so close” or the sting of the phrase “better luck next year.”
2017 has felt different for me.
This team has felt magical from the beginning. Almost creating a chill of excitement. For baseball being a game of inches…it started to seem like we were on the right side. I felt this at random moments through the year, but when Charlie Morton took the ball in game 7, there was magic in the air. Containing my hopeful and stress filled excitement was a challenge behind enemy lines, but it was there. The minute Charlie got the ball, I began to let myself believe. Every pitch had a touch of magic and a sense of true destiny for the city of Houston.
Before I knew it, it was the bottom of the 9th. As I tried to see around the “lovely” Dodger fan purposely standing in my way, the first out happened in seconds, I’m pretty sure the second out, I spaced out because I barely remember it happening as I stood their praying with bated breath. All of a sudden, my team needed the final out. As I watched from above, it was an outer body experience. I could see the ball trickle through the infield to Altuve I don’t know how long it took but it felt like slow motion. He knelt down to scoop the ball and all I remember is relief and tears of joy and sobbing satisfaction pouring down my cheeks as I doubled over in relief. My team did it. They really did it! My team won the freakin’ World Series behind those Dodger Blue enemy lines.
Game 7 was ours. Game 7 was for Houston. Game 7 and I was there. And nobody can ever take that feeling away from me.
xoxo,
A Tearful & Grateful Champ