World Series offers escape for Harvey victims watching from home

Astros fans Jim and Jennifer Dean watch Game 6 of the World Series from their home in Pearland. The house was gutted after Hurricane Harvey. Astros fans Jim and Jennifer Dean watch Game 6 of the World Series from their home in Pearland. The house was gutted after Hurricane Harvey. Photo: Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle Photo: Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close World Series offers escape for Harvey victims watching from home 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Ginger Mendisabal walked into the driveway where her children sat in camping chairs, passing out candy after taking in their own hauls, and announced it was time to go. The ballgame was starting, and this was not their home.

The family of four from Baytown had been living in a hotel room, paid for with money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Their own neighborhood had flooded, and so they had come to celebrate Halloween with family friends - at least until the Astros World Series game started.

It was a joyful occasion. Ginger's husband, David, a Baytown firefighter, had spent the day working on his gutted home, but Tuesday evening the families had eaten corn dogs and pizza. The parents, who wore AstrosT-shirts, photographed the kids in their outfits, 10-year-old Michael dressed as Harry Potter and his 7-year-old sister, Jenna, as a character from the movie Maleficent.

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Sprinting ahead, the children had laughed and smiled as they trick-or-treated. The streets filled with other kids, and then emptied. On television, the national anthem was sung - signaling to their mom, an elementary school teacher, that it was time to hurry back to their makeshift home. Her son had not wanted to miss a single home run.

The Mendisabal family, like thousands of Astros fans affected by Hurricane Harvey, had planned to settle in to watch the biggest game in team history in places that, months earlier, they would never have imagined.

Across the region, TVs glowed in gutted living rooms, short-term apartment rentals and hotel lobbies. Other fans tuned in from trailers parked in driveways outside flood-damaged homes, while still more watched at the homes of family members who had taken them in, or from the second floors of their otherwise ruined houses.

For many storm victims, little is normal two months after Harvey. But in each game of the Astros' championship run, storm survivors have found a chance to escape, at least for a few hours, from the chaos around them.

Game 6 was no different.

"There's no normalcy," 46-year-old Jim Dean said. "It almost helps you escape."

Dean watched Tuesday night from his camping chair in the gutted living room of his house in Pearland. His family is living in a motor home in the driveway, but the small TVs are usually occupied with video games or cartoons for his two boys, ages 7 and 10. "It's kind of tight in there," he said, so he set up a way to watch the game in the torn-up home - "old school," as he put it.

Dean keeps beer next to him in the cooler he found floating in his home after it flooded. The TV sits on a custom table they took pains to clean, spraying it down with vinegar. Behind it, the wall has been cut out.

Life in a trailer

Fifty miles away, Shae Butts cheered from her trailer, which she bought to take her grandkids camping and now uses as her temporary home in Simonton.

Butts, 60, can't stay in her flooded house, so she sleeps on a bed that folds down from the trailer wall. A widow, she has figured out a way to mount the TV so she can sit in her Coleman chair, with her feet propped up on a Rubbermaid box filled with her shoes. She follows the team, yelling as loud as she wants from her tiny living space.

"It's a little different," Butts said, "but it's good."

They are part of a kaleidoscope of experiences of people tracking these games as they piece their lives back together. Figuring out how to watch has required some creativity, sure, and it has taken place in circumstances no one ever would have desired. But it's also forged new relationships as a result, and strengthened ones that already existed.

Marjorie Meyers, 47, expected she would be sitting on an ottoman watching the game while her teenage son sat on the family's only comfy living-room chair. After moving from hotel to hotel, they finally settled in an apartment this past weekend.

"I think the city has come together amazingly as one," she said. "I want to see us win it.

Meyerland resident Meg Whitaker, 66, and her husband Phillip had planned to go to their friend's rented apartment not far from the one where the Whitakers were staying.

Their shared experience during Harvey had brought them closer, and the families had built a bond through watching the games - a sort of silver lining after so much loss.

Whitaker would take guacamole and a homemade dessert with her. She lost her Astros gear to the storm, but during the game she wouldn't have to think about the damage that more than 4 feet of water did to her home, or the feeling of waiting and wondering about how they will move forward.

"All the sadness and all the madness going around, something about when you watch ... it just brings, I don't know, it just brings a peace and happiness," she said. "I think it helps. Every little thing like that helps."

Watching from garage

A party of sorts occurred too in a flooded home in northwest Harris County, where Christi Walker, 53, and her husband, Scott, met a friend to watch from his garage. People in the neighborhood, called Ravensway, often watched sports this way together before the flood, outfitting their garages with TVs and, sometimes, recliners.

They grilled burgers and sat in folding chairs Tuesday night, but new appliances and repair materials now filled half the space, and the bottom portion of the walls had been torn out.

Still, they planned to jump to their feet and cheer.

The team had given her hope through the flooding that seemed like it would never end, and the games have offered relief through the slog of gutting and cleaning their home - though a few commercials with scenes of the disaster can be jarring, taking them back to their own escape in boats and efforts to wade through the water to check on their house.

In a sense, it feels like the team is working hard and playing for them.

"It helps," she said. "It definitely helps. Watching the games makes it feel like this is how it should be and you forget. You totally forget."

Back at the hotel room they all shared, the Mendisabals settled in. Jenna dumped out her candy on the floor and began to sort it. Her mom, a longtime Astros fan, sat on the only bed and turned on the TV, flipping the channels as she untied Michael's Harry Potter tie. It was still the first inning.

Michael pulled on his Astros T-shirt and cap. His mom walked a few steps over to the couch where, at night, the two kids would sleep.

"Here we go Mikey," she said to her son.

He came to sit on the arm of the couch and leaned against her. She told him tonight he could stay up to watch.

She explained, " 'Cause if they win, it's history, baby."

Mike Hixenbaugh contributed to this report.