The best team in baseball is also the least-liked team in baseball, and there is no need for a debate over whom neutral America’s will be wanting to lose when the World Series begins on Friday (8:03 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports App).
The Houston Astros, they of 106 regular season wins, four World Series trips in six years, and a so-far perfect postseason clip, still find themselves booed wherever they venture, and it’s that way not because sports doesn’t forget, but because it does so mightily slowly.
As the Fall Classic takes its opening swings and fluctuates between Texas and Pennsylvania, it will be the Philadelphia Phillies, lowest-seeded of the National League wild-cards, happy-go-lucky underdogs, who will hold the rooting interest of most would-be fence-sitters.
Yet the narrative surrounding the Astros and their position as baseball’s bad guys becomes a little more complicated with every fresh telling, and with each new chapter of Houston success.
Yes, José Altuve, Alex Bregman, Yuli Gurriel, Justin Verlander and Lance McCullers Jr. are still part of a squad that was found to have stolen signs on the way to a 2017 championship, but they are the only five of the current 26-man roster that remain from back then.
Not just that, but the worst kind of cheat in the public’s eye is one that fooled us all by becoming really good when they actually weren’t, and doing so by nefarious means.
Clearly, as we have seen in 2019 and 2021 and across a 3-0 sweep of the Seattle Mariners and a 4-0 rout of the New York Yankees, the Astros are spectacularly good, whether banging trash cans or whistling, or not.
“When everything happened a few years ago, we knew the one thing we could do is win – and win a lot,” RHP McCullers told reporters. “I understand people are still not going to like us. They’re going to boo us, but at some point you have to respect what we’re doing.”
It’s on that point that things get more nuanced. Because Houston has players to admire: Verlander for his evergreen excellence, Jeremy Peña for his bat-and-glove energy, Altuve’s pint-sized pugnacity.
And a manager in Dusty Baker who is familiar enough to be widely loved, good enough to still be at the top, and grandfatherly enough that he was part of the first-ever public high-five 45 years ago. It’s true, look it up.
It is also worth considering, as we approach the end of another season where the Astros were jeered on a nightly basis whether there is any point to the vitriol. In other words, is Houston as good as it is in spite of the boos, or partly because of them?
As we see time and again in sports and life, nothing motivates a group quite as well as when they feel the world is against them.
In any case, if we’re talking narrative, this World Series has an obvious one. The Astros are the baseball world’s choice of a heel and the Phillies are the smiley face, a bunch of best buds who hang out away from the diamond and all like each other.
So the Philadelphia story goes, anyway … though to be fair there is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest the friendship line is true, enabled by likable manager Rob Thomson, who took over from Joe Girardi and let his guys have fun.
The Phillies are not a rags-to-riches type deal, for this is not a cheaply assembled group, but even with their huge contracts, Bryce Harper and Nick Castellanos and Zack Wheeler will have more well wishes sent in their direction than the Astros, let’s put it that way.
“We are a bunch of brothers in there,” pitching ace Wheeler said. “We all have a good relationship.”
It could be a series that leads to an awe-inspiring piece of history in one sense. If the Astros (-200 with FOXBet) jump to an early lead and keep rolling, they can maintain the chance of becoming the first team in the wild-card era to sweep the postseason.
Hopefully, for everyone outside a certain corner of Texas, it is far more competitive than that, with the Phillies filled with form and hope after taking advantage of the expanded playoff field.
“Good guy, bad guy” storylines are part of what sports are about and there is always, inevitably, much more to the tale than the simple headline. Yet, as a teaser for a series between two of the most exciting teams in the game, it’ll work just fine.
If good guy/bad guy turns into good baseball — and a memorable series — well, that’s good for all of us.
