Thumbnails | Next player The Mambo King: Jose Lima, the Astros' excitable and showy righty, jumped to a 9-2 record with a sub-3.00 ERA and may be the best pitcher in the majors you haven't heard of. There's a time to sing and a time to dance, and for Houston Astros righthander Jose Lima, those times are just about always. At three o'clock in the morning, as his infant son sleeps in an adjoining room, Jose is wont to rouse his wife, Melissa, and whirl her around to the sound of his own voice. At a street fair in Houston one evening last spring, he climbed onto the bandstand to croon and prance. Then there are the afternoons before his night-game starts, a time when most starting pitchers pace the clubhouse lost behind 10-mile stares. Lima prepares by standing half-clad on equipment trunks, shimmying, performing mock stripteases and singing robustly along with his favorite merengue CD. It's no surprise that he knows all the words -- he wrote them. The CD is titled Jose Lima en Vivo (Jose Lima Live). "I remember the naming ceremony for our new ballpark," says Houston manager Larry Dierker, referring to Enron Field, which is slated to open next season. "[Astros owner] Drayton McLane was there along with a lot of other important people, and there was a band. It was maybe 11 a.m., and all of a sudden there's Lima with the microphone, singing La Bamba. People were astounded. Astounded because he was so good, not because he went up there -- you only have to see him pitch to know he's a showman." Oh, yes: Lima brings his mambo to the mound. He takes the field with stirrups that extend to the top of his calves and begins a game-long dance that evolves pitch by pitch. He flaps his elbows, squeezes his fist, points, shrugs, grimaces, nods, jumps, kicks and writhes. He swivels his torso after one pitch and gyrates his hips after the next. After a big strikeout he busts a move that would make John Travolta proud, mock-shooting his victim with his forefinger and thumb. -- Kostya Kennedy Issue date: June 14, 1999 Photograph by Brad Mangin Sports Illustrated on Baseball | Team-by-Team Reports Rookie of the Year Watch | SI's Inside Baseball Archive

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