If there is a stain on the city of Houston—humidity and traffic excluded—it is the Astros. A steel drum band masquerading as a professional baseball team, the Astros are a bunch of pusillanimous cheaters who have brought nothing but shame (and ill-gotten championships) to what is otherwise the greatest city in Texas. Their timorous constitution alone would implode the Astrodome were cowards still allowed on such hallowed grounds. (Fun fact: they didn’t put a roof on Minute Maid Park because architects couldn’t come up with a structure strong enough to withstand the internal pressure from how hard the Astros suck.)
And so it is with great resignation—and honesty a level of integrity that I wouldn’t expect an organization as craven as the Astros to understand—that I must report that Houston Astros catcher César Salazar runs a really good coffee Instagram.
Now, to be fair, to Salazar and to myself, the Sonoran-born catcher didn’t first join the team until 2023, after the team’s dastardliest of deeds were made public (and wrists slapped with the most rigid feather duster MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred could find at the novelty shop). So until informed otherwise, Salazar can still be considered among the realm of Good People.
Having recently been called up from the Triple-A Sugar Land Space Cowboys—which is an objectively good name for a sports team, even if their logo doesn’t hold a candle to the Teddy Roosevelt theme of the Double-A Frisco RoughRiders—Salazar has spent quite a bit of time on the road this season, where he has been recording all his coffee stops on his account @Sally.Sips.
As reported by the Houston Chronicle, his obsession with coffee is fairly recent though, starting only last year after fellow (and former) Space Cowboy Austin Davis took him to a local specialty cafe, where Salazar had his aha moment with a pour-over and “was surprised to taste notes of orange and chocolate.”
“I thought, ‘Oh, this is how good coffee tastes,’ And [Davis] is like, ‘Yeah, you’ve got to go to different coffee shops and try different methods. And you’ll taste the different notes. So I just started paying a lot of attention to… this coffee has lemon citrus and caramel notes, or chocolate and almond notes, and sipping on it slowly to see if I can taste that note.”
In June, he started his Instagram account—that is run by his sister back in Mexico—and it has already racked up an impressive list of coffee shops Salazar has visited in its three months of existence. Ghost Note in Seattle, Three Pines in Salt Lake City, Bluebeard in Tacoma, the recently-opened NYC via London export WatchHouse, Spyhouse in Minneapolis, and of course BlendIn in Houston, home of US Brewers Cup champion Weihong Zhang, just to name a few.
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Salazar tells the Chronicle that is favorite spot thus far has been his first stop, at Caffe d’Bolla in Salt Lake. “I bought a $50 shot of espresso that changed my life… I said, ‘Hey, just give me whatever, whatever you recommend.’ And he goes, ‘Do you like cigars? And do you like vanilla?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ He whips the espresso shot and gives it to me and it literally tastes like a vanilla cigar.” (Despite my eyes wanting to pop out of my skull at the thought of a $50 espresso being the first response to a customer asking for a recommendation, it is nonetheless promising that such a price tag for a coffee isn’t treated as a punchline but as a reasonable shorthand for something rare and worthwhile.)
And Salazar’s coffee obsession has taken over his countertop. Chasing down the perfect cortado—his favorite drinks—Salazar’s home setup has grown to include a Breville espresso machine, a Varia VS3 grinder, a v60 for pour-over, and a hand grinder for good measure.
The 28 year old is the latest, but certainly not the first, Astros player to let his coffee freak flag fly. Noted sign enthusiast and co-owner of Houston’s great board game cafe Coral Sword Hunter Pence travelogued his coffee journeys with his wife Lexi on their YouTube channel near the tail end of his playing career. (Pence wasn’t on the Astros during their more furious rule-bending, so he’s cool too.)
Luckily for Salazar and Salazar alone, the Astros have all but punched their ticket to the postseason, granting him more travel time to explore new cafes. Future stops could potentially include great coffee cities like New York, Boston, or Kansas City. Maybe even Philly or Los Angeles if there is no god.
I’m rooting for you, Sally. Mostly to play for a different team so that I can root for you in earnest. But rooting nonetheless.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
