George Springer, Elite Young Core Turn Houston 'Lastros' into 1st-Time Champs

LOS ANGELES — Ten days ago, forget a title—the Houston Astros had never won so much as a World Series game since the year of their inception in 1962.

Then they stepped into Game 1 of this Fall Classic, led by their fearless and mostly flawless leadoff man George Springer...and Springer whiffed four times. He stunk up the place so badly he couldn’t have hit Los Angeles traffic if he exited the carpool lane. Debuts seldom go so wrong, even for D-list Hollywood actors.

That seems like, oh, 56 years ago now.

Forget the opening, but what a show. Once Springer and the Astros sprung to life, the Los Angeles Dodgers couldn't dodge them. Couldn't outrun, outslug or outpitch them, and by the time Houston polished off a 5-1 Game 7 rout before 54,124 in Dodger Stadium, they laid claim to a word they never before could.

"We are a championship city!" Houston manager A.J. Hinch exclaimed onstage during the championship presentation in front of an enormous throng of raucous Astros fans behind the first-base Houston dugout. "These players are always going to be called champions."

Springer, the World Series Most Valuable Player, bounced back from taking that Game 1 golden sombrero to hit .379 with three doubles, five homers, seven RBI and eight runs scored. His eight extra-base hits stand as a World Series record, surpassing Willie Stargell's seven in the 1979 Series. His five homers tied the New York Yankees' Reggie Jackson (1977) and the Philadelphia Phillies' Chase Utley (2009) as the most ever in a Fall Classic. And he became the first player ever to homer in four consecutive World Series games.

From zero to 80 mph in one game flat.

"Unbelievable!" Springer said.

What did the Astros do to pick him up after that rough Game 1?

"He was facing Clayton Kershaw," Astros catcher Brian McCann said. "He made his pitches that night. You tip your cap and move on. You turn the page."

His father, George Springer II, didn't see much of a need to speak with his son, either, following a Game 1 in which Kershaw fanned him three times and Los Angeles closer Kenley Jansen struck him out once.

"Didn't need to," Springer II said. "He knows how to turn the page. He understands it's a game. You pick yourself up, and you move forward. The sun always comes up. He's done it consistently."

Alex Gallardo/Associated Press

It's fitting that what Springer did, really, was mirror the rise of these Astros. It wasn't long ago that they too were taking oh-fers and looking for new sunrises.

In November 2011, owner Jim Crane took possession of an aging roster and a broken organization that was stripped to the studs after it traded traded stars like Roy Oswalt, Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn under Drayton McLane. Crane hired Jeff Luhnow from the St. Louis Cardinals the next month. In the shadow of the national space program, what McLane did was akin to NASA tearing apart one of its rockets, boosters, engines and all, leaving the seat and starting over.

The Astros lost between 106 and 111 games each season from 2011 through 2013. What they did was master the art of tanking: conceding seasons in exchange for hoarding draft picks.

It was ugly, it was painful, and it was beyond chaotic. A lifelong member of the National League, Crane agreed to move his club to the American League in 2013 as a condition of purchasing it. An identity crisis hit hard, the losses piled up, and in 2014, there were days when the Astros charted a 0.0 television rating for some games.

"It was painful," Astros Hall of Famer Jeff Bagwell said, standing on the Dodger Stadium turf as the celebration howled around him. "When I left after '05, things started to go south. Then came the 100-loss seasons. It wears on the kids. It's no fun losing."

As one of those who played on Houston's only previous World Series team, the 2005 club that was swept by the Chicago White Sox, Bagwell took it personally.

"You don't want to go on losing all the time," he said. "Then you get Altuve, Springer, Correa, Dallas, Verlander, Yuli, Bregman. Everything Luhnow and the front office did to get this rolling...it's worked out right now."

Out of the darkness came, via the draft, Cy Young-winning pitcher Dallas Keuchel, World Series MVP George Springer, superstar shortstop Carlos Correa and superstar-in-waiting third baseman Alex Bregman.

