A look back
What this World Series means to someone who has been covering Houston sports all his life
Nov 2, 2017, 11:38 am
I wrote this the night the Astros won the World Series. I thought it would be worth bringing back for Father's Day.
It was about an hour after Game 7 that it hit me. The Houston Astros are World Series champions. And for the first time in a long time, I got emotional. I felt incredible joy for the players, team management, and most of all the city of Houston.
My city.
I hoped the people celebrating realized how truly memorable this moment will be going forward. How rare it is. How special it is.
How sports gives us memories like this that we should never forget.
I come at this from a different perspective. I am an old man, three years younger than the Astros. I have been covering sports in this city in one form or another since I was 16. But my ties go even farther back than that.
Both my parents were in sports journalism. I grew up around it. I thought every little kid got to go to Don Wilson pitching camps. Dan Pastorini quarterback camps. I thought they all got to meet Gordie Howe and Guy V. Lewis. At the time, I did not appreciate any of it.
I lived through all the moments Barry Laminack wrote about. And I see what this means to the city, as the incomparable Ken Hoffman wrote.
But sometime during the evening, after my work posting stories to this site was done, sipping on whiskey, I realized what it meant to me.
So about that different perspective...I am not a fan. I can’t be. I have to be detached. I could not really enjoy the games as they were happening. My mindset was simple: What do we need to do for the site? What will we talk about on The Blitz? I look at teams with a detached eye, because that is how I was brought up.
Fans can truly enjoy the moment, but can’t really be honest. They can’t see things from a neutral perspective. I have always had to do that, whether it was my time at the Chronicle or now. It does not always lead to popular takes. But it is how I have to be to do my job.
But when the job was done, I could sit back and appreciate what we just saw.
What sports is really about is escape. It is the greatest and best form of reality TV. It takes our mind off our everyday troubles. It gives us amazing memories.
And that’s what hit me. It made me think of my dad, Fred B. Faour, one of the smartest, funniest people who ever lived. A man who endured terrible hardships growing up. He was abandoned by his mother and grew up in an orphanage. He was kicked out of our great grandparent’s house because my mom had married an "N word." He was Arabic and looked different from everybody else. He was discriminated against. He was not promoted because he was not a white man.
And he never complained. He was irreverent. He buried himself in sports as an escape. He covered sports and coached kids and gave them hope. He created memories.
As a journalist, he never acted like a fan, because he couldn’t. But he lived and died with the teams. My worst sports memory was UH’s loss to N.C. State. I was devastated. I thought none of my teams would ever win anything after that. I was an 18-year-old kid who watched people he knew -- I went to high school with Alvin Franklin -- lose a game they were supposed to win.
I could tell my dad was hurting, too. But he made jokes. And I felt better. That’s what he did. When my grandfather died, my dad cheered us up by making jokes. When I went through my first divorce, he hit me with one inappropriate joke after another. And it made me feel better.
Year after year, as the heartbreaking losses mounted, he would make me laugh. When we lost him in 1997, I tried to make people think of the good things, make them laugh. And that’s been my policy ever since.
But early Thursday morning, when I no longer had to work, I understood what this World Series meant. Memories we will have forever. My dad made me realize that sports is not just the “toy department,” as we were often called in my newspaper days. It is how we bond. How we come together. How we find joy and sorrow together. It is about emotion. Watching everyone celebrate, whether it was the players in LA or the people in Midtown or in Minute Maid: We came together. We were all on the same side. We rejoiced.
Not a day goes by where I do not think of my dad. And when I finally had a chance to be a fan, all I could think of was how I wish he had lived to see it. How I wish we could have talked on the phone for hours about every detail of the game. How we could make Dodger jokes. I could almost hear him say something inappropriate like “how many (lady parts) do you think Springer is test driving tonight?”
And that is what sports is to me. Talking about it with people we love. Sharing the moments, good and bad. And there have been a lot more bad than good in this city.
The older you get, the less emotional you get. But this has been a tough stretch. Harvey was devastating. Seeing the people piling into the George R. Brown was heartbreaking. Talking to friends who lost their dream houses and are still displaced was more than depressing. The shootings in Vegas also hit close to home. I spend a lot of time there and was just at that venue, and two of my favorite people were in the middle of it. Our world is a mess right now. Bad news dominates everything.
