Jose Altuve's Day At The White House Looked Pretty Awkward

The Houston Astros visited the White House today to be honored for their 2017 World Series win, which puts reasonable-minded players in a bit of a pickle. The traditional post-championship White House visit is a potentially once-in-a-lifetime honor. Having to tolerate Donald Trump in the flesh and be party to his whole presidential charade is a bit of a bummer, though. Carlos Correa and Carlos Beltran opted to skip the event altogether (although Beltran said it , per se).

AL MVP Jose Altuve did attend the ceremony held earlier today, and stood just behind the podium from which the President read his carefully scripted remarks. Altuve hasn’t said anything publicly about Trump and I wouldn’t presume to know his politics, but he spent most of the ceremony looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. At the end of the event, he showed zero interest in shaking Trump’s hand:

Altuve did shake Trump’s hand earlier in the ceremony, after the President made a direct reference to Altuve’s award-winning season and singled him out. Even that looked strained:

Here he is reacting to Trump’s joke about the team getting complacent in the wake of their championship season:

And here is that same steely-eyed stare and a notable lack of applause after manager A.J. Hinch talked about how honored the team was to be at the White House.

And this what he generally looked like the whole rest of the time:

Maybe Jose Altuve just has a nasty case of resting visceral disgust face.