Welcome back to “What’s Happening On This Baseball Card?” where we ask MLB players about the action that photographers capture inside the frame of a particularly iconic-looking baseball card.
This entry examines card No. 203 from Topps Series One 2024. It has no official title like the Minnesota Twins card we looked at in April, but Houston Astros outfielder Chas McCormick gave it a name.
During the Astros’ swing through Kauffman Stadium for a series against the Kansas City Royals in April, McCormick told Pitcher List all he could remember about one of the best catches of his career.
Not his famous catch from the 2022 World Series, one which didn’t get its own baseball card.
McCormick made one of the most beloved catches in Astros history in Game 5, robbing Philadelphia Phillies slugger J.T. Realmuto of extra bases at Citizens Bank Park to protect a one-run lead in the ninth inning. The Astros won the game and took the Series in six.
McCormick, who grew up about 30 miles from Philadelphia in West Chester, Pa., was 13 years old when the Phillies won the World Series in 2008. He called Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard his favorite players, yet he probably made them, Chase Utley, and other retirees from the championship squad all crestfallen when he made the catch for the Astros 14 years later.
“My 13-year-old self would be mad at me,” McCormick told reporters.
Topps issued multiple cards of McCormick from the ’22 World Series, but the only card related to his catch in Game 5 was a reaction shot of him being congratulated by his teammates. It’s a great card. Another of McCormick’s subsequent great catches got preserved in even grander fashion.
On May 16 of the following season, McCormick and the Astros faced the Chicago Cubs at Minute Maid Park with much less at stake. No matter, McCormick still gave himself up on a deep fly ball in the sixth inning with the Astros ahead by four runs.
With a runner at first base and one out, right-hander Cristian Javier delivered a 94.1 mph four-seam fastball, and Dansby Swanson gave it a ride 104.2 mph to left-center. McCormick raced an estimated 121 feet to the wall before leaping and reaching 10 or 11 feet in the air, banging into a padded pillar, falling to the warning track, and holding on for the catch. MLB Statcast gave Swanson an expected batting average of .510 on the drive to the alley.
Depicted on the pad behind McCormick was, with appropriate serendipity, a blown-up, close-up shot of a baseball. It was a billboard for the WM corporation, which had shortened its name from Waste Management earlier in 2022. McCormick’s uniform is also caked in infield dirt from a hands-first slide during an RBI double in the fourth inning.
“I call it the ‘Waste Management Catch.’ One of the tougher catches I’ve ever made,” McCormick said.
McCormick always liked to remind the Astros what a good basketball player he was in high school, manager Dusty Baker told reporters the night of the catch. Playing for Henderson High School in West Chester, McCormick was the school’s first 1,000-point scorer in basketball to also have 100 hits in baseball.
McCormick brought the hops on the catch against the Cubs.
“He hit it super-high, and it was coming straight down to the wall, and Swanson hit it pretty good,” McCormick said. “I remember saying to myself: ‘I have to jump pretty high to just see if I can, maybe, scoop this off the wall.’ I jumped really high, and it kind of came back in my glove, which was weird. So it was a very tough catch.”
Javier showed emotion that was atypical for him after the catch, smiling widely and tipping his cap. Later, he gave McCormick a big hug.
“Tremendous play for me and for the team,” Javier told reporters afterward using a Spanish-language interpreter. “When he hit the ball, I didn’t think he got that much of it. I didn’t think it was going to get that close to the wall, but then I saw him jump and catch that ball. Tremendous play there.”
Baker, at the time, quibbled with McCormick’s decision to show umpires that he caught the ball with no ambiguity rather than hustling the ball back to the infield to possibly double up Nick Madrigal at first base. It would have been a tough double play anyway.
At the moment of truth, McCormick wasn’t sure that he had caught it. Neither was Astros TV analyst and former major leaguer Geoff Blum after watching the fourth or fifth replay.
“It almost looked like it hit off the pad,” Blum said on the broadcast.
Play-by-play announcer Todd Kalas told Blum to bite his tongue, but the Cubs never challenged the umpire’s call.
“It’s too late now,” Blum said to Kalas.
It’s hard to tell for sure if McCormick caught the ball without it bouncing off the pillar, but it does appear the ball bounced off the fingers in his glove into the pocket, giving it the false impression it was trapped. McCormick in 2025 says he is certain to have caught it fairly.
Statcast rated the play three stars out of five, giving McCormick a 75% catch probability. The algorithm appears to minimize, or miss, at least one degree of difficulty — the unique fence line in left field at what’s now called Daikin Park.
In addition to the famous Crawford Boxes near the left-field line that are fronted by a manually operated scoreboard, the warning track in left-center includes pillars, alcoves, and archways that carve out recesses to make plays like McCormick’s extra difficult. There’s no way OSHA has any ex-outfielders monitoring this stuff. An outfielder could be running after a fly ball and — wham! — they crash at full speed into the wall at an unforgiving angle. Or, if the defensive player isn’t running at full speed because they’re worried about being stopped abruptly, they risk not doing everything possible to complete the play. It’s an awkward and tough outfield to play.
“Chaz has made a lot of great plays, and the uniqueness of Daikin Park makes that one much tougher,” Blum said. “The way the columns jut out is kind of tricky. And those columns, running into them is not like running into a chain-link fence. Those are something like cinder blocks.”
It was the kind of play the Astros had come to expect from McCormick, even though he has spent his career exceeding most expectations. The Astros in the 2017 draft picked McCormick in the 21st round, which doesn’t even exist anymore, from Millersburg State, an NCAA Division II school in Pennsylvania that had sent just two other players to the major leagues in its history.
McCormick continued to defy the odds as the Astros promoted him in the minors, even being added to their 28-man postseason roster in 2020 despite having zero big-league experience to that point. He didn’t see any playing time in the ’20 postseason, but McCormick made the next Opening Day roster and hit 14 home runs in 320 plate appearances in 2021. He also played nine games that postseason, all while never ascending higher than the team’s No. 13 prospect, per Baseball America.
After hitting another 14 home runs in 2022, plus two more in the AL Championship Series against the New York Yankees, McCormick achieved the ultimate with the Astros in the World Series. He reached base seven times in the first four games ahead of his catch in Game 5.
Realmuto’s drive went 102.4 mph off the bat and traveled an estimated 387 feet, with McCormick covering 92 feet to track it down before he crashed into the fence. Also, per Statcast, Realmuto had an expected batting average of .690 on his drive to the gap.
McCormick thinks the Waste Management Catch had a higher degree of difficulty — he definitely jumped higher — but he probably prefers his catch against the Phillies over any other because of how it helped the Astros win their rings.
“It’s hard not to put the World Series catch at No. 1,” McCormick said.
Still, the Swanson grab three years ago was the talk of the clubhouse after the Astros beat the Cubs 7-3. It was, if for no other reason, because it was another great play by McCormick, who has made a number of five-star and four-star plays in his career. He also finished the ’23 season with his best offensive production yet, posting career-best numbers practically across the board.
Injuries, including a broken hand, limited McCormick to 267 plate appearances and poor production in 2024. He has begun this season as a part-time player, making only eight starts and being used mostly as a defensive replacement. McCormick has a .379 on-base percentage and leads the league in sacrifice bunts in 32 plate appearances. McCormick, now 30, always will be a World Series hero, but he also wants more opportunities to play than he has been getting.
“We have so many games left,” McCormick said of the Astros, who are 17-17 heading into action Tuesday. “I think that I’ll get more time out there. I obviously want a bigger role, but we’re still trying to figure out our identity.”
