Hurricane Season: The Unforgettable Story of the 2017 Houston Astros and the Resilience of a City Audiobook (Free)

An inside look at the 2017 Houston Astros tournament season, concentrating on the epic seven-game World Series, leading workplace decisions that built an absolute team, and the resilience of the town in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

On November 1, 2017, the Houston Astros defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers within an epic seven video game battle to become 2017 World Series champs. For the Astros, the mix of a magnificently played series, a 101-triumph season, as well as the devastation Hurricane Harvey brought about Hurricane Season: The Memorable Story of the 2017 Houston Astros and the Resilience of the City with their town was so incredible it might give Hollywood screenwriters pause. The country’s fourth-largest town, still reeling in the wake of catastrophe, was smiling again.

The Astros’ first-ever Globe Series victory is a superb football story, but it is also the story of a significant American city–a city (and circumstances) that the rest of the nation doesn’t always love or understand–becoming a sentimental favorite because of its grace and good will in response to the largest natural catastrophe in American history.

The Astros’ magic season can be the fascinating tale of the thoroughly contemporary team. Constructed by NASA-inspired analytics, the team’s data-driven system took the game to a more sophisticated level compared to the so-called Moneyball approach. The team’s new owner, Jim Crane, bought in to the system and was willing to withstand humiliating months in the baseball wilderness with the expectation, distributed by few in the beginning, that success involves those who wait. And he was correct.

But no data-crunching could take credit for a group of likeable, refreshingly good-natured teenagers who wore ‘Houston Strong’ areas on their jerseys and meant it–guys like shortstop Carlos Correa, who kept a photo in his locker of a Houston female trudging through fetid water up to her knees. The Astros base included George Springer, a powerful slugger and rangy outfielder; third-baseman Alex Bregman, whose defensive play and clutch hitting were essential in the series; and, of course, the stubby and tenacious second baseman José Altuve, the heart and soul of the group.

Hurricane Period is Houston Chronicle columnist Joe Holley’s moving accounts of this extraordinary team–and the extraordinary conditions of their championship.