Cubs rookie need not apologize
Baseball can be so, so stupid. With the Cubs down by three runs and down to their last strike against the Nationals on Sunday, David Bote clubbed a pinch-hit, walk-off grand slam.
“Sometime baseball gives you a moment to just enjoy — enjoy this time, this moment,” Bote told 670 The Score, a Chicago sports radio station, on Monday.
Again: Walk-off grand slam. It’s essentially the most exciting thing that can happen in a baseball game.
Bote is a 25-year-old rookie reserve player who just single-handedly won a game for a team in the midst of a tight pennant chase. Bote has played real well in his 34 Major League Baseball games, but there’s no guarantee he’ll have another moment like that in his career.
There’s really no way to over-celebrate a walk-off grand slam, but there’s really, really, really no way to accuse Bote of doing so. All he did was gently flip his bat, then run the bases with his arms out in the type of obvious, transparent excitement that should absolutely accompany, again, a walk-off grand slam.
“I didn’t even realize I did it until I saw it on the replay ... I meant no disrespect by any means. It was the heat of the moment,” Bote told 670 The Score on his bat flip.
After flipping his bat on a big homer in a game in July, Athletics outfielder and wise baseball sage Mark Canha started to apologize, then thought better of it, saying, “People getting offended by bat flips is so silly. I’m not sorry. I’m not really sorry. It’s part of our game. Everybody does it.
“If somebody is going to throw at me because of it, I’ve gotten thrown at in the past this season for bat flipping, I clearly didn’t learn my lesson. If you’re offended by that, I don’t care.”
Canha is absolutely right. Baseball is for fun. And it’s horribly damning that enough of stuffy old school baseball culture lingers to compel a guy such as David Bote to clarify why he might show excitement in the midst of an unspeakably exciting moment. Seriously, how is this still a thing?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Greatness is fleeting. Enjoy your home runs.