It’ll be a while before the Houston Astros escape the fallout from their cheating scandal. While there’s some other unfortunate stuff going on with players on the team involving fans not remembering that the players are still human, the rest of the league is still having some fun at the Astros’ expense.
One case in point, Toronto catcher Caleb Joseph hit Houston hard… with an epic drum solo.
The Blue Jays paying tribute to the Astros pic.twitter.com/bYbApwx0tR
— Baseball Bros (@BaseballBros) February 20, 2020
Or air drum solo rather.
With a sold-out crowd of his teammates surrounding him, Joseph pantomimes the drum solo from the song “The Spirit of Radio” from the legendary Canadian rock group Rush. The performance served also as an honor to Rush’s late hall-of-fame drummer Neal Peart, who passed away earlier this year after a battle with brain cancer.
Joseph, an admitted huge Rush fan and Neal Peart fan shared thoughts on the latter in a tweet earlier this year.
Don’t tweet much but am so saddened by the news of Neil Peart’s passing. Rush is my favorite band and Neil my favorite drummer. The reason I even picked up drum sticks was because of Neil. Just absolutely crushed by this news. Always held hope for 1 more tour. Thank You Neil!
— Caleb Joseph (@YYZBackstop) January 11, 2020
An important sidebar to the show put on by Joseph for his Blue Jays teammates is the effort put into setting up an impressive drumkit made out of buckets, tripods, and some cones for cymbals. And in watching him play, even on his fake set, you could see that the man knew what he was doing.
[I’ve been] playing drums, I’d say, 10 years… playing the air drums for the past, probably, 25.
While the original intent wasn’t to poke fun at the Astros, the internet (of course) ran with it quickly, painting it as an ode to Houston’s sign-stealing scheme. And a good time was had by all.
