Jose Altuve jumps to swing at a pitch (GIF)

Jose Altuve is a great baseball player. He has become the face of the Houston Astros and he has put together a historic 2014 season. To wit: he broke the Astros’ franchise record for hits in a season and then passed the mark for the most hits by a second baseman in a season since 1937.

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Those are all fine accomplishments, and it seems to generally be understood that Altuve is a really good baseball player. But that’s not what he is known for.

Being short. That’s what Jose Altuve is known for.

Standing just 5’5″, Altuve is one of the shortest professional athletes in any sport. He is playing the right position in the right sport for his size, but one imagines that it gets old sometimes that people qualify most comments about him as a player by first mentioning his diminutive height.

Sometimes we just don’t have a choice though. For example: if Altuve is going to actually jump to swing at a pitch, we have no choice but to mention the fact that he is so short and that he probably wouldn’t be jumping to swing if he was shorter.

Here is the swing, courtesy of MLB’s Twitter account.

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