In our fifth installment of our Legends Series, we sit down with Art Howe, who\u2019s chosen the Bayou City as his permanent home.\u00a0 Art\u2019s heroics as a player would ultimately launch the Astros into their first ever post-season appearance.<\/p>\n
As a manager, he\u2019d go on to win 392 games with the Astros, developing the eventual Hall of Fame careers of Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell.<\/p>\n
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We start with that magical 1980 season, and the N.L. West tiebreaker at Dodger Stadium on October 6th, 1980.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Q:\u00a0 What do you remember most about that run that season and that elimination game?<\/p>\n
A: \u00a0 We had a good team the year before and kind of blew that lead in 1979.\u00a0 1980 finally came around and it went down to the wire.\u00a0 People forget that Joe Niekro that day earned his 20th win of the season.\u00a0 He pitched a wonderful game for us.\u00a0 I had a good game that day and I\u2019m still in touch with so many of those guys.\u00a0 It\u2019s fun to talk about.<\/p>\n
Q:\u00a0 What do you remember most about the home run in that do or die game vs. the Dodgers in the 3rd inning that broke the game wide open?<\/p>\n
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A:\u00a0 Doug Harvey was the home plate umpire.\u00a0 I\u2019m up with a runner on, I\u2019m down 1-2 in the count, and I get thrown a breaking ball and it comes down from the top of the zone, it\u2019s strike three.\u00a0 I kind of flinched and Havery says it\u2019s a ball (laughs).\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 It was clearly a strike.\u00a0 Joe Ferguson is catching for LA, and he\u2019s going ballistic.\u00a0 \u00a0 I stepped back out of the box and Doug said to me, don\u2019t take that pitch again.\u00a0 \u00a0 The next pitch, I literally hit it out of the park and as I\u2019m crossing home plate, I say to Doug Harvey, \u201cI didn\u2019t\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Q:\u00a0 What stood out most about Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio?<\/p>\n
A:\u00a0 The makeup was there.\u00a0 You knew they were special.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
With Bagwell, I\u2019ll never forget that we traded for him and its Opening Day, we had just gotten him and we\u2019re in Cincinnati.\u00a0 The Reds have that loaded bullpen with the Nasty Boys at the time, and when he comes up, they throw a fastball at his head.\u00a0 He somehow gets out of the way, but it knocks him down.\u00a0 He casually brushes himself off, and the next pitch, he hits a line drive right back over the pitcher\u2019s head into center field.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t intimidated in the least.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
With Biggio, when I first got there, he was our catcher.\u00a0 One day he\u2019s out there with his catcher\u2019s mitt and he\u2019s fielding grounders with that giant mitt, and he\u2019s doing it better than some of our infielders.\u00a0 He was so quick and athletic.\u00a0 That\u2019s all I needed to see because he had so many tools.\u00a0 By putting him at second base, he could do everything and steal bases all year long because his legs weren\u2019t tired from catching a game.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Q:\u00a0 When it\u2019s all said and done, is Jose Altuve on the Mount Rushmore of greatest Astros?<\/p>\n
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A:\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 It\u2019s incredible to me the pitches he\u2019s able to hit, often way out of the zone, although there have been moments this season where he\u2019s been more disciplined at the plate.\u00a0 He just loves playing the game and the team feeds off of that energy.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Q:\u00a0 On the managerial side, Joe Espada is in his final year of a contract.\u00a0 Does that wear on you as a manager?<\/p>\n
A:\u00a0 Well, he\u2019s been there in some capacity for well over a decade, and Joe has seen a lot of the winning all of those years from the dugout.\u00a0 Heck, last year they almost won the division again.\u00a0 If I were him, I wouldn\u2019t be concerned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In our fifth installment of our Legends Series, we sit down with Art Howe, who\u2019s chosen the Bayou…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2389],"tags":[85389,42,5,535,15268,39,85390,139,54,3211,11557,48210,50792,817,19,4,64,536,33174],"class_list":{"0":"post-672465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-astros","8":"tag-art-howe","9":"tag-astros","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-cincinnati","12":"tag-craig-biggio","13":"tag-dodgers","14":"tag-doug-harvey","15":"tag-houston","16":"tag-houston-astros","17":"tag-houstonastros","18":"tag-jeff-bagwell","19":"tag-joe-ferguson","20":"tag-joe-niekro","21":"tag-jose-altuve","22":"tag-major-league-baseball","23":"tag-mlb","24":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","25":"tag-reds","26":"tag-three-rivers-stadium"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116380482022367570","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}