My fake eye shines for the Houston Astros

Some of my best friends – and many family members –are Cub fans, and my dear friend Benita was born a Yankees fan: she grew up in The Bronx. But I have a long-term friendship with a guy in the Astros front office. In these 2017 MLB playoffs, I’m rooting for Houston.

Kevin Goldstein, Special Assistant to the General Manager of the Houston Astros, is one of very few friends to have seen me without my fake eye.

That’s Kevin at home with his pooch, Otto.

Some back story: my husband Mike Knezovich was Kevin’s supervisor in the 1990s, when the two of them were at a start-up company called Spyglass. Like so many others at Spyglass, Kevin was smart. Computer savvy, too. But Kevin stood out:

• He didn’t have a college degree (he was one of the youngest people working there, and Mike says he was one of the smartest).
• He shaved his head long before it was popular (and he let me feel his scalp).
• He listened to The Pixies and They Might be Giants (long before Indy rock was a category on You Tube).
• He paid attention to new-age baseball stats, otherwise known as sabermetrics (long before the book Moneyball was published).
• He knew about minor league prospects (long before anyone else did).

I had a job in the ticket office at a minor league low-A team called the Kane County Cougars when Kevin and Mike worked at Spyglass. We enjoyed many a game there together, and when I went with Mike on a business trip to Phoenix once, we joined Kevin to check out a guy pitching during something called the “Arizona Fall League.” Kevin knew that a hot pitching prospect with the Cleveland organization named Jaret Wright was scheduled to pitch. Who knew there was such a thing as an Arizona Fall League back then, and if there was, what day Jaret Wright would be starting?

Kevin did.

When Mike left Spyglass, we moved to North Carolina. When Kevin left Spyglass, he moved to baseball. This story on the Astros web site explains:

It wasn’t until Goldstein, who dabbled in the interactive industry and worked in consulting and marketing, started writing for Baseball America and developing his email prospect newsletter did he one day envision working for a Major League club. “It was something fun that I had a passion for,” he said. “I started Prospect Report, and it started growing on a strange level and some teams were interested in the information I was putting out there.

Baseball Prospectus (BP) eventually hired Kevin to write for them–later on he took Nate Silver’s place at BP when Silver left to launch Five Thirty Eight. Kevin’s reputation grew as a go-to analyst of up and coming ballplayers, and Mike and I started getting used to turning on the radio or TV and, ho-hum, there was Kevin again, being interviewed on sports shows about prospects.

Major League Baseball teams started noticing Kevin, too. In 2012 the Houston Astros were in town to play the Cubs and their general manager Jeff Luhnow contacted Kevin for an interview. They talked for about three hours, and Kevin told Mike afterwards that he thought it went well. Jeff Luhnow must have thought it went well, too: he hired Kevin to oversee the Astros’ pro scouting efforts.

Kevin still lives in the Chicago area. He has a lively interest in the absurd, and when I asked him to come along to an unusual (for most people) appointment one year, he jumped at the chance: he accompanied me to the ocularist to get my fake eye polished.

Kevin thought the trays of fake eyeballs were awesome. We think he’s pretty awesome, too.

I had my fake eye back in when we joined Kevin and his partner Margaret at an Astros-White Sox game this past summer. Astros General Manager Jeff Luhnow sat with us for a few innings, and Kevin introduced him to Mike “He was my boss at Spyglass.” Jeff Luhnow got a good look at Mike and replied, “You did a great job!”

A week or two later, Kevin Goldstein was promoted to Special Assistant to the General Manager.

So between Kevin’s well-earned rise to a Major League front office and the rise of that adorable 5’6″ second baseman Jose Altuve (who was once told he was too short to make it to the bigs), I’m all about the Astros. Go Houston!