Culture / Sporting Life

Hurt and Super — Carlos Correa Hits a 100 MPH Pitch With a Bad Back, Delights His Future Wife as Fenway Goes Funeral: Red Sox Fans Leave Early as Dominant Astros Roll

BY // 10.14.18

BOSTON – Carlos Correa needs to worry about the way he sits. He needs to worry about the way he walks. He needs to worry about the way he lounges. A bad back will turn even the most well balanced man into something of an unsure mess. A bad back could turn Wilt Chamberlain into one of the nervous kids from Goosebumps, it could make George Clooney feel as gangly as a teenager fighting pimples.

“I have to make sure I sit the right way at home,” Correa says a few days before the start of the American League Championship Series. “I have to think about it.”

But the Houston Astros do not need to worry about Carlos Correa. He’ll still come through when his team needs him the most. He’ll still find a way to contribute, a way to make a difference.

He’ll muscle a 100 MPH pitch into shallow center field with two outs in the sixth inning, with his team having just seen its 2-0 lead turn into a 2-2 game. He’ll bring in Alex Bregman for the go-ahead run. He’ll shift momentum right back in a Saturday night prime time showdown in baseball’s ultimate cathedral.

Carlos Correa may have the most talked about back in Houston. But that doesn’t mean he can’t still put the Astros on it when it counts most.

“He told me after he hit BP that this is the best he’s felt since coming off the DL,” Astros outfielder Tony Kemp tells PaperCity. “I knew was going to do something big tonight.”

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All Correa does is account for what Astros ace Justin Verlander calls the most important hit of the night. The defending champions’ relentless, merciless lineup will add four runs in the top of the ninth inning, making the final 7-2 score feel like a demolition. One that leaves the Fenway Park faithful streaming for the exits, heading into one cold October 13th before their team even takes its final at-bats.

But make no mistake, Correa — an unfairly good seventh hitter — is one who sends the Astros on the way to this tone-setting Game 1 win.

“I was fired up about Correa,” the Astros’ regular season and first round playoff MVP Alex Bregman says. “I was looking back at Correa.”

Bregman only gets on base because Red Sox reliever Joe Kelly drills him with one of those 100 MPH fastballs in the arm. Many assume Bregman looks back to stare at Kelly after crossing home plate. But Bregman says no. It is about Correa. It is about his teammate.

The way it always seems to be with this special Astros squad.

This is clearly a team stalking history. A.J. Hinch’s team has outscored its playoff opponents 28-8 in four postseason games, four postseason wins. Yet, they still know how important their hurting superstar shortstop is to keep things rolling for the seven more wins needed to secure a historic repeat.

“Right now, I’m feeling really good,” Correa says. “I’m hoping for a really good series.”

Correa has his fiancee Daniella Rodriguez and a lot more family with him in Boston. The Correa crew is spotted by Astros fans having breakfast at The Friendly Toast restaurant on Saturday morning.

By Saturday night, he is basking in another big playoff moment, balky back and all. Correa walks into the cramped interview room tucked away in one of Fenway’s old corridors, wearing a distinctive black jacket and black jeans. He looks like baseball’s version of Ryan Gosling — he’s the coolest guy in the room and everyone knows it.

This is a star who’s feeling it again, a star who is learning he can still do plenty as he hurts. Correa’s achy lower back will not let him be peak Carlos Correa. But this version can still do some special stuff.

“Carlos has had huge at-bats,” Hinch says, pointing to Correa’s two-out walk that kickstarted the Astros’ two-run second inning as well. “We talked about it. He had a little bit more results with a couple of walks and the base hit with the RBI with two outs.

“So I’m not panicked about him if you’re wondering.”

Baseball’s Monster Lineup

Justin Verlander never panics. He just doesn’t believe in it.

Verlander just keeps coming, just keeps firing. Stress him and he’ll up the velocity on his fastball, reach back further than a 35-year-old athlete should be able to and ratchet it up to 98, 99 MPH. The Astros ace somehow gets out of a jam in the fifth inning still locked in a 2-2 game — and then he marches back out for an easy 1-2-3 sixth after Correa gives him the lead back.

It’s a cold night at Fenway with temperatures dipping into the forties and few balls reach the outfield until the Astros go off in the ninth. The two best teams in the American League will battle it out in a grind, with mistakes (walks, wild pitches, errors, bungled throws) meaning as much as any heroics. This is a game with 14 combined walks, three hit batters (all Astros), a hit umpire (Joe West who doesn’t move on a wayward dart from Red Sox catcher Christian Vazquez) and a hit first base coach (Bregman makes an errant throw during pre-inning warmups).

This isn’t anything close to a pretty game, but the most pressurized playoff games are rarely perfect.

It will come down to which team has more grind, to which team won’t let up, to which team just keeps believing. These Astros always seem to be that team.

When Josh Reddick leads off the ninth with a blast into the cold out of nowhere, a home run that defies the conditions and travels 419 feet, Houston more than has that old feeling back. Only, it’s somehow even better.

These Astros still haven’t lost a game this October. If last year’s run to the first world championship in Houston baseball history was a roller coaster ride, these playoffs have been a flex of dominance from a determined, ultra confident defending champ.

The rest of baseball might as well be pleading for mercy.

“We scored a lot of runs today,” Carlos Correa says. “When we put great at-bats together, it can get scary out there.”

Boston already looks spooked.

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