But moments like this make it all melt away, like light snow on a fall day, even if it is fleeting. We can escape. We can feel.
And it brings back so many memories. Watching Jose Cruz. Enos Cabell. Earl Campbell. Moses Malone. Living my entire life as part of the sports landscape of this wonderful city, from the time my parents took me to the first game in the Astrodome in a stroller, to the Rockets titles, to me creating the tombstone, to UH winning the Peach Bowl, and finally to this.
Memories.
So many times I came close to leaving Houston. Even in the last five years, I had opportunities in Denver, Los Angeles and Toronto. But this is my home. This sports scene is my life. All my memories are here.
This moment is why I stayed. This memory we will have together forever.
The Astros are World Series champs. And for once, dad, we don’t have to make jokes to cheer each other up. The Astros actually won.
I wish you were here to see it.
It’s May 1, and the Astros are turning heads—but not for the reasons anyone expected. Their resurgence, driven not by stars like Yordan Alvarez or Christian Walker, but by a cast of less-heralded names, is writing a strange and telling early-season story.
Christian Walker, brought in to add middle-of-the-order thump, has yet to resemble the feared hitter he was in Arizona. Forget the narrative of a slow starter—he’s never looked like this in April. Through March and April of 2025, he’s slashing a worrying .196/.277/.355 with a .632 OPS. Compare that to the same stretch in 2024, when he posted a .283 average, .496 slug, and a robust .890 OPS, and it becomes clear: this is something more than rust. Even in 2023, his April numbers (.248/.714 OPS) looked steadier.
What’s more troubling than the overall dip is when it’s happening. Walker is faltering in the biggest moments. With runners in scoring position, he’s hitting just .143 over 33 plate appearances, including 15 strikeouts. The struggles get even more glaring with two outs—.125 average, .188 slugging, and a .451 OPS in 19 such plate appearances. In “late and close” situations, when the pressure’s highest, he’s practically disappeared: 1-for-18 with a .056 average and a .167 OPS.
His patience has waned (only 9 walks so far, compared to 20 by this time last year), and for now, his presence in the lineup feels more like a placeholder than a pillar.
The contrast couldn’t be clearer when you look at José Altuve—long the engine of this franchise—who, in 2024, delivered in the moments Walker is now missing. With two outs and runners in scoring position, Altuve hit .275 with an .888 OPS. In late and close situations, he thrived with a .314 average and .854 OPS. That kind of situational excellence is missing from this 2025 squad—but someone else may yet step into that role.
And yet—the Astros are winning. Not because of Walker, but in spite of him.
Houston’s offense, in general, hasn’t lit up the leaderboard. Their team OPS ranks 23rd (.667), their slugging 25th (.357), and they sit just 22nd in runs scored (117). They’re 26th in doubles, a rare place for a team built on gap-to-gap damage.
But where there’s been light, it hasn’t come from the usual spots. Jeremy Peña, often overshadowed in a lineup full of stars, now boasts the team’s highest OPS at .791 (Isaac Paredes is second in OPS) and is flourishing in his new role as the leadoff hitter. Peña’s balance of speed, contact, aggression, and timely power has given Houston a surprising tone-setter at the top.
Even more surprising: four Astros currently have more home runs than Yordan Alvarez.
And then there’s the pitching—Houston’s anchor. The rotation and bullpen have been elite, ranking 5th in ERA (3.23), 1st in WHIP (1.08), and 4th in batting average against (.212). In a season where offense is lagging and clutch hits are rare, the arms have made all the difference.
For now, it’s the unexpected contributors keeping Houston afloat. Peña’s emergence. A rock-solid pitching staff. Role players stepping up in quiet but crucial ways. They’re not dominating, but they’re grinding—and in a sluggish AL West, that may be enough.
Walker still has time to find his swing. He showed some signs of life against Toronto and Detroit. If he does, the Astros could become dangerous. If he doesn’t, the turnaround we’re witnessing will be credited to a new cast of unlikely faces. And maybe, that’s the story that needed to be written.
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