And just like that, the 2022 Major League Baseball season has come to an end. The Houston Astros this year are the team that have risen above all others and become the World Series Champions.
With their victory comes a variety of different outlooks from fans, critics and all others alike. On one hand, many fans across the league are still upset from the cheating scandal the Astros faced in the 2017 and 2018 seasons.
Now going into exactly what these scandals revolved around would be a whole article in itself, so to sum it up, essentially the team was stealing signs from other teams, or in simpler terms, coaches or other people would use audio or visual cues to alert the batter to what pitch was coming to them to better prepare them for the at bat. This issue has left a bitter taste in the mouth of many supporters of teams that the Astros knocked out of playoff contention during those seasons.
These people are obviously unhappy with the team’s victory this year; on the other hand some are quite happy. And speaking of being happy, you can look no further than the Astros loyal fanbase, and their manager Dusty Baker. Baker has been coaching in the major leagues since 1993 when he started with the San Francisco Giants. Since then, he has brought his various teams to the playoffs 11 times without a World Series win.
That was until 2022, for his 12th appearance in the “big game” he pulled things all together and brought home the championship. This win makes him both the oldest manager to appear in, -and win- a World Series.
His accolades however don’t end there, he had plenty as a player, but if we stick for this article to his coaching accomplishments, he was the first MLB manager in history to lead five different teams to division titles, he is the ninth manager to win both an AL and NL Pennant, and he is also the 12th manager and first African American manager with 2,000 victories, and first African American manager with 50 postseason victories.
This win was by no means an easy one for the Astros however, it did take six games to crown a champion.
The first four games were split between the two teams, each proving a worthy adversary for the other. Game five went to the Astros leaving one game to go, and the Astros were able to pull it together to win it all in game six.
Now with the season behind us, the offseason begins, and with it the preparation stage for next season, after of course a little break for the teams, and a bit of time for the Astros to rest on their laurels.