Bad omen: Astros World Series banner gets stuck during pre-game ceremony

When Houston Astros pitcher Dallas Keuchel said the team didn’t want to suffer the fate of the 2017 Chicago Cubs, his message was clear: There will be no World Series hangover for Houston in 2018.

Early in the season, the team has lived up to that declaration. After four games, the Astros are 3-1, and look just as menacing as they did last year.

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Before their home opener Monday, the team finally hit its first snag … literally. During the pre-game ceremony, the team’s World Series banner got stuck at the worst possible time.

If you can’t tell from that angle, a man with a leaf blower stepped in to try and fix the issue. Some of the players couldn’t help but smirk at that turn of events.

Eventually, the tactic worked. The banner was revealed and the fans went wild.

If you thought banner issue was enough to knock the Astros off their game, you would be wrong. The team seemed pretty locked in when the game started, scoring an early run in the first inning.

Instead of the banner snafu negatively impacting the Astros, maybe it will serve to help the club live up to Keuchel’s promise. Maybe the banner refusing to drop represents the Astros putting 2017 behind them and focusing on things ahead. Is it possible the black cloth was a metaphor for the team erasing their 2017 accomplishments in an effort to motivate themselves for 2018?

Or are we reading way too much into this …

A banner got stuck, people laughed and then it eventually fell. The Astros continued hitting the stuffing out of the ball.

We expected nothing less. It’s going to take a lot more than a snagged banner to ruin the Astros in 2018.

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Chris Cwik is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at christophercwik@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik

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