Nationals win World’s Series with late-game rally
Forget the game’s ancient unwritten rules, it’s more fun when players express emotion
There is a major-league baseball advertisement that’s often played in-stadium, with the slogan “We Play Loud.” It contrasts the young stars of today with grainy footage of players in baggy flannel uniforms, and shows modern guys like Mike Trout and Aaron Judge mashing homers and making diving plays. Cody Bellinger does a particularly cheeky bat flip.
The message, and the slogan that’s plastered all over ballparks this post-season, is simple: Baseball is not the game of your grandpappy, or especially your great-grandpappy, when diversity meant having a couple of tall guys on the team and a heater was anything thrown harder than 82 miles per hour. MLB wants you to know it’s flashy and cool now. It even wears its cap turned around backwards sometimes. It Plays Loud.
On Tuesday night in a thrilling Game 6 of the World Series, two of the game’s brightest young stars helpfully demonstrated this fact. Houston’s Alex Bregman belted a first-inning pitch from Stephen Strasburg deep into the left-field seats, and as the ball soared toward the stands the 25-year-old trotted toward first base with the bat still in his hands. It was a bit of showmanship, an anti-bat flip, and it gave the home fans at Minute Maid Park a little extra buzz.
It was also a flagrant violation of baseball’s unwritten rules, which require players to never do things on the field that could be interpreted as showing an opponent up. The Nationals were steamed, or at least some of them were. Strasburg would later say he thought the bat-carry was “pretty tired,” which is about as outspoken as he’ll ever get. If he says he pitched “pretty good,” you can expect to have just witnessed a no-hitter.
A few innings later, with the game tied 2-2, Washington’s
Juan Soto hit a ball so hard and high toward right field that it might have burned up upon re-entry. The 21-year-old carried his bat most of the way up the first-base line, then tossed it insouciantly. Why, these fellows were Playing Loud.
But, when the game was over, there was a lot of regret and contrition. Baseball is in the throes of an identity crisis. It wants — needs, most would say — to appeal to younger fans who are used to seeing athletes celebrate enthusiastically in end zones and while hanging from basketball rims. But baseball’s old guard remains there to solemnly shake its head and say that such demonstrative behaviour isn’t how the game should be played.
How ingrained is this unwritten rules business?
After a game that was full of exciting moments, it took until just the second question of Houston manager A.J. Hinch’s news conference Tuesday night before he was asked about Bregman’s capital offence.
“He shouldn’t carry (the bat) past first base,” Hinch said. He said Soto shouldn’t have done it, either.
Washington manager Dave Martinez sounded downright ashamed.
“We didn’t like it,” he said of the Bregman carry. “And the fact that Soto did it, I’ll be quite honest with you, I didn’t like it when he did it, as well. It’s a conversation I’ll have with Juan. That’s not who we are.”
I mean, is it not? Part of the story of the Nationals’ run to the World Series has been how the addition of some heart-on-theirsleeves guys has loosened up a club that has traditionally been too tight in big moments. They have complicated dance routines in the dugout, they mimic driving race cars, they wear goofy sunglasses. This is the team of Baby Shark, which offends more than a few grumpy old warhorse types.
Martinez, admittedly, has never seemed entirely comfortable with some of it. He said earlier in this series that he admonished some of his players when the celebrations were taking place on the field, in front of the dugout. In the dugout was fine, he said. This is the thing about the unwritten rules: it’s a living document.
Bregman, who hails from a family of baseball lifers, was more apologetic than anyone, saying he let his emotions get to him, and that it wasn’t “how he was raised to play the game.”
Later, asked about Soto returning the favour, Bregman essentially said he deserved to have it rubbed in his face.
“It was my fault, and I apologize for doing it,” he said. It’s going to be tough to put that clip in the next We Play Loud commercial.
Only Soto didn’t seem particularly regretful, perhaps because he hadn’t yet been upbraided by Martinez. He said he thought that Bregman’s bat-carry was “pretty cool” and decided that he wanted to do it, too. Soto was even wearing his cap backwards when he said it.
I’m on Team Soto with this. Baseball is more fun when players express themselves, even when, gasp, it might cause offence. (Bregman’s decision to celebrate in the first inning is another issue entirely. You’re just asking for karmic retribution.)
Carry the bat to first, throw it in a majestic arc, rock it to sleep like a baby, whatever.
Many will disagree, citing proper sportsmanship, the way the game ought to be played, and things of that nature. And I get that. But baseball, by the very image that MLB is projecting itself, doesn’t want to be that sport anymore.
But it’s only the 21-year-old star who seems to understand that.