Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista has recently been the topic of discussion for many of baseball’s greats. Despite the slugger’s successful 2015 season, during which he hit 40 home runs and 114 RBIs, Hall of Fame pitcher Goose Gossage declared him “a f—ing disgrace to the game.” Iconic third baseman Mike Schmidt questioned why “so many players feel the need to embellish their success.”
All these remarks, of course, as well as countless others, refer to Bautista’s blockbuster bat flip that came against the Texas Rangers in Game 5 of last year’s American League Division Series. Obviously enough, Gossage and Schmidt will always believe the game was better when they played it. Meanwhile, today’s stars will clearly disagree, telling the older generation to get with the times.
It isn’t just baseball’s classicists that oppose bat flipping. Texas relief pitcher Sam Dyson — who allowed Bautista’s bomb in that fateful game — said that Bautista needed “to calm that down” and “respect the game a little more.” However, it seems extremely unlikely that a veteran player such as Jose Bautista, who has played for five different teams in his career, would disrespect the game.
When you consider that game and all the circumstances surrounding that fateful play, it’s no wonder the Blue Jays star reacted the way he did. Let’s recreate the scene that might go down in history as the most controversial home run celebrations of all time.
It’s the bottom of the seventh inning in an elimination playoff game. The score is tied at three runs apiece, and your club has runners on the corners with a late-game lead ripe for the taking. You stand at the plate, ready to be the hero. In this unparalleled high-pressure scenario, you send a ball into orbit. The Toronto crowd and bench simultaneously erupted.
It was at that moment that “Joey Bats” became “Joey Bat Flips.” And honestly, I would’ve been disappointed if he didn’t celebrate. That home run was one of the defining moments of last year’s postseason.
While I’m not a fan of excessive showboating, I am a fan of passion. In an essay he wrote to The Players’ Tribune following his bat flip, Bautista explained that he has no disrespect for the unwritten rules of the game. Rather, he wrote he “was caught up in the emotion of the moment.” When I watch that play, I see a passionate player celebrating the biggest hit of his career, and one of the more important home runs in his franchise’s history — not an insolent player disrespecting the unwritten rules of America’s past-time.
Pitchers get caught up in the emotion of the game all the time. Nobody seemed to care when closer Francisco Rodríguez celebrated after one of his many saves. K-Rod had a rather elaborate post-save routine that he perfected during his record-breaking stint with the Los Angeles Angels.
Players have been celebrating in many ways for many years. Ricky Henderson was known for celebrating after stealing bases, which he did proficiently. Granted, they haven’t celebrated to the extent that Bautista did in last year’s ALDS. Yet there have only been a handful of moments like that Bautista homer in the past decade. It’s not often that one mammoth hit decides a playoff series for a postseason starved franchise like Bautista’s did for the Jays.
Also, the MLB has clearly supported bat-flipping celebrations. In fact, the official MLB Twitter profile tweeted a side-by-side of New York Mets slugger Yoenis Céspedes and Joey Bats, dubbing them #BatFlip Kings. Since Major League Baseball itself backs the bat flip, perhaps now may be the time for classicists to usher in a new era of acceptable, emotion-fueled celebrations.
My last point is that players such as Bautista are important ones for the future of baseball. Recall the clip of the “Jose Bautista kid,” a young boy who wore a face-painted beard and sunglasses so that he could resemble his favorite player, Jose Bautista.
It’s no secret that baseball’s ratings have been down recently. According to The New York Times, the first game of the 2014 World Series between the San Francisco Giants and Kansas City Royals drew just 12.2 million viewers. That number has decreased steadily for more than 30 years, peaking with 44.3 million in 1978.
In addition, baseball’s viewers are aging. Nielsen ratings show that more than half of baseball’s TV viewers are 55 or older. Rich Luker, a psychologist and sports researcher who has run ESPN polling for about 20 years, told The Washington Post that if baseball does not do anything, “they’ll probably stay flat for another 10 years.” He continued by saying that in 20 years, baseball could be “doomed to irrelevance like Tower Records or Blockbuster Video.”
Kids want to see exciting, emotional bat flips much more than they want to see high fives in the dugout and handshakes with coaches. Modern day athletes such as Cam Newton and Stephen Curry are revolutionizing sports, and everyone — especially the next generation of athletes — is taking notice.
There should be baseball counterparts to the football and basketball stars. While hitters probably will not celebrate a single up the middle like a strong forward celebrates a posterizing dunk, celebrations in baseball will need to become more commonplace and more widely accepted in order to foster younger fans.
