Yes, Virginia, the Astros Will Win The World Series This Year

The following is my imaginary letter to any sports editor — along with the imaginary response. (I just discovered that the great Newseum has on its website the real letter that inspired all of this. Thanks be to God for that!)

My letter

“DEAR EDITOR: I am 44 years old.

For as long as I can remember, my friends have teased me for believing, every year, that my Houston Astros will win the World Series. They are laughing at me especially hard this year. In fact, I just voted that I believe the Astros will win their new division this year, and some jerk on that site said I need to be slapped.

But my Dad says the Astros have as good a shot as anyone else this year.

Please tell me the truth; will the Astros win the World Series in 2013?

Don “Virginia” Cudd

The Response

Don “Virginia”, your little friends and that jerk are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Don “Virginia,” whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Don “Virginia”, the Astros do have as good a shot at the World Series as anyone else. And they just may win it this year!  The possibility exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if only the Rangers or Angels or A’s had hope of winning the American League West this year. Or if Congress passed a law  that only the Yankees were allowed to win the World Series. It would be as dreary as if there were no Don “Virginias.”  There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

You should be slapped for believing in your Astros? You might as well be crucified for following Christ!

You might get your Dad to hire a statistician to prove mathematically that Jose Altuve’s rookie season was better than Craig Biggio’s and Greg Bagwell’s combined or that Philip Humber is capable of five more perfect games in his career. But your friends will not be swayed.  Nobody will ever agree that the Astros will win the World Series in 2013.

But everyone has been wrong before. Plenty of times, in fact.

Just last year, they were wrong about the San Fransico Giants, the  Detroit Tigers and even the Pittsburgh Pirates. Heck, a lot of people were even wrong about the Astros (several of us would never have believed their season would have been as atrocious as it was). And I know that you remember your team’s formal rivals, The St. Louis Cardinals, winning the World Series just two years ago even though they were considered “out of it” by people like me in early August.

Don “Virginia,” let me ask you this: are you still bitter that the 1969 “Miracle Mets” were not the “Miracle Astros?”

Well,  don’t lose faith, my son. There is plenty of potential for a miraculous Astros in 2013.

It is important that you remember the most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. So that is why sports experts like me should almost always be ignored. We had no idea the Seattle Seahawks would make the NFL playoffs this year. And didn’t Butler make it to the Men’s Basketball Final 4 last year?  What about George Mason the year before that? And didn’t your own Texas A&M Corpus Christi Islanders come tantalizingly close to the Sweet 16 in 2006? (Okay, that may a revision of history, since they didn’t even win the first round. But they were up by, like 20, at halftime in that game, and their next opponent would have been UNLV, who they had already beaten once that season. Right? Weren’t you drunkenly explaining that to everyone at Beamers? And didn’t you hear that local radio guy saying the same thing at halftime!?) And who was that Trevor Bayne kid who won the Daytona 500 in 2011?  And I’m still not sure that the Vatican shouldn’t consider the Florida Marlins in the 1997 World Series as some sort of official miracle. Oh yeah, and speaking of Florida, the Miami Hurricane basketball team is currently 13-1 in conference this year! I’m sure I would have called for the slapping of  anyone who predicted that!  (And who would have ever believed that Wake Forest would be the first ACC team to beat those guys?)

We “experts” clearly don’t know anything about sports, Don “Virginia.” I’m sure you realize that we all had Finland losing soundly to the Russians in the 1980 Olympic Gold Medal hockey game, right?

So your stupid friends may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond.

Can the Astros win the World Series this year despite two 100-loss seasons, a bunch of no-names and rookies, a new manager and a very tough new division? Ah, Don “Virginia”, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No chance for the Astros this year?  Thank God they will play the games! A thousand years from now, Don “Virginia”, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, the world will still have records that, in 2013, the Houston Astros were a great baseball team. And, since God continuously makes glad the heart of childhood, it is important you you remember, Don “Virginia”  The World Series is definitely within the grasp of your beloved Astros. Any man who tells you otherwise is himself, worthy of a slap.