/Photo: Karen Warren, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer
By Brian T. Smith | Houston Chronicle
(Editor’s note: Opinion pieces are published for discussion purposes only.)
You heard the hard, game-shattering crack.
You immediately looked skyward, searching through glaring white lights, glass windows and green rafters.
It was already gone.
Kurt Suzuki’s solo shot in the top of the seventh inning during Game 2 of the World Series. Another uneven October evening for Justin Verlander. Back-to-back games inside Minute Maid Park for the best regular-season team in Astros history.
And then it really got ugly.
The internet would say dumpster fire.
I pictured the Bad News Bears.
The Washington Nationals unloaded six runs in the seventh, while the home team played some of the worst playoff “baseball” this city has ever seen.
Then done-with-it fans started streaming out and an even more painful truth was about to set in as 12-3 Nats on Wednesday became hard reality.
The Astros’ season? The year in which A.J. Hinch’s smart, powerful, sharp squad won an MLB-best 107 games? The Fall Classic favorite that features Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve, George Springer, Carlos Correa and all the names you know so well?
Those Astros are on the verge of 2019 extinction.