Signed as international free agents were batting champion Jose Altuve and slugger Yuli Gurriel. Acquired at this year's August waivers trade deadline was ace pitcher Justin Verlander, who went 5-0 with a 1.06 ERA in five regular-season starts for the Astros and then 4-1 with a 2.21 ERA in the postseason.

The remnants of the tanking are still scattered about: This year's Astros, for example, drew 2.4 million fans, still down from the glory days of Bagwell and Craig Biggio, when they regularly drew around 3 million.

But by the time Verlander arrived, it was evident that this was as good a team as any in baseball and maybe the best. After the Astros clinched the AL West title Sept. 17, Verlander exclaimed in the celebration that this probably was the best team he's played on, raving about the club's athleticism, how every single position player in the lineup could scoot from first to third on a hit or score from second.

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The ace was already a veteran of two losing World Series teams in Detroit in 2006 and 2012, and it was easy to think back to fearsome sluggers Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez who played station-to-station ball and ultimately fell short.

Now, as the Astros lined up for introductions in Yankee Stadium before Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, Carlos Beltran leaned over to McCann—a fellow Yankee turned Astro—along the baseline and quietly said, "You know we’re going to win the World Series. This team deserves it."

With that, Beltran gave McCann a hug, and off they went.

"This whole experience has been emotionally draining," a joyful McCann said. "Intense baseball that you don't get during the regular season.

"You can't play six months like this. You'd be crushed by May."

Game 7 didn't quite match the thrills and chills of some of the rest of this World Series. The Astros mugged Dodgers starter Yu Darvish for two runs in the first inning and three more in the second, including Springer's two-run homer that stamped the night with a feeling of inevitability. By game's end, Verlander and Keuchel were warming and ready in the bullpen, just in case.

"This was a dogfight, as hard a fought series...emotionally draining, physically draining," Springer said. "It took seven games. But the difference between us and them today was us scoring early. Being able put them on their heels early and not [let them] attack us was huge."

It was the first time two teams with 100 wins during the regular season met in a World Series since 1970, when the Baltimore Orioles and Cincinnati Reds dueled, and Wednesday night became even more dramatic. It was the first time two 100-win clubs met in Game 7 of the World Series since 1931, when the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Athletics.

The drama didn't last long, however, thanks to Darvish. Not only did the Astros beat the Dodgers on the field, but they also, in hindsight, whipped them at the trade table this summer when the Dodgers veered away from Verlander and focused on Darvish.

The Dodgers also never recovered from prematurely yanking starter Rich Hill in Game 2. He was cruising along with seven strikeouts in four innings when the Los Angeles analytic storm hit: No matter how well Hill was pitching, they were not going to allow him to face the Houston lineup a third time. That set off a chain reaction that wound up with Los Angeles using nine pitchers and being stuck with Brandon (Losing Pitcher) McCarthy on the mound in the 11th inning. McCarthy hadn't pitched in more than three weeks.

Instead of taking a two-games-to-none lead in the series, the Dodgers went to Houston with the series tied at one game each. And in Games 2, 3, 4 and 5 combined, the Dodgers ran through a stretch in which they used 25 pitchers in 35 innings. In Sunday's wild 13-12 Houston Game 5 win, the Dodgers blew a four-run lead, a three-run lead and a one-run lead.

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"This was a great series between two 100-win teams, two great teams, two great offenses, two great defenses, two great pitching staffs," Springer said. "The wildness of this series, the wackiness of this series, the emotional ups and downs...being able to play in this was something I'll never forget."

Nor will anyone associated with the Astros or the city of Houston. Together, Springer and the Astros started in a hole, and together, they roared back by playing some of the best baseball you'll ever see.

"Incredible," Astros Hall of Famer Craig Biggio said, standing near his buddy Bagwell on the Dodger Stadium infield. "Watching the growing pains. We weren't good, we stocked up on No. 1 picks, and now you [see] them all over the field.

"From an organizational standpoint, from the city's standpoint, speaking as someone who lives in Texas...this is a big deal."

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.