Obviously it was weird when Raider Jeff coaxed the Tank Commander out of retirement to helm the flooding vessel into the strange waters of the AL West. Obviously Springer being what Springer is wasn't what those of us who let hope in the door hoped for, and the Ming Santana flirtation with greatness has reminded one of Reeshard (and the perpetual gnashing of teeth signified therein), obviously we still strike out too much and, with the exception of the Kid, send to the bump a rotation of #3s, but Jesus when we hit we knock the crap out of the ball, and the defense shows up and then some, and the bullpen throws smoke, and his 31 peers in GM offices around the country tremble when Raider Jeff shows up on caller ID, and our rangy righthander in the owner's box seems to have the measure of the rangy righthander in that of the Hated Foe (4K strikeout differential notwithstanding), and the Yankees fans don't outcheer the hometown crowd anymore (quite as often, anyway), and nobody relaxes when the Houston Astros come up on the schedule.
What a shock it was to approach the deadline back in 2016 and realize that there was a chance, just a shitty little glimmer of a chance, that we'd actually be buyers; though I think it had to've been the midseason call-up of Correa that year that really changed the game. "Correa to Deshields to Singleton--and that's your ballgame, folks!" It was suddenly clear that here we had not a new kind of rookie exactly, but a rare bird, one that in spite of his slender years brought a peculiar charge and stability to what for the better part of a decade had been more or less a permanent traveling horseshit show that even those millenial Stros would've been embarrassed to swat down. Solitary episodes triggering hope-related symptoms jump out now: CJL following the Brad Lidge path to shut-down dominance (missing nary a stop on the DL en route); the "Jason Castro Era" giving over to the "Deshields Era"; Kid McCullers K'ing Pujols to record his first major league out--what a cracking thing of beauty that was... And now that there's three left to play, all against the Hated Foe, and a sweep puts us into the playoffs, it occurs to me that though no one of any relevance is talking about it, the spirit of 2012 is the real galvanizing force here, the nasty fucker of a demon these 26 honest-to-Cartwright ballplayers are doing battle with...not the Foe under the Old Man's grumbling despotism, not Selig or the legion of skeptics or their own burgeoning rivalries. It's that interminable season of Cleveland Spiders-level futility, that season of jaw-dropping ineptitude (remember "the bunt"?), of strikeouts suffered in humiliating quantities, walks and wild pitches and errors so generously distributed, the astonishing pace at which we, as fans, inured ourselves to the indignities of anticipated failure. Oh Lord, the fucking unholy destruction. When, if you were an optimist, you scoured the Web for news of 17-year olds in Greeneville, you began counting down to draft day the day after draft day, and were made fleetingly content by the successful execution of routine plays. I remember 2012.
I remember 2012 and they do too. Even given the revolving door, the attrition that's turned the club entirely over, even though not a single surname adorns the blue and gold that once disgraced the brick and mud, they remember too. A red line links these Astros of 2018 to the hapless bunch of NLers who meekly exited the Senior Circuit stage at about 3:30 on October 3rd from Wrigley Field in '12, expressing in their final act the the nadir of a once-proud franchise. That we're proud again today reveals that the red specter of that abysmal season is at least partially exorcised. And that there's fight in this team after such endless brutal shellacking makes me want to call my mother and tell her I love her, makes me want to lift a glass high and stroll down the street crying tears of joy for America, because I remember 2012.
Say it with me:
