There is pessimism, realism, optimism, and then there’s the completely irrational thinking that used to go along with my daughter Spring and her Astros.

Years later, she’s grown out of that super fandom as she’ll watch a few minutes of a game on the couch and still loves going to the park to watch them. But back in the day, there was nothing like Spring and her love of the Astros.

Here is just a little place to start.

J.P. Heath, the voice of the Rice Owls and more importantly to me a great friend, and I have a running thing where we each predict the records of our favorite teams along with what we expect in the playoffs prior to the season. It’s sort of our way of keeping tabs on ourselves and how much we really know about our teams (records indicate we don’t know much).

I don’t have the totals in front of me, but here’s sort of how the guesses would go in a normal season.

J.P.: Astros 87-75, Rangers 91-71, Dodgers over Yankees in the World Series in seven games.

Josh: Astros 94-68, Rangers 82-80, Red Sox over Dodgers in the World Series in six games.

In the day, our guesses seemed logical enough. Then we got Spring’s guesses.

Astros 162-0, Rangers 0-162. Astros win the World Series by forfeit because the other team is too scared to show up.

I’m not even exaggerating there.

It was somewhere around 2016 when Spring started to find ways to amuse herself with letting the house know how she felt about the Astros.

Milo Hamilton was a Hall of Fame broadcaster for the Astros and when the Astros were on a hot streak, one of his signature calls went like this.

“Astros win! Astros win! Astros win again!”

So Spring decided that she would take it upon herself to be the Milo Hamilton of the house to every one of her siblings. So after each win, we’d hear repeatedly across the house, “Astros win! Astros win! Astros win again!”

Her siblings welcomed her with chants of their own.

“Spring, get out of here.”

That didn’t deter her. But I did have to step in and make an agreement for the sanity of everyone involved. She was allowed to make her signature call one time after each win. Nothing more.

Eventually Cameron, who was 9 years old at the time and has the “fortune” of having three sisters, came around on the Astros.

He never got to the point of Spring’s chants or predictions, but he was a pretty good fan that will still gladly join me on an Astros trip.

Sierra? She was the Rangers fan of the group.

OK. Maybe not so much a Rangers fan. But she was going to pretend like she liked them to annoy her sister as much as humanly possible.

Now, all of that background is leading to a trip to Minute Maid Park to watch the Astros play the Rangers back in 2017. I was going to bring Spring, Sierra and Cameron to the game.

The kids had absolutely no idea we were going to the game, and it was a school day. So the looks on their faces were a little puzzling when I showed up at the school to pick them up.

Those looks of curiosity quickly turned to excitement.

Sorry, teachers. I know I’m probably not supposed to get them out of school to watch a baseball game. But I couldn’t help myself.

For the record, they’re all somewhere between good and great students now, so I think everything turned out OK.

But after the smiles of finding out they had a day off school and an Astros trip, we were off to Houston.

They got by the Astros dugout for some pictures, took a few more with a Mickey Mouse statue and we went up the escalator to find our seats.

Then it was time for our score predictions.

Cam (who actually missed his Little League game for the trip and had a good knowledge of baseball): Astros 5, Rangers 2.

Sierra: Rangers 7, Astros 1.

Spring: Astros 182, Rangers 0.

But when the game got started, things weren’t looking so good for the Astros.

Texas, which had absolutely owned Houston for years, went on a home run derby for four innings with Delino Deshields, Joey Gallo, Elvis Andrus and Jonathan Lucroy going yard for a quick 5-0 lead.

The Astros slowly got back into it with some power of their own with homers by Jose Altuve and Marwin Gonzalez trimming the margin to 5-3.

Yet things looked pretty bleak when it got to the eighth inning and the Astros still found themselves in a two-run hole.

That’s when Spring started with the predictions again.

Spring: “The Astros are about to hit a grand slam.”

Sierra, whose softball experience was limited to a single season did prove she knew a little bit about the game.

“Spring! They can’t hit a grand slam. The bases aren’t even loaded!”

Spring didn’t hesitate.

I knew enough to stay out of conversations, so I just sat back and waited.

Sure enough. Bases loaded.

Spring sat there with a smile as Marwin Gonzalez came to the plate.

Gonzalez is now known for hitting one of the biggest homers in Astros history. But at the time, he wasn’t exactly your prototypical power hitter.

A hit would have been nice. Even I have to admit a second homer in a single game would have been asking a little much.

Then the seemingly impossible happened.

Gonzalez unleashed on a pitch, and the ball went sailing just inside the foul pole.

Spring laughed maniacally as the Astros fans around us exchanged high fives.

Sierra, who at times liked to claim witch powers, attempted to disappear completely into her seat.

“I told you they were going to hit a grand slam,” Spring said to her sister as obnoxiously as possible.”

Houston eventually had to hold off a Rangers’ rally in the ninth inning for an 8-7 win.

I kept a close eye on the girls to make sure there were no punches thrown when Spring used her one allotted time a day for her signature line.

“Astros win! Astros win! Astros win again!”

There may have been a clenched fist and few words exchanged, but it didn’t devolve into violence.

As we made our way out of the stadium, the always rational Spring obviously understood that it’s a 162-game season, and overreactions for early-May games should be avoided at all costs.

“We’re probably going to be World Series champions this year.”

“I don’t know, Spring. They’ve never been World Series champions before,” I replied.

She replied with the same four words she had before predicting a grand slam.

So I shouldn’t have been completely stunned on the first day of November that same year when the Astros knocked off the Dodgers and Spring jumped on the couch a few times and then right into my arms as the Astros won their first World Series ever.

I didn’t believe they would actually do it until the last out happened.

And maybe that’s why being an 8-year-old can be so much fun.

Blind faith mixed with irrational thinking.

Of course for those that follow the game, you know the Astros missed the playoffs this year for the first time since 2016, which was a year before that trip to Minute Maid Park.

Cameron and Spring were third-graders then. They’re high school juniors now. Sierra was a fifth-grader. She’s now at Texas A&M.

Nowadays, Spring is more likely to crack a joke about one of my teams losing again rather than be the one making wild prognostications about a grand slam or a World Series.

By all indications, the “golden era” could be over after the Astros missed the playoffs for the first time since 2016.

If it is, then it was still quite a run.

When we went to the game that early May day, the Astros were four years removed from the worst three-year stretch in MLB history.

In 2022, when they won their second title, it was proclaimed they were the closest thing to a dynasty MLB currently had going, something only an overly optimistic 8-year-old would have only thought about guessing.

If you would have told me the Astros would be that “dynasty” as we walked out of the stadium that May night, I would have had four words for you.

“You are absolutely insane.”

Spring would have replied by pointing out that maybe they weren’t the best team in the past.