As Michael Brantley came up to bat in the fifth inning an advert for a gym flashed up on electronic hoardings with the slogan ‘Home of the Judgement Free Zone’.
It could easily have served as the motto of a raucous and roofed Minute Maid Park, the Astros’ safe and loving place, hermetically sealed off from the harsh verdicts of a suspicious outside world.
To some here, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred is the villain for meting out punishments last year for the Astros’ 2017-18 sign-stealing scandal while others, perhaps, escaped notice.