LOS ANGELES -- The Houston Astros are all alone in the baseball stratosphere, coming through just when their city needed them most.

Just a little over two months ago, the Astros were displaced, disconsolate and helpless, grieving that they could not do more for a city ravaged by Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath. All the Astros could do then was play baseball, to give their fans common cause and a little distraction.

2017 MLB Postseason

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All they can do now is revel in the first World Series title in the history of both the city and the state. It seems like so much.

“Our team believed in each other all year,” World Series MVP George Springer said. “And through the good times and the bad times, through a rough stretch in August, to getting down 3-2 against a very good New York team (in the ALCS), there's a lot of things that happened. I'm so happy to be a part of it to bring a championship back to a city that desperately needed one. It is a surreal feeling.”

In one of the most dramatic World Series ever, the Astros sucked the air out of Dodger Stadium from the outset. They jumped on Los Angeles Dodgers starter Yu Darvish for five early runs and then cruised to a 5-1 clincher on Wednesday, the first World Series Game 7 at Dodger Stadium.

As he has done so many times during his spectacular young career, Springer sparked it all, leading off the game with a double and scoring on Cody Bellinger's throwing error. Then he broke the game open in the second inning with a comet-like homer to left-center that gave Houston its initial five-run lead. No team had ever overcome a deficit that large in a winner-take-all World Series game. Lance McCullers Jr. and the bullpen -- led by a heroic four-inning effort from Charlie Morton to finish the game -- made sure that stat remained in effect.