The Oakland faithful unloaded on Houston second baseman Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman and Carlos Correa on Thursday at the Coliseum.
The gathering also chanted “Cheaters” during the national anthem and brought signs calling the Astros the same. They delighted in A’s starter Chris Bassitt hitting Correa in the left shoulder with a 94 mph fastball in the fourth inning.
“Got to hear some boos, finally,” Astros starting Zack Greinke told reporters postgame, per the Houston Chronicle. “That wasn’t fun to listen to, I didn’t think, but we played good so it didn’t matter. Hopefully we’ll keep playing good and it won’t be as big of an issue.”
The Astros won 8-1 and Bregman hit a long home run in the eighth inning.
Altuve, Bregman, Correa and Yuli Gurriel are the lone position-player holdovers from the 2017 Astros team that won the World Series over the Dodgers in seven games. In late 2019, former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers (who’s now with the A’s) blew the whistle on Houston’s activities during that championship season. The team filmed catchers’ signs with a camera in center field that was connected to a monitor mounted behind the Houston dugout. Once the Astros knew what pitch was coming, someone would bang on a trash can to tip off hitters.
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A’s fans recreated the trash can trick Thursday:
MLB began investigating after Fiers went public. No players were suspended because commissioner Rob Manfred granted them immunity in exchange for their full cooperation. Then-Astros manager A.J. Hinch and Red Sox manager Alex Cora — Hinch’s bench coach in 2017 — were suspended for the 2020 season for their roles in the scandal. They were also fired by their respective clubs. The Astros fired then-general manager Jeff Luhnow as well. Carlos Beltran, who played on the ‘17 Astros and was fingered as the operation’s ringleader, was dismissed as Mets manager.
Last offseason, the Red Sox rehired Cora and the Tigers hired Hinch to be their new manager.
Altuve has denied taking part in sign-stealing. A defiant Correa backed Altuve’s claims during spring training in 2020. Altuve also denied wearing a buzzer underneath his uniform jersey in the 2019 ALCS against the Yankees. That controversy erupted after Correa hit a walk-off home run against Aroldis Chapman in Game 6 to send Houston to the World Series and the diminutive star motioned that he did not want his jersey ripped off in the celebration. Houston would go on to lose to the Nationals in seven.
