You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time. – Jim Bouton

When Jose Altuve fielded Corey Seager’s groundball to right and made the routine throw to first baseman Yuli Gurriel for the final out of the 2017 World Series, I threw my arms up, folded over in disbelief for a few moments, hugged my wife, and then I grabbed my phone and called my dad.

Joel Roza Sr. was born on May 22, 1964, two years after the Houston Colt 45’s began playing in a makeshift stadium just a few hundred feet to the south of what would be the Astrodome.

He loved baseball, followed it all his life, and came to know what all native Houstonians learn as they grow there – you’ll have good teams, you’ll have a couple great teams, and you’ll have a litter of shit teams, but you will never know the joy of hoisting a World Series trophy in your own city.

He spent a good portion of my youth reminiscing about the 1980 and 1986 Astros, both of whom lost all-time classic NLCS match-ups to the Phillies and Mets, respectively.

We lamented the waste of the ’98 Astros, with 102 wins and ‘The Big Unit’ Randy Johnson leading the rotation after being acquired in a stunning trade in the dying seconds of the trade deadline only to watch their World Series aspirations die a shitty death in the familiar graveyard of the NLDS.

When the Astros went to the 2005 World Series, a couple of things were happening – one, I was now enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard and had spent a good chunk of the season in New Jersey and California.

The second thing that was happening, and it was truly regrettable for me even though it did lead to a massive breakthrough down the road, was that my dad and I weren’t speaking.

The details aren’t terribly important anymore, but it was a difficult time for our family and while that period lasted maybe three or four months total, it encompassed the entirety of the 2005 postseason.

When we reconnected, he revealed that he was at Game 4 of the World Series, sitting in Section 102, Row 2, Seat 5 – otherwise known as The Crawford Boxes in left field.

My aunt and uncle scored the tickets somehow, so my dad was invited and there you go – I can say forever that my dad was in the house of a World Series game, and that he failed to attack the umpire who called Orlando Palmeiro out at first¹.

Over the next 10 years, the Astros would descend first into disrepair, and eventually, into a purposeful rut.

Over that time, my dad and I grew closer, went to plenty of games together (they were easy enough to get into), and spent a good amount of time expanding our baseball sojourns to where my wife and I were living in Corpus Christi; the home of Houston’s Double-A affiliate.

But then came 2017 – 12 years after the last World Series appearance, with the team relocating to the American League upon the sale from Drayton McLane to Jim Crane in 2012, and five years after their organizational collapse gained purpose and a plan.

Prospects like Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, George Springer, Alex Bregman, Dallas Keuchel, and Lance McCullers Jr., had grown into young stars, and veterans like Josh Reddick, Charlie Morton, Brian McCann, Carlos Beltran, and Yuli Gurriel (Cuban League vet, but a vet all the same) surrounded them.

Mix in the waiver wire deadline acquisition of Justin Verlander amidst one of the greatest natural disasters to ever hit the city of Houston, Hurricane Harvey, and you had the makings of a film-like ascendancy.

They took out Boston in four games, came back and shut the Yankees down in seven games, and went toe-to-toe with a juggernaut Dodgers team that was, in so many ways, Houston’s National League doppelgänger.

When that last out was secured and the celebration began, I clutched my phone and told my dad, we did it – the Astros are world champs!

It took him a few a seconds to respond. I don’t believe he was overtly emotional, though given our 1,000 mile distance from each other at the time, I can never be too sure.

“I can’t believe it. This is awesome.”

It reads so mild on a screen, but to hear him say it with his cadence, his tone, and his history, it’s almost like hearing a mute speak for the first time. I could hear the wonder in his voice; the sheer amazement that something this amazing could happen to his city.

We love basketball and football, too. No doubt the Rockets’ back-to-back titles in 1994 and 1995 were amazing for us. I remember them, but I was only 8 and 9 years old.

2005 was great, too, but we were separated by more than just geography and getting swept in the end made it feel incomplete.

But 2017 was close to perfect.

We were living in Joliet, Illinois by then while my parents and family remained in Houston, but we recapped every game by phone, text or call depending on the time, and we both just loved this team.

It’s so rare, even for title-winning teams, to be this beloved by a city and revered forever.

