Freddie Freeman will hit baseball’s top hit for the first time. José Altuve, Carlos Correa and company are looking for more laurels. Venezuelan Luis García seems to have already found the formula to shine in the playoffs. The other Houston pitchers, including Framber Valdez, will face Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley and all those young Atlanta hitters. And Dusty Baker will continue to pursue a fall managerial coronation. Braves-Astros, a lot of flavor in this World Series, in which even a father will face his son.
Brian Snitker is manager of the Braves. His son Troy serves as a hitting coach in Houston.
“We know the Snitkers are going to have a World Series trophy at home,” said the Braves manager. “I don’t know who’s going to get it, but we’re going to have one, and that’s really nice.”
A duel that took six decades to develop will confront two teams that reached the military in the National League and have met more than 700 times, including five playoff series.
Just remember Hank Aaron and Jimmy Wynn fighting a Home Run Derby at the Astrodome. Or Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz taking on Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio on a June night.
Due to the schedule and COVID-19, the Astros and Braves have not met since 2017. They will collide on Tuesday, in the first game of the Fall Classic, in Houston. The Astros open as favorites 3-2, according to the FanDuel site.
And let’s be clear: There are many fans who would rather not see either of these two teams at this point in October.
The Venezuelan Altuve, the Puerto Rican Correa, Alex Bregman and the Cuban Yuli Gurriel will forever carry the tag of cheats, after being part of the Astros who devised a system to steal signals, on their way to the conquest of the 2019 World Series. At Minute Maid Park they find ovations. In all the other parks they are greeted by the hostility reserved for the worst villains in the majors. “Since the bad news, we’ve had to deal with what happened in 2017, and I think we all want to show what kind of players we are,” said Yordan Alvarez, MVP of the American League Championship Series.
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