EXCEPTION TO UNWRITTEN RULE
Bat flip sparks celebration debate
You can get only so far into writing about the Jose Bautista bat flip/javelin throw/caber toss before the whole exercise starts to feel a little silly.
These are the types of sentences one is compelled to write: Spontaneous displays of emotion are not bad for the sport. Or: why should anyone be upset because a player, in the moment, reacted with passion?
I mean, duh. It feels like you are having an argument with no one, like you are stating something so uncontroversial that there’s no point in stating it. Athletes should celebrate. A baseball is round.
And yet, the Blue Jays were barely into the Champagne spraying and beer guzzling on Wednesday night when word started to travel back from the Texas clubhouse that the Rangers felt they had been disrespected. Nay, the very sport had been disrespected.
You are familiar with the events at hand. Just moments after Texas had been gifted a go-ahead run on a fluke play that looked for all the world like a screwjob — not because the eventual call was wrong, but because the umpire blew the first call and then gave himself a do-over — Bautista crushed a second-deck shot that released 20 years of frustrations in an instant.
He stood at the plate and watched the arc of the ball, and then tossed the bat with a furious righteousness.
Sam Dyson, who surrendered the three-run homer that felt like a 12-run homer in the way it so completely changed the game, did not appreciate Bautista’s response, and he said something to that effect to Edwin Encarnacion, the next batter. Words were exchanged. It was not particularly civil.
The benches emptied, though not much happened between the teams other than some jostling. By the time the bullpen doors had opened and the pitchers began the reliably comical jog toward the fight — you want to strike just the right note of urgency, but no one actually wants to sprint into the fray — it was all but over.
But, back to the post-game. As the Jays were dodging corks and searching for someone doing a TV interview that they could douse with booze, Dyson was over in the Texas room explaining his displeasure.
He said that Bautista needed to dial his celebration down. He said he was setting a bad example for children. He said he needed to respect the game. Rangers manager Jeff Banister didn’t take the bait on Bautista specifically, but when asked about the display responded that his team played the game hard and that they “respect everybody.” The implication was that the Jays did not.
And so, off we went down the rabbit hole of baseball’s unwritten rules, and the various ways in which the sport is meant to be played “the right way.”
On one side are those who believe that all celebrations must be muted, if held at all. You hit your home run, and then you put your head down and run around the bases, preferably at a good clip lest the pitcher be offended by your leisurely pace.
If you are a pitcher who throws a strikeout pitch, you are to walk off the mound in a subdued fashion. Hollers, fist pumps, spontaneous expressions of joy: these are disrespectful to the batter. Can’t have that.
On the other side of the unwritten-rules divide are those who are OK with feelings and emotion, and displays of same.
This post-season has sparked a lot of discussion of the baseball code, though, and not just because of bat flips. In the Dodgers-Mets series, Chase Utley broke Ruben Tejada’s leg with a takeout slide that was closer to a football tackle than an attempt to reach second base.
In that instance, scholars familiar with baseball’s unwritten rules decreed that the play was perfectly fine: it was just a hard slide, the way the game was supposed to be played, dang it, even if it was a clear violation of the sport’s actual written rules.
Amazingly, there are those who defended Utley while also blasting Bautista. Which is to say, a reckless slide that endangers the health of an opponent — and the runner — respects the game, while a bat flip is a grave offence.
These arguments aren’t new, and it’s hard to escape the cultural differences that seem to play a part: Latino players are most often those excoriated for excessive celebration, while an American pitcher is lionized for drilling an opponent who dared to saunter around the bases after a home run. (Hello, J. Papelbon.)
One hopes that the reason people still react angrily to something like a bat flip isn’t simply a bitterness that so many Latin American players are succeeding at the highest levels of baseball, speaking Spanish in clubhouses, playing music that does not involve banjos and, most significantly, not worrying about whether there is a right way to celebrate. But for some, it’s at least a part of the reason.
The good news is that the unwritten rules are doomed. Young players like Bryce Harper and Josh Donaldson play hard, but they aren’t demure about it. Donaldson had already raised the ire of the Rangers in the ALDS when he stood and admired a long foul. The benches cleared then, too. Which brings us back to the earlier point. You want players to display less emotion? Basically, be more boring?
The rules are unwritten, so they can only be set ablaze metaphorically. That will have to do.