Sports Illustrated - World Series Commemorative 2022

EARLY IN THESE 2022 playoffs, a hot topic among baseball people was whether the new playoff format was making it harder for favorites to win. If anyone was trying to have that debate in Houston, though, it would have been difficult to hear them over the sound of the home run train at Minute Maid Park. In the National League the top four teams were knocked out before the NLCS. But the favorites in the American League—and least favorites in the hearts of many national baseball fans—did in 2022 what they do every year. The Astros, who won 106 games, 16 clear of second place in their division, romped through the postseason, losing only two games along the way. Third baseman Alex Bregman and shortstop Jeremy Peña keyed the offense.…

THE INEVITABILITY of the Astros this postseason was first evident in their sweep of the plucky Mariners, who had so much going for them and still didn’t win a game. The matchup pitted a Goliath that had won three of the last five AL pennants against a David that was playing in its first postseason since 2001, a 21-year drought that was the longest in North American professional sports. But the Mariners, even though they didn’t qualify for the playoffs until the final day of the regular season, came in hot. While they had finished 16 games behind Houston in the AL West, after June 19 Seattle had gone 61–33, which was the second-best stretch during that time in the American League, behind only the Astros (65–31). In the wild-card round…

AS THE DUGOUT emptied around him after the Yankees’ third straight loss to the Astros had put their 2022 campaign on the brink, New York righty Domingo Germán did not quite mourn the season. But he watched Houston’s players celebrate and thought about how far away joy like that felt. “We have a saying,” he said through team interpreter Marlon Abreu. “The team that wins is the one that has fun.” And there was no doubt about which team was having more fun as the Astros downed the Yankees 5–0 in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series. And also which team looked more like a dynasty. The ALCS matchup pitted the franchise that has won the most World Series titles with one gunning for its fourth pennant in…

THREE HOURS BEFORE a game 25 years and a thousand heartaches in the making, and with fresh news that his first baseman was out with a knee injury, Astros manager Dusty Baker relaxed in his office to the plaintive wails of the Texas blues, courtesy of Big Mama Thornton. Like Baker, Big Mama came to Houston to find unprecedented success. This was to be the third time Baker sat in his managerial office with a chance to win the World Series that night. The other two, both in 2002 when he was with the Angels, ended with squandered leads. In all, Baker had 24 previous seasons as a manager, and all of them ended out of contention or with a playoff loss. Big Mama’s wailing from his Bluetooth speaker had…

JUST BEFORE HIS highest moment, Alex Bregman stared at his lowest body part. His left foot—his front foot when he hits—had been betraying him for something like two years, and, just as he had started to figure out how to put it where he wanted to, he lost it again. After his second at bat of Game 2 of the World Series, which his Astros would win 5–2 over the Phillies to even the series, he returned to the dugout looking disgruntled. He had put good swings on the ball in both at bats, but his back hip was first drifting backward and then leaning forward as he swung, which slid that left foot a few inches behind where he wanted it to go. The result was a pair of grounders…

JUSTIN VERLANDER was dripping with water, beer, mustard, ketchup and happiness. Laundry will take care of the liquids and condiments. The joy never will be cleansed. At the age of 39, in his ninth crack at it and at the end of one of the most improbable comeback seasons from Tommy John surgery, Verlander finally won a World Series game. And that is why after the Astros exhaled following a nervy 3–2 win over the Phillies in Game 5, the first thing they did was stuff Verlander into a laundry cart, wheel him into the shower room at Citizens Bank Park and salute him with what’s known in the baseball world as a rookie shower, the traditional dumping of liquids and foodstuffs on a rookie upon a first win. “And…