WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Here’s the buzz. The Astros are proven and admitted cheaters. But no buzzers were utilized.
That was the word from the mea culpa Astros on Thursday, including Jose Altuve, who insisted there was no buzzer used to hit his Game 6 ALCS-winning home run against Aroldis Chapman and the Yankees last October.
On a day they admitted cheating the game in 2017, using electronic sign stealing and banging a trash can to alert hitters of the pitch that was coming, the Astros drew the line in the sand on electronic buzzers at the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches.
Once a cheater always a cheater, so believe the Astros at your own peril but they stood united on that front. Altuve stood in front of his locker and used the remorse line.
Asked directly by The Post about that at-bat against Chapman and using a buzzer, Altuve said, “I didn’t wear a buzzer. The (apology) that I made today was about 2017. All the buzzer stuff started on a fake Twitter account. That makes me a little sad that a fake Twitter account had that much credibility. I feel bad for 2017 but I did not do the buzzer thing. Nobody on this team wore a buzzer.”
Why was Altuve guarding his shirt with a death grip so teammates would not rip it off and why did he quickly go into the clubhouse to change out his jersey?
“It’s not the first time I did that,” the 2017 MVP said of protecting his shirt and going into the clubhouse. “If you go back multiple times I did that. That doesn’t mean I have a buzzer. MLB did their investigation and they didn’t find anything. They found what they found in 2017. They did a really good investigation in 2017. They did an investigation on the buzzer and they didn’t find anything. When you are saying you don’t believe that I didn’t have a buzzer, you don’t believe what MLB investigated.”