Enough already. Enough baseball—bring on the Iditarod or synchronized swimming. Bring back the six-day bike racing. The Houston Astros won their first World Championship last night—their first after fifty-six years’ trying—taking down the Dodgers, 5–1, in L.A., in the seventh and final game of the World Series: a glorious but un-tense finale in which the ’Stros did all their scoring in the first two innings. Astro fans everywhere, including the jam-packed hordes at their home, Minute Maid Park, who were watching on giant television screens, loved every moment of this three-hour-and-thirty-seven-minute trial, but, dutifully sitting by my home set, I longed for the thrilling back-and-forth of the previous six, including even that 13–12, twenty-eight-hit, ten-inning monster of Game Five.

As happens so often in a long series, the joys and triumphs of the winners and their rooters remain pure, while the rest of us, and not only the Dodger fans, try not to think about several inexorable but excruciating failures and pains. We must put aside, for instance, what today must look like for Yu Darvish, last night’s Dodger starter, who was gone after those two innings, and who had lasted for a bare five outs in his Game One start, while coughing up six hits and four runs. Dodger first baseman Cody Bellinger struck out three times last night and seventeen times in the Series, in the end resembling only an embarrassed high-school swinger up there. He set the record for the most strikeouts in the post-season, twenty-nine. Dodger ace Clayton Kershaw pitched four useful innings in a relief role last night but now must ponder his astounding eight homers surrendered in the post-season. Yasiel Puig and his bat, although close, will undergo some counselling this winter. He by turns licks, gnaws, whispers to, and kisses his partner between pitches, but throws her violently to the dirt when she fails him. They probably love each other, but this is an abusive relationship.

There’s a bit of sunshine, however, for the notable Dodger cleanup hitter Justin Turner, who batted .130 for the Series, but perhaps even this afternoon will take himself to the barber, to be shorn of his enormous pinkish-red mane and whiskers, which have grown untouched since some rash vow last spring.

This Astros championship began with fresh ownership and management after 2013 and 2014, when the team suffered more-than-a-hundred-loss seasons. Brilliant draft picks and front-office algorithm strategizing brought us this cast of thrilling newcomers now fixed in our baseball consciousness—the stubby and exuberant José Altuve, with his three successive two-hundred-hit seasons, Series M.V.P. center fielder George Springer, whose five Series home runs tie a record previously shared by Reggie Jackson and Chase Utley, and the tall and athletically eloquent Carlos Correa, among others.

My own happiness at this outcome is centered on some older guys, familiar to me from earlier seasons. I’m thinking about the illustrious Carlos Beltrán, now forty, who has his first Championship ring after nineteen years’ service with six prior teams, including the Yankees and the Mets. I also respect catcher Brian McCann, a former Yankee reliable, and almost forgive his ceaseless high-school-corridor whisperings with his pitchers. Most of all, I’m happy for Justin Verlander, who pitched strongly for the Tigers over thirteen seasons, picking up Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards along the way, before joining the Astros in a last-minute midsummer deal. He went 8–0 for them during the season and won four out of five games with a 2.21 E.R.A. during this year’s post-season. He had played in two prior World Series, but this was his first championship.

Verlander is workmanlike and minimal on the mound, with an intelligent pre-pitch gaze that almost allows us to share the pitch plan and the grip and angle of the ensuing delivery. He accepts the result, good or bad, with a grizzled composure. As the starter (and eventual loser) for the Astros on Saturday, he had struck out seven batters over the first five innings and was protecting a 1–0 lead when he gave up a single to Austin Barnes and then saw a pitch of his nick the next batter, Utley, on the foot, just before the go-ahead single and sac fly that put the Dodgers ahead. He left the mound after an inning-ending strikeout and was gone from the game, but displayed no or few sighings or mutterings on the bench. You take what comes. Now he has played in his first World Series, and it has brought him a Championship ring and a sweet winter off. For the rest of us not in or around Houston, the reward after two thousand four hundred and fifty-eight regular-season games and thirty-eight more in the post-season is a bit more sleep and, for the moment, at least, no more innings.

A previous version of this article misstated the number of World Series that Justin Verlander has appeared in.