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Reggie Jackson recently shared an elevator with Yankees fans, one of whom told his buddies how much he loathed Jose Altuve.
“I hate this sawn off SOB,” said the gentleman proudly to his buddies.
And here Mr. October, now Astros manager, entered the convo.
“He’s my favorite player,” Jackson told the lad before adding a comment. “You should be quiet.”
The guy had a question for Reggie.
“You’re Reggie Jackson, aren’t you?”
“Yes I am.”
And so the guy took Reggie’s advice and shut up.
Now the rest of the Yankees believers should follow suit.
For Altuve, it’s punishment enough for the Astros’ unfortunate shenanigans during their 2017 championship season. If you call it that.
Every time the Yankees fans boo Altuve, he responds by punishing the Yankees. He scored on Nestor Cortes’ first pitch on Sunday and later walked twice and stole two bases before the Yankees recorded a rousing 6-3, 10-inning late comeback win in a thrill-packed four-game streak scored which ended in a split and served as a likely ALCS preview.
Altuve now has 10 home runs in 99 at-bats against the Yankees since 2017. Serenading the boos is obviously not working.
At this point, it’s clear that while their trophy is undeniably tainted, the 17-year-old Astros were a fantastically talented team that certainly didn’t need any help getting into the playoffs – it was full of stars you remember and even by Joe Musgrove and Teoscar Hernández. And they remain an outstanding team, surpassed only by the Yankees to this day.
Altuve is the face of the franchise, a longtime homegrown astro who keeps getting big hits, so it makes sense that he’d take the brunt of fan frustration. But it’s ridiculous. It is now known that Altuve was one of the few Astros attackers who didn’t even take the stolen signs over the trash can.
“He didn’t even take the signal,” Reggie said.
Didn’t take her, didn’t want her.
And as for the rumor that Altuve is a buzzer beater, everyone around the Astros is saying the BS is that’s why he covered it up after taking Aroldis Chapman deep to win it in 2019, is that he didn’t want to be undressed on the field, as teammates had done before.
Yes, I know it’s hard for Yankees fans to believe an Astro. But bear with me here:
1) It’s plausible that Altuve would hit a big homer (he has 23 postseason homers, five more than Mr. October himself);
2) It’s certainly believable that Chapman would allow a big home run, and #3 is the big one;
3) It’s totally unbelievable that someone claiming to be Carlos Beltran’s niece (from all the fake people on twitter s/he could get the award) would have broken this story as the fake Beltran relative is by definition even less honest is than the real Beltran.
Anyway, five years of boos is enough for something only Altuve knew about.
It’s not earned, and more importantly, it doesn’t work.
“Our best player is Altuve,” Reggie said. “And he’s a prince of a guy.”
If you count, only five Astros remain from 2017. And the Yankees employ three 2017 Astros – Super Utilityman Marwin Gonzalez plus two in the broadcast booth, Beltran and Cameron Maybin.
“They give Marwin an appeal, and they FU Altuve, and Marwin is why we won the World Series,” one Astros player noted, recalling key Gonzalez hits that helped put the Dodgers in this one to beat the World Series.
Beltran remains the only ex-2017 to admit the Astros’ title should have an asterisk, and he did so while taking a paycheck from the Yankees as a YES Network broadcaster. Incidentally, Beltran is the only player named in the MLB report. (Not Altuve here either!)
I understand it on some level. The Astros continues to be a thorn and a hurdle. They are actually the hurdle in the AL as a Yankees fight story.
These are by far the top two teams in the league, and while the Yankees have played significantly better so far, it will mean little if they don’t get past Houston again.
Three years out of the last seven, the Astros eliminated the Yankees in the postseason, and while it’s hard to tell anyone has their number, not when they have a 117-win pace and are currently sharing that streak, it would be quite a downer if the Astros do it again to the Yankees.
At this point, the Yankees would have to ask: Do we have a Houston problem?
Reggie, a longtime Bay Area resident and fan of the Golden State Warriors, recalls telling Warriors owner Joe Lacob and coach Steve Kerr when they beat the Bulls’ 72-win record that there was nothing means if they can’t finish the job. They didn’t and it didn’t.
The Warriors have won four more championships and now they know for sure that the title counts.
“Everything else is preamble. … It’s window dressing,” Reggie said.
No matter how many regular wins of the year they amass, these Yankees need to finish the job.
For now, her fans just have to forget 2017. And also stop blaming a guy who didn’t even participate in all the nonsense around him.
