In the end, it wasn't the greatest World Series of all time, despite the early promise. Great, but not the greatest.
That superlative has more to do with small, personal moments of triumph (Bill Mazeroski) or disaster (Bill Buckner) than crooked numbers or relievers' ERA.
While Houston vs. Los Angeles was high art, it never did boil down to the elemental story of one man in one moment against fate.
The drama ebbed near the end, and then fell off entirely during Game 7. Wednesday's final contest was over inside 30 minutes.
But given all the unlikely turns that had dropped the floor out from under the audience before, we were compelled to stick with it for the next three hours.
When it turned out as baseball games often do – a tidy lead built up early on a starter who doesn't have it, then protected drearily by a parade of specialists from the bullpen – that seemed monstrously unfair. Houston won the game 5-1 and the series by the length of George Springer's bat.
You were sitting back in your chair thinking, "Any minute now, any minute now …" and it never happened.
Where were our five-run innings? Where was the collapse in the ninth? Wasn't anybody going to hit another three or four home runs? And if not, who should we be calling for a refund on our cable package?
Because, after having spent a few days with the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers, we had all grown used to a certain type of baseball – the exciting kind.
In a few years, fans outside Texas will remember one thing about the 2017 World Series – Game 5, 13-12 and the through-the-looking-glass feel you had as you watched it go down.
If baseball were like Game 5 every night, they'd only play it once a week. That'd be enough.
Inside baseball, this series will be remembered as the moment the Earth turned upside-down.
During the regular season, when a record number of home runs were hit, we grappled with the juiced ball. No one could quite put a finger on what exactly had changed (and Major League Baseball repeatedly denied anything had), but pitchers agreed something was off. The ball was bouncier, smaller, felt denser, the stitches were tighter and had a lower profile. All of those things at once, or just some or, if you're Corey Kluber or Max Scherzer, none of them.
Whatever it was, this tiny, possibly illusory alteration was shifting the balance of power away from the mound and toward the batter's box.
In the World Series, we got a new variation on the theme – the slick ball.
Suddenly, no one could find the requisite grip to throw a proper slider. (Exhibit A: Dodger goat Yu Darvish.)
"We're in here signing balls before the game, and it's hard to get the ink on the ball sometimes," Astros starter Justin Verlander told Sports Illustrated. "You know when you sign a receipt at Starbucks, and if you don't hold the paper down with your hand, the pen just slides across the paper and the ink doesn't stick to it? That's what it's like sometimes trying to sign these balls."
It's an interesting point that raises an important question: Who pays for coffee with a credit card? This guy is the reason you have to stand in line for 10 minutes every morning just to get a medium blend, black.
(Ironically, though Verlander became the chief agitator on the slick-ball file, he was the best pitcher in the postseason by a country mile. Go figure.)
Pitchers sitting at home picked up the battle cry, even if some of them didn't seem totally sure what they were complaining about.
"The baseballs are the same, my ass," tweeted Jays' starter Brett Anderson.
"So damn thankful they juiced the ball after I retired," said journeyman Dan Haren.
No, no, we're not talking about a juiced ball any more. It's a slick ball this time. Also, possibly juiced.
It's a good time to be a baseball fan graduating from a jet propulsion laboratory, because soon every team will need its own physicist. He or she will spend most of their days explaining to pitchers that when you take spin axis and air drag into account, you're still being paid millions of dollars to throw a ball and perhaps you oughtn't be out in public complaining about it so often.
Baseball doesn't do controversy well (case in point being the anti-Solomonesque fumbling of Yuli Gurriel's foray into ethnic charades), but this one should be easy.
Whenever pitchers complain about the balls going forward, they should be pointed back to the last week or so.
That. That's what people who pay to sit in the stands want to see.
It's not offence for it's own sake. It's unpredictability.
It's the sense that a three-run lead late in a game is not safe, no matter who you have closing.
Because if we move to the world pitchers seem to favour – one in which everything is minutely stage-managed and the averages tend to work in their favour – a large chunk of baseball is going to be unwatchable. What they're arguing for is more Game 7s at the cost of Game 5s.
What we want most from sports is that our team wins. What we want even more, but often don't articulate, is that it does it in the most painful way possible.
You can't really enjoy a four-game sweep, even if it turns out in your favour. It's dull.
But seven up-and-down games? Lead changes, disappointments, ultimate triumph? That is sweet. I'd argue that there is more entertainment utility gleaned by fans from losing a seven-game gut-punch than winning a five-game walkover.
Because it's the uncertainty of sport that is its power. And that can only be reinforced when things go completely sideways. Baseball had been moving in the other direction. Now it's moving back.
For a few games there, Houston and Los Angeles stretched that idea as far as it will go and it was glorious, even for the neutral.
If slick/juiced baseballs were the reason, then good work everyone. Excellent conspiring.
And if they weren't, maybe they should start.
Cathal Kelly