⚾🤜"RELENTLESS" in 2024: Houston Astros Unveil New Team Slogan & Hype Video

After "Level Up" & "Ready 2 Reign," Astros publicity team reverts to 1-word slogan. Were they full of relent? Did Crane pull the multi-word bonus off the table? Will this force Orbit to wear pants?😱

Here ya go….the copy for the hype video…video just below! Pull out your best, dulcet’n’deep-intoned John Facenda (“the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field”) or film-trailer great, Don “Thunder Throat” LaFontaine (“in a world where anything can happen….and, this time, it’s personal”) for this one:

There is a price to pay for greatness.

A cost for the consistency.

And we pay our dues.

Paid in grit. Paid in reps. Paid in sacrifice.

The Reward?

The chance to continue making history.

And to be a part of a team that simply does not. Go. away.

The plan hasn’t changed, and the same goal remains.

Pour sweat…

And Spray champagne.

Along the way, it’s not about perfection.

It’s about protecting this winning culture, repping this city.

And the relentless pursuit of baseball’s biggest prize.

What if the Door Into Conference Room B Was Left Ajar?

In the early-February span of days between the appearance of a gopher-with-a-resume, headshot and shadow (and an aggressive agent), and before the airing of Taylor Swift’s Self-Importance Bowl, the Houston Astros’ promo and marketing brain-trust unveiled the ten-letter word that will propel everything going forward…off the field, anyway.

She hasn’t the Vegas idea: Suddenly bursting into song from her bleacher seats before she orders her Uber, Tay-Tay laments waiting to call for tickets the day before the game. Hoping for better seats next year, she was gently reminded to call StubHub a couple days earlier next year.

This just in….Speaking of the future Mrs. Travis Kelce (“Yay, we won, Trav! Now maybe we can afford a two-bedroom apartment!”), we hear she’s in talks with the ‘Stros to record Josh Hader’s new 9th inning entrance song, a re-working of her “Shake It Off,” with this lyrical change: “…’Cause, Hader’s gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate…..losing!” Fingers crossed.

Clothes hoarse: Newest Astro, reliever Josh Hader, has been known to walk in from the bullpen to the mound in something other than the approved uni.

Every year at this time, after an exhaustive Houston winter, groggy guys’n’gals emerge from Minute Maid’s tony Conference Room B, equipped with the “Charge!”-like directive that will be slapped onto every letterhead (are those still a thing?) and web page on astros.com.

For 2024 (marked down from $32.50), it’s “Relentless.”

It had better be. Funk & Wagnall remind us that they’re still around. They also want us to remember that “relentless” is an adjective, and employs these two definitions:

1. not easing or slackening; maintaining speed, vigor, etc., as in a relentless barrage of bad news.

2. unyieldingly severe, strict, or harsh, as in Espada’s reaction if Jake Meyers can’t put it all together this year.

In 2023, Houston saw fit to saddle the team with “Ready 2 Reign,” a subtle, numerical wink to the pressures inherent in mounting a repeat performance of the ‘22 Champ year:

👑"Ready 2 Reign" in 2023: Houston Astros Unveil New Team Slogan & Hype Video

It was early in 2022 when the team revealed the shrug-worthy “Level Up,” but it brought a ring and a trophy, so who’s to say what works?

"Level Up": Houston Astros Unveil New Team Slogan, Apparently Just For the H of It

But, What of the Rest of Baseball?

So, if the Astros have relentlessly deemed themselves to be….well, dutifully lacking in anything resembling relent, where are the other teams and their sandlot sobriquets? Of the 30 MLB teams, about half have seen fit to put pen to paper and fashion for themselves, a 2024 call-to-action.

In the Astros’ AL West, only Seattle and the Rangers turned their work in on time. Having gone with “#SeaUsRise” two years ago, the Mariners have settled for a snack bar theme, with their new, inspirational “Tridents Up” suggestion:

Fine. They apparently insist. Perhaps they, too, are relentless! Still, they oughta try the gum thing. Just sayin’…..and chewin’.

As for the reigning World Champ Texas Rangers (I know…sounds like a punch line, doesn’t it?), they challenge syntax and grammar, both, as they proudly trot out, “Went and Took It”! What, no “We Gonna Swipe It Agin, I Betcha, Lord Willin’ and the Crick Don’t Rise”?

We have it on good authority that our fly-shagging Arlingtonians had to go through several painstaking editing sessions to hammer this one out just right: “We done gone and tooken it”? “We done taked it, we did!” “See that trophee over yonder? We just up and stoled that thing, we did…Hyuk!”

Ladies & gentlemen, the Rangers’ 2024 hype video: Over-produced at 6 seconds long? Gotta hand it to the Rangers’ front office for hiring middle-school AP art students!

📸Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle, 2021.

So, the Astros saddle up for the ‘24, as Spring Training gets underway, relentlessly, at the newly-renamed CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches in balmy Florida.

Native Houstonian, rapper Travis Scott (above, and featured in the video below), recently bought the naming rights; I wrote an article on the opening of the Spring Training complex (that the Astros share with the Washington Nats) for The Runner Sports all-sports blog site exactly 7 years ago! You can access it by clicking on this sentence.

Astros fans! For 2024, keep up with the Astros throughout the season with two of Substack’s top Astros writers:

Marty Coleman

, for his daily Astros projections, as well as seasoned and experienced commentary….

…..and, Brian Arbour’s

Orange Fire (Brian Arbour IRL)

, for up-to-date ‘Stro news, analysis, and player profiles: