PEARLAND, Texas - At Jim Dean's Pearland home, a familiar sound once again echoes from inside and the lifelong Astros fan is right where he belongs.
"I'll be sitting watching them right here," Dean said. "I wasn't able to get tickets for the home opener series."
Astros baseball is back, and so is the escape that got him through one of the toughest times in his life.
"We were able to just sit back and forget about everything else," Dean said.
Everything else was Hurricane Harvey.
"We got 12 to 18 inches," Dean said.
His home was gutted, so badly damaged, he and his family lived out of a trailer for months. But when the Astros started their World Series run, they watched history unfold from their empty, stripped living room.
"This picture was game 6," Dean said.
A now iconic photo of Dean snapped by Houston Chronicle photographer Steve Gonzales spoke volumes.
"I think it represents a lot of people in this town," Dean said.
It moved a city.
"You didn't even realize there were walls missing or there was a cooler right in front of you on concrete floors," Dean said. "You got sucked into it. It's almost a wow factor, because wow, look at what we were living in."
Five months since that photo was taken, Dean's family and his home have come a long way.
"It's a little bit more comfortable to watch it now," Dean said. "If I want to get a cold beer, I can go to the refrigerator now instead of a cooler."
But there's still a lot left before life gets back to normal.
Now that baseball is back, "way more than baseball, way more than that, it's home," Dean said.
He's ready to cheer the team that gave Houston so much to another championship title.
"Houston's proud of them," Dean said. "We're ready to show them, yeah, you won the World Series, but you also helped us pull through what nobody thought we were ever going to go through."