But we watched these players grow up – literally!

Dad and I went to Hooks games in 2010, 2011, and 2012. We watched Jose Altuve, George Springer, Dallas Keuchel, and so many others who wound up being a part of that title team when they were just kids working their way up the ladder.

As a freelance sports columnist for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times from 2009-2013, I had a front-row seat to the planting of those dynastic seeds.

My dad read every column, Googled my name to see who was mentioning my work, and sat with me for countless hours on the phone while I waxed poetic about the ace potential of a Jordan Lyles, or the star potential of J.D. Martinez, or the importance of Jason Castro’s rise and ultimate place on future championship teams.

I also wasted a lot of time talking to him about dudes no one will ever hear about – Drew Locke, Ross Seaton, T.J. Steele, Jon Gaston, and Jimmy Van Ostrand, to name but an inglorious few.

Over the entirety of Houston’s golden era run – eight consecutive playoff appearances, seven consecutive ALCS appearances, four American League pennants, and two World Series championships – we marveled together at the heights of our little team from Houston.

We thought dynasties only happened in places like New York, Los Angeles, Boston or Chicago.

The Astros gave us the chance to put Houston in that discussion, and I am eternally grateful that my father got to experience every second of that run.

In 2022 – a full 17 years after that inaugural berth in the Fall Classic – I arrogantly assumed that the Astros would return to the World Series, so I booked a trip home for what would be the first three games of the series a full month before it even happened.

Of course, the Astros swept both Seattle and New York enroute to a second consecutive trip to the Classic, and I arrived in Houston one day before Game 1.

We unfortunately did not attend any games, but we did go to the ballpark on the day I arrived and forked out a few hundred bucks on World Series paraphernalia.

Though the Astros blew a 5-0 lead in Game 1 and lost it in crushing fashion, it felt like a historic wrong had been righted.

There we were – father and son, taking in the World Series just 15 minutes down the street from the actual event.

Fortunately, Game 2 provided the necessary balm for the previous game’s misstep. My buddy, Jake, came to the house for the game, and my mother watched her first full baseball game in her then-62 years on Earth.

It was a blast from end-to-end.

Naturally, I had to fuck it up by contracting RSV, with symptoms literally appearing about ten minutes after Game 2 had ended.

By the time Yordan Alvarez turned Game 6 upside down and the Astros wrapped up their second World Series championship, I was back in Illinois.

But it took about 2.3 seconds for me to grab my phone and dial the only number there was to dial.

This was only the second championship, but winning in Houston had become a habit. We weren’t impressed with division titles, and we fully expected the ALDS to serve as almost a second spring training.

Dad reflected this attitude as well.

After losing the Fall Classic in 2019 and 2021, my dad’s opening line to me after the win in ’22 was, “it’s good to be king.”

There were so few things that my dad found joy in during the final six years of his life.

His company for 25 years, Genesis Telecom, laid him off with no severance or path forward in 2019. I raced home within two days and took him to an Astros v. A’s game. It was a fun distraction, but it was short-lived.

For the first time in my life, I saw my father sort of succumb to depression.

Here was a man who had suffered three heart attacks, was overweight, with hips and knees starting to betray him. He felt like the worst version of himself so often, and it manifested in myriad ways that seemed foreign coming from someone so historically prone to perseverance and a ‘water off a duck’s back’ mentality.

But this period also led to a lot of reflection and storytelling. I heard stories that captured my imagination, piqued my interest and curiosities, and left me wanting more.

We’ve always been close, but we really bonded as we got older. It is scientifically impossible for me to overstate how grateful I am for that.

This time of year – Opening Day, and all that encompasses it – has always brought a sense of renewal to us.

Last season, I was in Houston for Opening Day as the Astros hosted the Mets.

Dad was in the hospital, still recovering from open-heart surgery that saw doctors implant an LVAD (left ventricular assist device) to his failing heart.

The coincidence of those two events lining up wasn’t lost on us.

He was on the 8th floor at St. Luke’s in Houston on the day of the game. He kept urging me to go since all I had done for over a month was drive to and from the hospital, but I refused. It felt wrong to even conceptualize attending Opening Day while he was still strapped to a hospital bed.

