Bregman Was Our Guy as Astros Fans. He Was Especially My Guy.
As an LSU fan, Alex Bregman has been my guy for many years. Watching him on another team will be different, that's for sure.
I’ve been following Alex Bregman’s career since the draft.
“Yes,” you say. “I was excited when the Astros got a college star with the #2 pick in 2015.”
No, not that draft. The draft in 2012. I’m an LSU fan. LSU media pays more attention to the baseball team than any other one one on campus except obviously football. When the 2012 MLB draft came around, LSU media had stories on whether the players in the signing class would get drafted high enough to sign a contract and skip college.
Joey Gallo was drafted in the first round and spurned his LSU commitment. Alex Bregman didn’t get picked until the 29th round. It meant he was not going to sign and instead come to LSU.
That day in early June 2012 made me an Alex Bregman guy. He’s a great player…for my team. And in college, Bregman was indeed a great player. As a true freshman, he was installed at the starting shortstop on Opening Day, penciled in to the middle of the lineup, and immediately showed that was the right decision.
He was SEC Freshman of the Year in 2013 and led the Tigers to Omaha.1 He earned All-SEC honors each of his three years in Baton Rouge, and was universally acknowledged as one of the best players in college baseball. In his junior year, SEC fans debated who was the best player between Bregman, Dansby Swanson (Vanderbilt), and Andrew Benintendi (Arkansas). As an LSU fan, I knew the right answer: my guy Alex Bregman.
Then, thanks to the blessing of the Diamondbacks taking the Swanson with the first pick,2 the Astros nabbed Bregman with the 2nd pick of the draft. My guy would again play for my team.
And after a short stint in the minors, Bregman made his debut for the Astros in 2016 and just like in Baton Rouge, he was installed in the every day lineup at a key defensive position and in the middle of the order.
The addition of Bregman and Yuli Gurriel to the Astros infield were the final pieces that took that good teams of 2015-16 to the great team—and especially the great offense—of the 2017 team. Bregman quickly proved to be a dude.
And in the bottom of the 10th of Game 5 of the 2017 World Series, he was THE dude.
In the pecking order of Golden Era Astros stars, Bregman stands out. Altuve is the best player, but is a retiring personality. Springer is fun, but most of that is for his teammates. Correa is serious and wants to outthink players. Tucker is quiet and Yordan is even quieter. And pitchers can never truly be leaders of a baseball team—they don’t play every day. So aces like Verlander and Framber can never truly be the team’s top guy because they don’t play every day.
Bregman is the guy who combines the most of these characteristics into one personality. He’s diligent in his work like Altuve, a spokesman for the team like Correa, and cut-up in the clubhouse like Springer, and one of the faces of the franchise. He signed a contract extension that kept him in Houston for two of his free agent years, giving him a longer tenure than Correa, Springer, or Tucker. As a result, he got to play a key role on both World Series winning teams. In short, he just feels like a Houston Astro.
Next week, Alex Bregman will play a Spring Training game and put on the uniform of the Boston Red Sox. It will not look the least bit right to anybody outside of New England, but most especially for us Astros fans.
He’s our guy. Or at least, he was our guy.
And as an LSU fan, he’s really my guy. He was in Omaha in 2013. He was when I was debating Arkansas fans online about who should win SEC player of the year3 He was in 2017 against Kenley Jansen in the bottom of the ninth; in 2019 when he drilled 40 bombs; in 2022 when he had a .908 OPS against the Phillies; and in 2024 when he convinced Hunter Brown to throw a sinker.
And he’s definitely my guy when I’m hanging out at our synagogue here in the New Jersey suburbs outside of New York City. I married and am raising a Jew. We sent our son to their pre-school and then to their religious school. His bar mitzvah will be next October. I have always known that it is important to show up to Shabbat service and temple events to show my son his Judaism is important to us as a family.
One of the first of these events we attended when my son started at religious school as a kindergartener is the holiday of Simchat Torah. This is the Jewish holiday I find with the fewest parallels to something from my Christianity. Jews read the Torah not from books but on scrolls and the holiday is officially just the time when you reach the end of the scroll and need to roll it back to the beginning. They have turned this into a celebration, with tons of dancing.
Importantly, the holiday happens in October. The first time we to the Temple’s celebration was in 2017. All the kindergarteners in the religious school were specifically invited and welcoming them into the religious school was part of the ceremony.
It was also the day after the Astros had won the ALDS to set up a matchup with the Yankees in the ALCS. I wore an Astros shirt to work that day, and talked lots of smack all day to Yankee fans.4
I walk into the synagogue that evening and eyes turn toward me. One stranger gets up out of his seat and comes up to talk smack to me. “Astros, huh? I like my Yankees chances pretty good against them.” “Oh goodness,” I thought. “I’m trolling the entire synagogue. And basically on my first day.”
That stranger is now a friend of mine and the synagogue community no longer eyes me oddly when I wear an Astros shirt. They often wonder if I own any other shirts.
And after attending my first Simchat Torah, I realized what a festive holiday it is—a party for Torah. The Torah scrolls are passed from person to person, including to me that first night, but a friend who knew I was not Jewish. This was fun, and I was a part of this community.
And thus, a community I could troll. So in 2019, when Simchat Torah was held right after the Astros defeated the Yankees in the ALCS, I wore even more elaborate Astros gear—my Alex Bregman jersey.
“I’m just honoring the best Jewish player in baseball. That he plays for my team is just a happy coincidence.”
It was October. I got to celebrate my team, this festive holiday, my wife and son’s love of being Jewish, and honor my guy—a star of my team, the bane of the Yankees existence, and the best Jewish player in baseball. Bregman is an LSU guy and Jewish. He’s my guy.
This year’s Simchat Torah was less fun than the others. I still wore my Bregman jersey, but the Astros had already been eliminated from the playoffs and the Yankees were still playing.5 Plus, I knew it would be the last time Bregman would be an Astros during the holiday. If the Astros were going to sign him to a contract, they would have already done it.
But I gotta wear my Bregman jersey, even if it was bittersweet to do so. He was still my guy, even if that time was coming to an end.
Of course, my experience is specific to me and my circumstance, but it is not different from many Astros fans. Alex Bregman was our guy. A player who was brash at all times, cocky much of the time, yet one who matured in front of use to become a team leader. A player dedicated to his craft and working to perfect it. A player of intelligence as shown by his excellent batting eye and his detailed knowledge of baseball.
Fans of other teams may not have liked him. But every Astro fan did. And for obvious reasons. He was our guy.
And as an LSU fan and the father and husband of a Jew, he was definitely my guy.
In his first game in Omaha, Bregman botched an easy grounder to cost the Tigers the game. I’ve never heard him talk about that play in his time with the Astros, but I always feel that he’s thinking about it in key moments in the playoffs—I’m not doing that again.
Compounding their mistake, the Diamondbacks traded Swanson to the Braves before he debuted in the majors. So they somehow made the pick worse.
They won the battle. I won the war.
My other favorite moment from that day. I was having a smack talking conversation with a Yankee fan. “So who got pitching in Game 1?” “Keuchel,” I replied, and immediately the joyful smile fell off his face replaced by a look of concern.
Some people definitely made sure to mention this to me.