HOUSTON — An hour and a half before Game 6 of the World Series, the Astros won the title. Hitting coach Alex Cintrón knew it. Utilityman Aledmys Díaz knew it. Most importantly, even before he hit the 450-foot, game-changing bomb he called the best moment of his career, left fielder Yordan Alvarez knew it.
They still had to play the game. Lefty Framber Valdez had to baffle the Phillies’ dangerous lineup for six one-run innings, just as he had in Game 2. The defense had to turn the few balls Philadelphia put in play into groundouts. The hitters had to grind through 20 plate appearances against Phillies ace Zack Wheeler, who reared back for 98 mph and found it. They had to wait until Nick Castellanos’s loopy fly ball nestled into right fielder Kyle Tucker’s glove, just shy of the wall down the line, to seal the 4–1 victory.
(It’s a good thing the Astros won the World Series in Game 6, because they would have been very hobbled if the series had made it to Game 7. Third baseman Alex Bregman told Sports Illustrated early Sunday morning that he believed he had broken his right index finger sliding into second base in the eighth inning, and that second baseman Jose Altuve had strained a hamstring going first to third in the sixth.)
