The Houston Astros won an absolutely fantastic 2017 World Series

LOS ANGELES — The Houston Astros were a joke. A literal punchline to whatever baseball joke you could come up with. They were “The Aristocrats!” of baseball, something you could say at the end of a long, drawn out explanation of utter and total baseball incompetence. Say the word “Astros,” and you would get laughs.

The Houston Astros are World Series champions for the first time in their 56-year history.

LOS ANGELES — Of course there will be a Game 7. In one of the silliest World Series in history, there had to be a Game 7. The potential for bumblescrewery is through the roof, and there 50 players who went to sleep Tuesday night thinking about how they’re going to be a part of it. Clayton Kershaw for 27 innings? Sure, sure. Yasiel Puig at shortstop? Hey, if there’s a need, you know he has the arm. Norichika Aoki pitching in his second game for the Astros this season? Not sure how he’s back on the roster, but that sounds great.

Consider how the 2017 World Series has gone so far:

HOUSTON — Words fail. Analogies go limp. A common refrain for a game like Game 5 of the 2017 World Series is that baseball is drunk. Baseball is not drunk. Drunk people don’t fall up the stairs, through a window, and explode upon contact with the moon. This is not a movie. Movies have plots, logical progressions from A to B. This is not an avant-garde movie, either, where the director was trying to be weird. Both the Dodgers and Astros really, really, really wanted to be normal, and they absolutely could not.

Game 2 of the 2017 World Series forced me to break out the hyperbole stick, and angry readers wrested it from my hands and beat me with it. It was somewhat deserved. But the hyperbole stick is in control now. There’s nothing you can say about it that isn’t at least partially grounded in the truth. It was Michael Bay directing a movie based on Snoopy’s novel. A door slammed! A maid screamed! Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! The two teams rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves! A left and a right! A left! Another left and right! An uppercut to the jaw! And there were explosions, explosions, explosions the whole time.

HOUSTON — There are 50 players between both teams who are eligible to play in the 2017 World Series. In the top of the fifth inning, Cody Bellinger was the saddest one of them all. There are no metrics to quantify this. If you asked him, he would probably deny it. But after striking out yet again, he was 0-for-13 in the World Series, with eight strikeouts. This latest whiff featured him waving through a fastball on the outside edge before he chased a back-foot curveball, and as he walked back to the dugout, it was as if all of his bones were replaced with gummy worms. He was broken. He was defeated.

An hour later, he was the Most Feted Super Baseball Hero of the Wonderful Terrific Baseball World Series. With a double to left field in the seventh, he got Charlie Morton out of the game. With a double to left field in the ninth, he got his whole danged team back to Dodger Stadium. The redemption was swift and it was complete. The violence in Bellinger’s swing was muted, and something had changed. He had ... made adjustments? He was ... reborn? The balls going to the opposite field were a great sign, and I would assume that he’ll carry that confidence into Games 5, 6, and 7.

HOUSTON — Consider what it means for a team that’s been around for 56 years to have never won a World Series game at home. The Astros have had the pomp and circumstance before, the enormous flags in center field, the special guest stars throwing out the first pitch, but they’ve never had the whooping delirium that comes with a win. There’s always a comforting traffic jam down the stairs, ramps, and escalators, with strangers high-fiving each other and yelling things just to yell them. It doesn’t matter if it’s Houston, Los Angeles, or Kansas City. There aren’t a lot of times in your life when everyone around you is completely stoned on optimism. The walk out of a ballpark following a World Series win is one of those times.

Houston has one of those now. It took 56 years, and there were a couple of false starts along the way. Look through the game log from Game 3 in 2005 and imagine the digestive systems of everyone in those 14 innings. Look through Game 4 and marvel at the inability of the Astros to do anything. Those walks out of Minute Maid Park were not filled with whooping delirium. They were Charlie Brown trudges, chin to chest the whole way. White Sox fans in the building knew to shut up, or at least keep it to a dull roar. That was the only chapter of World Series history in the lengthy tale of the Houston Astros.

LOS ANGELES — At some point after the hills around Dodger Stadium caught on fire and a drunken fan jumped into the Astros’ bullpen, there was a home run, a longer home run, an even longer home run, and a home run after the home run after that. There was an umpire moonlighting as a hockey goalie to prevent the winning run from scoring, and there was an immaculate bullpen that couldn’t stop allowing runs. The Astros were dead before they were alive before they were dead before they were alive before they were dead before they were victorious, and as the smoke poured into the ballpark, it was impossible to know if the whump-whump-whump of the helicopters around the ballpark were for the fire or the World Series, and it’s not like anyone could tell the difference.

Deep breath.

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Dodgers hadn’t played a World Series game since 1988, but you would never have known, unless you read the thousands of articles or listened to the thousands of on-air discussions that mentioned this. I, uh, might have used YouTube videos once or twice or a few times to emphasize this point. It was an easy target. Pick a pop culture moment from ‘88, laugh at how dated it was, and tie the Dodgers into it.

I mean, look at Orel Hershiser’s sweater here: