Tyson Perez is not just a relief pitcher. He's something of a cowboy.

Not like the ones you see in movies, though. The Astros right-hander, after growing up on a ranch in Hanford, California, is adept with a lasso and possesses enviable horse-riding skills. He's just a little reluctant to use the term "cowboy."

"I'd probably consider my dad one," said Perez, who pitched last year for Houston's Triple-A affiliate in Fresno, roughly 30 miles from his hometown. "It's kind of more of a hobby to me."

That hobby, more specifically, is called team roping. In the rodeo sport, two competitors on horseback chase a steer and catch it with ropes. The first rider -- the "header" -- has to capture the front of the steer, turning it around so the trailing rider -- the "heeler" -- can lasso its back legs. The team that accomplishes the feat fastest wins the event.

A number of different skills are required, not the least of which is a well-trained horse.

"However good of a horse you have can determine your time," said Perez. "It takes people a lot of time to learn because you have to not only ride a horse very well, but you have to be able to swing a rope while you're chasing a cow as fast as it can run and do everything in five to eight seconds.

"However fast of a roper you are can win or lose you a lot of money. There's a big event in Las Vegas every year, and it's actually during the Wrangler National Finals, which is pretty much like the World Series of rodeo. They have the bull riding, bronc riding and all that stuff, and then there's actually an event for amateurs. Everyday people that enjoy the sport can compete against their same class of roper. These people are competing for $200,000-$300,000 dollars each. Just a normal person like me that's not a professional team roper."

But as a pitcher, roping will be nothing more than an offseason hobby for Perez until his playing days are over. Still, it's a big part of him. For much of his life, it was all he knew.

'The biggest gift I've ever received'

Perez was born two days after Christmas in 1989 to two of the best team ropers around. Since it's a communal sport, his parents gained a measure of local notoriety for their abilities.

"When they met, they both shared this same passion," he said. "So them two together, it was kind of great. They both are some of the most talented people that there is."

His mother, Sandy, came from a family of avid ropers and horse trainers. Her father had been a gold card member of the Turtle Association, now known as the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the largest American rodeo organization in the world. He instilled a passion for raising horses in his daughter.

The road proved to be more complicated for his father, Frank. His family had never shown any interest in team roping, but many of his friends were heavily involved in the sport. At age 16, a friend's father taught him how to ride horses and handle a rope.

The connection was instantaneous. He decided to quit the high school baseball team and dedicated his time to perfecting the craft. After high school, he began competing at rodeo events. At age 20, he was offered a job as a roping partner by someone who wasn't that good but could handle the expenses, and for the next decade, Frank Perez stayed on the road.

"We won here and there, not a whole lot," Frank recalled. "But I would go on my own without him sometimes, and yeah, I made my living with that. I did good."

He did so well, in fact, that he eventually attained a rank of 9 on the PRCA's 1-10 scale, a distinction typically reserved for the best professional ropers.

Frank walked away from that job after getting married and the couple settled down on a ranch in Hanford, where they worked raising and training team roping horses.

"I was 33 years old when I had Tyson," said Sandy Perez. "To have a son at 33, and to think that maybe you would never have any, was the biggest gift I've ever received."

Learning the ropes

The Perez ranch houses 10 to 12 horses. In the backyard is a roping arena, where the younger Perez would watch his parents practice. Fascinated, he began lugging a rope around and imitating them.

"I was never told that you have to work hard in life to get what you want. [My parents] just showed me by their everyday life."

-- Tyson Perez

"He would drag a rope around when he could walk," said Sandy Perez. "He would carry it at his side, he could swing and rope it from the time he could walk or use his hands. He could use a rope as well as any kid could."

"He would always play with the rope," added Frank. "He grew up with the rope like it was part of his hand."

Tyson didn't have formal training. Everything he learned from his parents, he learned by observation.

"I don't really remember ever being taught," he said. "My parents led by example, by setting the standard for me and showing me what hard work is. I was never told that you have to work hard in life to get what you want. They just showed me by their everyday life.

