The Astros’ Colby Rasmus has made his dream of owning a farm a reality.
Outfielder feeds new offseason passion by stocking Alabama farm at cattle auction
Only a handful of people in a crowd of about 400 knew who the man with camouflage and a hat was. To the rest, he was some young guy unexpectedly making high bids.
The bids were unexpected even to him, but the rush of the process brought a high.
“The bull, I knew he was going to be somewhat expensive. But that morning I walked out there, and I was like, ‘I’m taking you home with me, dude. I don’t care,’ ” Colby Rasmus said. “We started the bidding at like $5,000. Next thing you know, we’re at 20,000, and I’m like, ‘Yaaaah!’ ”
Retelling this moment, Rasmus sounded like he was urging a horse to gallop faster, lifting his arm at the same time — this was how he placed his bids at Gibbs Family Farm’s annual cattle sale in Ranburne, Ala., in November.
“My heart’s like dum dum dum — ‘Oh no, what am I doing?’ “Yaaaaaah!!!” Rasmus made another bid. When it reached $39,000, he sat there.
“Nobody in the place knew that I was doing the bidding because I was just sitting there,” Rasmus said. “I had glasses on, big camo hat, and I’m just sitting there.”
And playing it cool as the bidding heated up.
Of course, he had one more “Yaaaaaah!” in him. Rasmus wasn’t going to let this bull, which he named The Rock, pass him by. He picked up 15 heifers as well.
A big week in November
Rasmus knew he’d be back in Houston this season — he’s presently raking to the tune of .275/.414/.623 with seven home runs and 19 RBIs — after he agreed to take the Astros’ qualifying offer of $15.8 million on Nov. 12, the same day he made a preliminary visit to the Gibbs farm. The next day, he was in Houston for a news conference, and the auction was Nov. 14.
“We didn’t know that (he had the news conference) until the next day,” Gibbs farm marketing manager Gordon Hodges said. “He had just asked if he could come and look at the sale cattle on Thursday, and Friday was tied up, so that was all we knew.”
Rasmus had cows at a young age. In the 2014-15 offseason, he scooped up some land near his Alabama home and put up fencing, laying the ground work. He wanted to start his own farm,
and this past offseason, he set out to make that dream come true.
“For some reason, I just felt a calling to do it,” Rasmus said. “I live in the South, and you never know how things are going to turn out. But if you’ve got cows, you’re always going to have meat to eat. … I like the atmosphere, and there’s good folks in the cattle industry. I just thought it would be something cool.
“I love cows. I love being on the farm. I love the lifestyle,” Rasmus continued. “I just want to have a huge farm. I can just ride around and pull up to the farm and send the dogs out, and they’ll round the cows up and feed ’em and all those kinds of things.”
Not ego-driven purchases
The undertaking isn’t a light one. Hodges has seen people with disposable income dive headfirst into unpleasant results.
But Rasmus wasn’t trying to become an overnight dominant force in the industry.
“I try to kind of throw a red flag up if they are wanting to spend a giant amount of money and you can tell their goal is, ‘I want to be one of the top cattlemen in the country, and I want to spend a lot of money and very little time,’ ” Hodges said. “Colby did not really have those desires. He said he wanted it more for personal satisfaction. He wanted to look out his window at his place and see some really good cows.”
Rasmus has nonetheless faced a learning curve. Trying to figure out the ideal bull to match up with a heifer and understanding how the cattle are evaluated, he said, is a little like managing a baseball team.
“Oh my goodness,” Rasmus said. “Well, I dove off in it, and I didn’t realize what I was in, and I’ve educated myself now. So I’m caught up. But the good thing is it’s kind of a slow-moving industry. So you have time.
“I just put (The Rock) out there with 15 heifers, and just look at him. ‘There he is. Man, he looks good!’ … I was going out there every day (during the offseason). I dropped my little girl off at school, and I’d go out there every day from 9 o’clock to 2. Every day.”
Can’t keep identity hidden
Because the bull is so highly regarded, Rasmus’ foray made some ripples in the industry. The North American International Livestock Exposition was underway in Louisville, Ky., at the time of the auction, and word of Rasmus’ purchase spread fast.
But even by the end of the auction in Alabama, some people figured out who the guy in camo was.
“It turns out the contending bidder that was the breeder from Kansas, he … is a pretty big baseball fan, and he recognized (Rasmus) from when he played with … I guess it was St. Louis,” Hodges said.
“They were both standing in the balcony area that we have in our sales arena. They weren’t but 15 feet apart. That guy walked over to Doug (Gibbs, the farm operations manager) and said, ‘Isn’t that the outfielder that used to play with St. Louis?’
“And he said, ‘Well, yeah, I think it is.’ ”