George Springer stepped to the plate in the top of the second inning at Dodger Stadium. One thousand, five hundred and seventy-one miles away, Eugenia Rios sat in her living room, wearing a Houston Strong T-shirt and clutching a rally towel.

An Astros-orange rosary dangled from a lamp, next to a stack of prescription pill bottles.

"OK, Springer," Rios said, talking to her TV. "Just put the ball in play now."

Just then, Springer swung hard and missed. Rios shook her head. "Come on. We don't need you swinging for the fences."

On the next pitch, Springer connected on a fastball, sending it 438 feet over the fence in left-center and putting the Astros up 5-0 in Game 7 of the World Series. Rios clapped and shouted: "Bye-bye, baby! You proved me wrong."

Then the phone calls started, from close friends and family who've been hoping and praying the Astros would win this one for Rios: "Hello. Yes, I saw. It was a great hit."

She hung up, and it rang again: "Yes, we're looking good tonight. I told you, I'm going to ride with Orbit in the parade."

And again: "Oh my God, yes Darlene. I think we're gonna do it. It's been a long time coming."

Rios, a longtime Astros season-ticket holder, is by no means a typical baseball fan. And yet, as her beloved team competed Wednesday in a do-or-die final game of the World Series, the 68-year-old Baytown woman seemed to perfectly embody a fan base that's never celebrated a championship —and has long worried that it never would.

"I believe they can do it," Rios said, hours before the first pitch. "We need this one."

She needed this one.

RELATED: Astros fan skipped chemo to attend opening day, hoping this is finally the year

Rios has been to every Astros home opener for nearly two decades, even after she was diagnosed three years ago with an aggressive and particularly deadly form of brain cancer. In the groggy hours after the emergency surgery to remove that initial tumor, the only way doctors could get her to open her eyes was by lying, and telling her the Astros were on TV.

A year after that, as she was in the midst of brutal chemotherapy treatments that thinned her hair and weakened her body, Rios and her sister flew to Cooperstown, N.Y., to see one of her favorite players, Craig Biggio, inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

She teared up when the star second baseman spotted her in a wheelchair and came by to ask what had happened to one of his biggest fans; She thinks he might have teared up, too, when he realized how far she'd traveled. She'd spent hundreds of evenings at the ballpark over the years cheering for Biggio and his hall-of-famer teammate, Jeff Bagwell, including a couple of games in the 2005 World Series. But even that historically great duo was never able to deliver Houston a title.

"I really feel like this is our year." That's what Rios had said more than 200 days ago, back on Opening Day at Minute Maid Park. She was quoted in the next day's newspaper, after telling a reporter that she'd delayed a chemo treatment to ensure she was strong enough to attend: "I wasn't going to let a little brain cancer keep me from my Astros."

Now, with the Astros still up 5-0 in the top of the sixth inning, she was on the phone with her cousin, who'd already gotten into line at the team store at the ballpark downtown: "Yeah … Get me a large … Make sure it says 'champions' on the front."

She was faking the confidence; she knew better after four decades of pulling for a team that had, for 55 years, always fallen short in the end.

RELATED: Fan with brain cancer not giving up hope after Astros' 3rd straight loss to Yankees

The first two Los Angeles batters reached base in the bottom of the sixth. She started to feel nervous, a few minutes later, when they scored a run.

In the top of the seventh, Jose Altuve stole second base with two outs. Rios clapped: "Now just steal third and home and get us another run. That's not asking too much."

At the start of the eighth, with the score still 5-1 and her team six outs away, she started to get sentimental: "If my dad were here," she said to no one in particular, "he would be beside himself. He waited his whole life for a night like this."

When a Dodgers batter lined out to center to end the eighth, Rios picked up her rally towel: "This is starting to feel like a reality. Oh my Lord."

She'd fallen in love with the Astros as a young girl, back when her dad used to listen to games on the radio. In the 1970s, when she and her sister Ardie were old enough to buy tickets, they became regulars at the Astrodome. In 2011, when the team recorded more than 100 losses, she still attended nearly every home game.

And on Wednesday night, when Altuve fielded a ground ball in the bottom of the ninth inning and fired it to first base, delivering Houston its first World Series championship, she held her rally towel close to her chest, and let out a hoarse scream.

"Thank you, dear Lord," she said, with a tremble in her voice. "All these years. All these years. My boys finally did it."

Best of all, she was still around to see it.

___

Mike Hixenbaugh writes about health care and medicine for the Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Send him tips at mike.hixenbaugh@chron.com.