We realized as the pregame show was wrapping up that the hospital wasn’t carrying the game, so I busted my phone out and we sat and watched the entire thing on my little screen as the Astros rolled up a 3-1 win in Juan Soto’s debut with the Mets.

We reminisced about the glory of the past decade, that insane Game 5 in the 2017 World Series (greatest game ever), and his memories of the ’86 NLCS against the Mets. Even with the circumstances, I never considered for a moment that this was our final Opening Day together; his final ever.

Even to type it, it’s so maddeningly final.

It’s been four months and four days since my father passed away. Four months and eight days since he was felled by the acute ischemic stroke that would ultimately take him.

Tonight is, technically, Opening Day with the Giants hosting the Yankees on Netflix, but the real thing is tomorrow.

Everything I do now is being done for the first time without him. Some of it is difficult, but all of it is notable.

An Opening Day without my dad is a scenario and circumstance I have dreaded for many years; since his health issues reared their head about 18 years ago. To be here now is still somehow unfathomable.

He was the man who taught me the game. He explained the rules to me during our infrequent early 90s trips to the cavernous Astrodome to watch mediocre Astros teams alongside sometimes-sparse crowds.

When I think of the Dome, I think of Lefty’s Pub out in left field, Dome dogs, Milo Hamilton’s voice booming out of the speakers outside throughout the Dome parking lot as we almost always arrived a bit late, the hazy screens high up in left and right field, the Killer B’s of Bagwell, Biggio, Berry, and Bell, Larry Dierker, Jose Cruz, the flower bed in center field.

But every morsel of those memories is attached to my dad.

By the end of the 90s, I was a blossoming baseball savant (at least in my house), and I’m sure my father wondered how far I would take this burgeoning obsession. Little did he know that he would help to launch a few more for me as the years passed.

I sit here today overcome with thoughts of our plans for 2026. We were still brainstorming, but we had concrete ideas and were just lining dates up.

Iron Maiden concert in Chicago in September? Check.

Astros visiting the friendly confines of Wrigley Field on his 62nd birthday, giving him a chance to go to a game there for the first time ever? Check.

Perhaps a September trip to Houston for a late-season rendezvous at Daikin Park? I’d never say no.

But the most imminent plan was hatched just three days before our world changed, when I announced that I was coming home the second week of January and that we would sit down with my studio mic and informally launch our podcast, Father to Son.

It was to be, as my mom put it, our phone calls turned into a show. I had conceived of the concept probably 10 years ago, but as life changed for both of us, it was always a backburner idea. But with his life hanging in the balance all throughout last Spring, it was that idea that buoyed him.

He always wanted to work with his son; I hoped to make it a reality.

I had our first episode loosely planned, and then life intervened.

There’s probably a litany of lessons in there. Something about not waiting for the perfect times, or for the stars to align; to just fucking do it, because life is shorter than we anticipate.

I have the rest of my life to consider all of the lessons left strewn about amidst the loss of my father. To be completely honest, all I can think of is baseball and how even as Spring renews most, it can’t budge the void that I’m still making room for.

I know I’ll be okay one day. I know that baseball will persist, and that gives me comfort.

One thing that baseball does for me is it allows me to disconnect from the world and get lost in the little details – the statistics, both mundane and quirky – and the little nuances that only this great game provides.

I can just see my dad in the garage of my childhood home, staying up late at night, rewiring my brain from Batman to baseball, slowly moving wires over from one end to the other as sweat drips from his head as he works by the light of a single lamp.

It’s obviously not how it happened, but it’s a fun visual. I mean, we had overhead lights in the garage, why the hell would he only use a lamp?

I’ll spend ample time considering the slow decay of the Astros’ golden era, and how to reverse it as an unpaid, unhired, and unsolicited consultant to the GM. My work will undoubtedly be cut out for me.

Baseball will be my safe place and my madhouse, likely simultaneously, and for that, I have my father to thank.

I miss him, and I love him beyond any limits presented by this mortal coil. He was my best friend, my partner in most crime, and the reason I did, and do, so much of what I do.

What son doesn’t want to impress his father? I lived for it.

The future is a foreign land, but baseball will remain constant.

Play ball.