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Houston Astros: Team’s return home this weekend provides lift to city

By Joe Fernandez

HOUSTON, TX - OCTOBER 12: A young Houston Astros fan looks on as his team loses the lead in the eighth inning against the Kansas City Royals during game four of the American League Divison Series at Minute Maid Park on October 12, 2015 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Eric Christian Smith/Getty Images)
HOUSTON, TX - OCTOBER 12: A young Houston Astros fan looks on as his team loses the lead in the eighth inning against the Kansas City Royals during game four of the American League Divison Series at Minute Maid Park on October 12, 2015 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Eric Christian Smith/Getty Images) /
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The Houston Astros have announced they’ll be coming back home to Minute Maid Park to play a series against the New York Mets this weekend, providing a much needed lift for our fair city.

The Houston Astros went through tense times this week traveling to Tropicana Field to play against the Texas Rangers and trying to focus on baseball while they knew their families were back home in the middle of the worst rain fall in United States history.

They tried to play through knowing all the destruction and suffering that was going on and had to try and focus on balls and strikes, pitch sequencing, and a bunch of other stuff that just doesn’t seem important in times like these.

We’ve seen this before in 2008 with Hurricane Ike and the Astros nearly being no-hit in back to back “home” games in Milwaukee against the Chicago Cubs and stopping their mad dash back into the playoff race that they were on that season.

But this year is different. Hurricane Harvey is far more devastating than Ike was. On the opposite yet positive (if not more trivial) sports perspective, the Astros are solidly in the playoffs this season. While sports are just games and nothing more, they can do so much for a city in healing.

Sports are a distraction. They can take us away for a few hours from whatever is bothering us and we get to emotionally invest ourselves in something that in reality has no effect on our day-to-day lives. If the Astros win the World Series this year, it will not bring back the lives lost and the homes destroyed in the wake of hurricane Harvey.

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What sports does is provide a distraction and gives us something positive to look to in otherwise dire times. If the Astros were to win a World Series it can give one giant positive for the city to share in. Nothing about what has happened or will happen with the city of Houston’s recovery process will change.

But the emotional boost that can be given by 25 men on one team playing a game beating another team of 25 men on the other side of the field can give people happiness, if ever so brief, in the face of loss, despair and grief.

The Astros return this weekend is a small step towards normalizing people’s lives and giving them that positive news, if ever so small, that can provide a smile. It’s making me smile thinking about the fans congregating at Minute Maid Park, giving a standing ovation to the team, singing the seventh inning stretch, arms around one another in a show of solidarity with their fellow human.

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The cheers will be as loud as they’ve ever been with every strikeout, home run and diving catch the Astros record as Houstonians receive a break from all their hard work putting their city and lives of their citizens back in order. It’s a well deserved break indeed. And we welcome our home town team back with open arms. Welcome back Astros.

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