- If you get it, in the way a poet hears the muse and a sculptor sees the form, you know how good baseball can be for the soul. Baseball can be our companion on a car radio on a summer evening, our place to dine al fresco with family as we wonder from the third deck how the umpire could possibly have missed that pitch, or simply ballast to our busy lives, always there when we need it.
There are as many reasons to love baseball as there are pitches in a season. One of the best of them, even if you are a New York Yankees fan who just watched him cut through your heart with one mighty swing, is Jose Altuve, the dynamo of a second baseman for the Houston Astros.
All that is great about baseball is packed into that 5-foot-6, 165-pound body, like one of those super concentrated detergents. A little goes a long way. Altuve plays baseball like the wag of a puppy’s tail. He plays joyfully. And he plays well.
He also plays hungry, though he already has won a World Series and is just two years into a seven-year, $163.5 million contract. And at his size, he is the beacon that makes clear that people of just about any size can play this game and play it very well.
“Jose Altuve is just a great human being and a great baseball player,” said Justin Verlander, one of his Houston teammates. “He is everything you would want in a person and teammate.”
Saturday night, as if repaying a debt, the game created a moment for Altuve. Not just a highlight, but one of those Bobby Thomson/Hank Aaron/Chris Chambliss moments that get forever preserved in the game’s amber.
Altuve won the pennant for the Houston Astros Saturday night with a bottom-of-the-ninth two-out, two-run homer off one of the baddest closers of this generation, Aroldis Chapman of the Yankees. Chapman should never have allowed Altuve even the chance to do so, but from the moment Altuve showed up at a second Astros camp all those years ago after being told at the first one to stay home because he was too small, all the man needs is a chance.
Was working late on Saturday night when I remembered that it was game 6 of the ALCS, so I googled, saw that it was tied at the bottom of the 9th, found a live stream, and tuned in at the moment Springer was walked to 1st. When Altuve was up 2-0 in the count, I knew that it was probably over for the Yankees. He watched one pitch go by, making it 2-1, but on the very next throw from Chapman, it was donezo. I loved it. It reminded me of Game 5 of the 2017 World Series, which is probably the wildest game of baseball I'll watch unfold live in my entire life. flagamuffin, deal with baseball, you've been summoned. And also #TX, you're not escaping your roots, bub.