At 5’6″ Jose Altuve is one of baseball’s shortest players. However his Cooperstown resumé stands tall.
Before the age of 30 Altuve stuffed his trophy case. In his 20s he earned three batting crowns, five Silver Slugger Awards, six All Star rings, a Gold Glove, an MVP, and a World Series championship. Each season from 2014-2017 the second baseman tallied 200+ hits, leading the league each time.
In the collection is this lineup card signed by Dusty Baker as manager of the Reds on August 3, 2011. Baker’s Reds dropped the the 5-4 game to his future employers the Houston Astros.
Altuve’s name is penciled in at the second spot in the Houston order. Playing in just his 14th big league game, the second baseman went 2-for-3. He recorded the 16th and 17th hits of his career and his third career multi-hit contest. His first-inning at bat featured the first sacrifice bunt of his career.
Hitting in the three-hole for Baker’s Reds that day was defending NL MVP Joey Votto. The Cincinnati first baseman had three hits – two of them doubles – and a run scored. Votto smoked 40 two-base hits in 2011 to lead the league in the category for the only time of his career.
It was also the first of five seasons that Votto led the NL in walks and the second of seven times that he paced the circuit in on-base percentage. An All Star for the second time in 2011, Votto also received the only Gold Glove Award of his career.
Baker’s signature is found at the bottom.
NO. He should have been suspended from the game for his cheating. That M.V.P. should have been takin away. Why is what he did any different from what Pete Rose did. He hurt the intergroty of the game. He benefited from a weak commissioner.
I do not consider that Jose Altuve is a cheating baseball player. To play baseball in the big leagues, you must have high conditions to do all what Altuve did on his career. Nobody can deny the effort that Altuve has been doing since he begun playing baseball in his country, practicing baseball all day, studying how to play-defense and batting and keeping himself to be daily player. But the most important part of him is, showed to the world, that a short-man has chance to be great player too.
He played hard to be a Baseball Star without using PED and he played with passion and love for the game to put his team on Post-Season all the time.
Baseball field has been full of players; just not only are associated with PED, but also are involved on other bad areas and some of them are in Cooperstown.
Today, some influencer and savvy baseball journalist are trying to pushing, hard to Hall of Fame, baseball players that were link to PED. This is “Unbelievable Thing”, but it is true.
In fact, Jose Altuve deserve be part of Hall of Fame, if his Organization made a big mistake, it ‘s his organization but no him.