"My dad is a very talented human being. So being around him, I learned minor things here and there about roping, just kind of tweaking little things as if I was working with a pitching coach, like working on mechanics or adding another pitch. But I was just blessed to have my dad's genes and kind of just had a good feel for it."

After Perez entered high school, he had less time to devote to roping. Each season now had a sport to go with it -- football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and of course, baseball in the spring.

"He was the quarterback for his high school team and he could have gone to college playing quarterback," his father said. "Then he was a three-point shooter on his basketball team and they won a championship. He was just an athlete, you know? And then he would rope in the summers with us when he didn't have anything going on."

His skill with the rope never seemed to dwindle, mostly because he would take any and every opportunity to practice. Any opportunity.

In grade school, Perez broke his right hand -- the one he used for roping -- and had to have it put in a cast. When his mother returned home from work the next day, Tyson was outside in the yard roping the family's practice steer with his left hand.

"And he still ropes very well left-handed," Sandy said.

Word gets out

Perez was drafted by the Astros in the 17th round in 2011 out of Fresno City College, and his hobby remained largely a secret in baseball circles for the first three seasons of his career.

"It's not really something you just go around telling people about," he explained. "Only if they asked I would say something."

It wasn't until 2014 that teammates at Double-A Corpus Christi got a taste of his unique skill set, particularly speedy left fielder Delino DeShields.

While Perez was filming himself roping a dummy for the team's website before practice, DeShields lobbed a challenge his way while walking out to the field with some other players.

"He said something like, 'Bet you can't catch me,'" Perez said. "I just turned and threw the rope over his head and just wrapped it around his waist, and he was just like 'Dang!' He didn't think I would actually do it.

"Luckily he was walking, because if he was running, I don't think I'd be able to catch him no matter how long of a rope I had."

Your browser does not support iframes.

But Perez's history didn't really become common knowledge outside of Corpus Christi until he met Jeff Murphy.

Fresno's 45-year-old roving catching instructor grew up in Las Vegas, but went to Central Arizona Junior College after graduating high school. There Murphy began hanging out with some experienced team ropers and decided to take up the sport himself.

He stuck with it for years, but never competed in events for money. When Houston went to Spring Training in 2014, Murphy built a roping dummy to bring to Florida. One day, Perez noticed him practicing with it.

"Tyson was playing stupid, you know, he was playing dumb," Murphy laughed. "I would go over at lunch roping my dummy, and he came over and was asking like, 'Oh, how do you do this?' I watched him grab the rope and I kind of knew he was trying to fool around with me. Then he did a rope trick and roped the damn thing. That very first time I met him, he sandbagged me."

Perez and Murphy were reunited in Fresno at the start of last season and picked up where they left off.

"On our downtime, we would go rope the dummy and kind of mess around and do some tricks here and there," said Perez. "Obviously, the team could walk right through and see it. I think that's how a lot of it got out.

"They were seeing me mess around and swing a rope or rope a dummy. … It's kind of hard to explain to everybody what it is, but I mean the majority of the people understand and they kind of think it's cool. They were like, 'Wow, you can rope and stuff?' I would say, 'Yeah, it's just one of those things I know how to do.'"

Best of both worlds

At Triple-A, Perez is one step from every ballplayer's dream -- that call to the big leagues. And that's where his focus will remain for the foreseeable future.

"[Roping] is not something that I really do any more, it's just something that, well, I can do," he said. "I'm not going to say that if I make it I'll stop doing it or I'll continue to do it. It's something that I don't really do that much to begin with anymore. But it's still something that I love, you know? Still something that I have a lot of fun with."

When the offseason rolls around, then he gets to return to life on the ranch.

"It's a lot different going from the city life of playing baseball, traveling, being on a plane, to being in the country where you don't have any neighbors and it's just dirt and work," he said. "It's just a lot different and I think those two together have kind of made me who I am. I'm very fortunate to be able to do that.

"My friends, if they've stayed over, they had to go help me clean the horse stalls or drive the tractor and feed the cows or something. You know, it's a lot different life, but at the same time, I wouldn't want to have it any other way. I kind of get the best of both worlds."