If Oscar the Grouch were a Yankees fan, he couldn’t have pulled off the Revenge Look any better than David Taub.
Taub arrived at Yankee Stadium at 5 p.m. Tuesday with green fur around his arms and a black “Trashstros” T-shirt wrapped around the top of the baggy Halloween costume garbage can hanging from his waist to his ankles.
Yes, the Astros — who were guilty of banging on a trash can to tip off batters as to what pitch was coming — were making their first visit since the sign-stealing scandal that broke in 2019. It tainted Houston’s 2017 World Series title and subsequent two playoff runs, which included two eliminations of the Yankees in a three-year span.
“We waited two years to do this! Two years for revenge!” Taub screamed. “We are not going to let them get loose now.”
Taub bought his trash-can costume for $85 off Amazon but told The Post he was forced to remove it by stadium security at the gate before he headed to the bleachers as one of 10,850 fans who turned screaming into chanting profanities throughout a 7-3 victory for the Yankees. They brought inflatable trash cans, and held up signs as direct as, “I find your lack of integrity disturbing,” and as cutting as, “Astros, Here’s a sign wanna steal it? ****”
“The asterisks are because their World Series doesn’t count,” Alexa Barisano said of her creation. “We should’ve won in 2017 and 2019. We don’t win because we don’t cheat? That’s not fair.”
Taub claimed stadium security told him at Sunday’s game that he could wear a costume but, in a move out of the Madison Square Garden playbook, said there was a policy change when he arrived, after waiting on line for 20 minutes. He hid the costume under a rock and recovered it after the game.
The first four fans in their seats booed during Astros batting practice. After first pitch, the masses harassed Alex Bregman — who hit a home run but committed a costly two-run error — and Carlos Correa. And they saved their best/worst for Jose Altuve, booing the 2017 American League MVP and 2019 ALCS star into the loneliest man on Earth and cheering when it looked for a moment like he was hit by a pitch.
Yankees fan Ryan Donohue 21, holding an Oscar the Grouch stuff animal with the Astros logo. Charles Wenzelberg / New York Post“I hope the Yankees fans smell blood tonight,” Taub said before the game. “I hope we don’t do anything irresponsible, but I hope we give our shares of boos and let them hear it. We definitely got robbed of a World Series. There’s no question about that.”
Astros manager Dusty Baker chose not to address the possibility of vitriol with his team pregame in order to avoid a psychological disadvantage. It might have been naïve.
“These guys are big boys, they’re men,” Baker said. “To address it would not do any good. You don’t want to have them fearful or apprehensive of something that may not even happen. There’s no way to really prepare for this except to go out and play.”
The Yankees didn’t retaliate between the lines like the Dodgers, who lost the 2017 World Series to the Astros and threw at Bregman and Correa when the teams met for the first time in 2020. Maybe that’s coming over the next two energized days.
One unidentified Astros player in right field during batting practice spotted Luis Perez holding up Barisano’s sign. He laughed.
“We were in the Dollar Store for 10 minutes thinking, ‘Trash, sign stealing,’ ” Perez said, “and this idea just came to her.”
