The Rookie Of Swag — Cam Smith Steals The Thunder From Kyle Tucker’s Emotional Astros Return, Pretends It’s No Big Deal

Cam Smith pulls on a short leather jacket, getting ready to head into one of the better Friday nights of his very young Major League Baseball career. The 22-year-old Houston Astros rookie already stole the thunder from Kyle Tucker’s return to the ballpark where he became one of the best players in baseball. And now Smith looks like the swaggy force that Astros manager Joe Espada took note of as soon as the young outfielder strolled into the clubhouse on this Cubs day.

Just another beautiful day in the Big Leagues? Cam Smith’s demeanor, the way he carried himself, screamed anything but to Espada.

“Even when he walked in, he had a little different feel to him today,” Espada says. “. . . Just walking around it was a little bit more of, ‘OK, I’m ready to play.’ It was just different.”

If Cam Smith’s walk spoke loudly, his bat boomed at sonic levels. With Tucker back in the Crawford Street ballpark (renamed Daikin Field), languidly but excellently patrolling that familiar right field perch of grass, the young centerpiece the Cubs sent to Houston, in a trade that seemed to rattle the Astros’ winning window, flashed first. Smith smashes a massive three-run home run up near the train tracks to give Espada’s team a 7-0 lead in a game they’ll win 7-4 with closer Josh Hader coming in to throw three pitches for his 22nd save.

Brad Pitt’s new F1 movie is less loud than this Smith swing. The rookie will get on base four times, score twice with those three RBI, and make a jumping catch in right field, Kyle Tucker’s old position. There is owning a night, and then’s absolutely stealing the stage.

No one needs to feel sorry for Kyle Tucker, of course. He’s still a superstar on his way to a potential 35 home run, 35 steal season who will be getting a massive payday this offseason. He’s still on a first place team, just in the National League now rather than the American League. He gets the standing ovation he so richly deserves (at least from the majority of the fans in Daikin Park, the ones paying attention in the pregame) in his first game back in Houston. The tribute video the Astros put together for him and Pressly is nearly three minutes along and as classy as ever from Jim Crane’s franchise.

Still, watching the young piece Houston general manager Dana Brown and the Astros decided was worth letting you go a season before free agency for look like a budding star, while you go for 0 for 4 and end up stranded in the on-deck circle in the ninth inning, can’t be easy.

Joe Espada ends the night talking about how he always pictured Cam Smith as a cleanup hitter, just maybe not this fast. (Smith bats fourth for the second, and certainly not the last, time this season for the Astros with the organization that drafted and traded him in town.)

With one of the best ballparks in baseball absolutely packed and jumping, the 22-year-old with 231 career at-bats in Majors is the one who seizes the moment. Then Cam Smith puts back on his cool leather jacket and does his best to pretend like it’s all really no big deal.

“Yeah I mean, it’s a great ballgame, you have great teams going against each other head to head,” Smith tells reporters. “That’s good baseball right there.”

Then when someone asks about his home run smash, Smith acts thoroughly unimpressed with himself.

“Yeah, just trying to do my best to pass the torch,” he says.

Is that reaction of someone who hit a monster home run against his former team or someone who did a decent job cleaning a window? Of course, this is how rookies are supposed to act, straight from the book of Derek Jeter, Alex Bregman and those who came before them. The Astros don’t do the whole captain thing. If they did, it’d be easy to imagine a Captain Cam one day.

Cam Smith Reminds The Cubs

On this night, Cam Smith eventually concedes this isn’t just another home run. “Inevitably yeah,” Smith says when asked if this home run means a little more. “But at the end of the day, we’re playing ball. We’re trying to win a ballgame any way we can. But that one — yeah, it did feel a little special.”

That’s as far as Smith will go. The Rookie of Swag does not show it with his words. Espada certainly believes in the swag though, already bought in on this rookie’s future.

“I did imagine that,” Espada says when asked if Cam Smith being the Astros cleanup hitter would have been unimaginable back in Spring Training. “I did. Maybe not this early, but at some point you’ve got to see this kid as kind of a middle of the lineup bat. Hopefully, he’s able to maintain the success.”

Brad Pitt’s new F1 movie is less loud than this Smith swing. There is owning a night, and then’s absolutely stealing the stage.

Listen to Espada talk about Smith and you’re given an idea of how this Astros manager makes his young players believe.

Smith is certainly already shifting the balance of things. He turns a night that many thought would have all those gold crown wearing King Tuck fans feeling reminiscent and more than a little down (for good reason) into his night. Cam Smith is the one who brings the thunder.

Swag on.