HOUSTON – When a homer is hit at Minute Maid Park you know it will soon be followed by the stadium's upper level train.
An homage to the former Union Station and Houston's locomotive history, the train is part of the Astros' celebration soundtrack. And for the last 16 years Bobby Vasquez has been the man behind its controls.
Here are some things you might not know about him.
He has a regular day job.
Though he's widely known for the Astros train, he spends most of his time as the editor and publisher of a daily online publication for Deer Park, Texas. Though at this point he's unsure if any of his co-workers would recognize him, “I haven't been in the office all month, hahaha, to be honest with you,” Vasquez said.
He's also the unofficial home run ball fetcher
When home runs are hit up onto the train deck Vasquez will jump out of his cab during the top half of innings to find the ball. At Game 5 of the World Series it enabled George Springer's family to get his seventh-inning dinger. And in the 2016 season his homer finding skills made a major memory for a sick boy.
“We had a young fan that had terminal cancer and he befriended Jose Altuve and before a ballgame he asked Jose to hit a home run for him. And Jose, sure enough during that ballgame, you're like what can't he do, he hit a home run and the ball came up here to the train tracks,” Vasquez said. “That was one of the greatest things that I've ever got to be a part of here with this organization.”
He gets paid to drive the train
Though we didn't ask how much, for a man who's been an Astros fan his entire life it is literally a dream come true.
“I can't even believe they pay me, to be honest with you,” Vasquez said. “They pay me to drive the train but the loyalty is who I am. I mean I've been a fan since I was a kid …. Astros baseball is all I know. It's all I ever have been a fan of. It's all I ever want to be a fan of.”
There are more buttons on the train than you know
We've been sworn to secrecy and asked to not tell you what they do but let's just say Vasquez gets some say in how the train celebration goes down.
