On the Line Between Emotion and Sportsmanship
You probably don’t need an introductory paragraph to this post. You read the title, so you already know what this one is about. Last night, with one swing, Jose Bautista untied the deciding game of the Blue Jays/Rangers series, and then Jose Bautista did this.
If you’re a Blue Jays fan, odds are you loved it.
The team hasn’t been to the postseason in 22 years, and have been lousy for most of that stretch. A few days ago, the team dropped the first two games of this series and looked like they were going to have a disappointing end to a promising season, only to go on the road and win a couple of games to force this decisive game five. Cole Hamels had mostly stifled the team’s offense, giving a crowd who came to be as loud as possible few reasons to make noise. And then, in the top half of the inning, the Rangers had taken the lead on a fluke play that hardly anyone even knew could happen. The crowd was tense and angry, and they were looking for a moment to release their frustration. And Joey Bats gave them exactly what they wanted.
Not everyone enjoyed the spectacle, however. Sam Dyson, the Rangers pitcher who gave up Bautista’s home run, said this when talking to the media after the game.
“I told him Jose needs to calm that down, just kind of respect the game a little more,” Dyson said. “He’s a huge role model for the younger generation that’s coming up playing this game, and I mean he’s doing stuff that kids do in Wiffle ball games and backyard baseball. It shouldn’t be done.”
Dyson certainly isn’t alone in feeling this way.
For a significant portion of people watching, Bautista’s act violated the principles of sportsmanship that were instilled in us in Little League when we were kids. We all heard the same messages, and they’re important life lessons to teach kids, who aren’t born with the awareness of other people’s feelings. Sportsmanship, at its core, is acknowledging the validity of the opponents humanity, realizing that your exhilaration comes at the cost of someone else’s despair. Teaching people to respect the feelings of those around you, or even in competition against you, and to not make their suffering worse, is probably one of the most important qualities we can pass down.
So while I’m not always a fan of baseball’s unwritten rules, or the fact that so many confrontations end up involving a white player lecturing a minority who was raised in a different culture about how they should behave, I appreciate the origins of these ideas. Dyson, and those who think Bautista should have just put his head down and casually jogged around the bases, aren’t attempting to deprive individuals of joy; they’re trying to enforce a code that elevates someone else’s feelings above your own. There’s honor in that principle.
Sportsmanship has value, and I appreciate where these sentiments come from. But those values flow both directions, and respecting the game shouldn’t be a hammer that is used to pound emotion out of those competing at the highest level. “There’s a time and a place for celebration,” I was regularly told by coaches preaching the same virtues that Dyson grew up with. They were right. And last night, in Toronto, it was the time and place for one hell of a celebration.
One of the battlecries of the anti-bat-flip crowd is “act like you’ve been there before.” Which is perfectly reasonable, assuming you’ve actually been there before. This wasn’t a third inning home run in May; this was a series-winning home run to cap off an improbable comeback for a team whose closer wasn’t born the last time Blue Jays were in the playoffs. Jose Bautista had never been here before. This was the defining at-bat of his career, what he’d spent 30 years working towards, the biggest moment of his professional life.
This wasn’t a run-of-the-mill home run. This is one of the great moments in Toronto sports history, and will be etched into the collective memory of every Blue Jays fan fortunate enough to see Bautista take that swing. As soon as Bautista connected, everyone else in the Rogers Centre lost their minds.
This is everything. pic.twitter.com/rMd035OprQ
— Drew Silva (@drewsilv) October 15, 2015
That moment, when years of pent-up frustration was exorcised with a single swing, didn’t call for stoicism. Jose Bautista didn’t throw his bat like a javelin because he was attempting to bring attention to himself, or show up the Rangers; he was participating in a wide-scale celebration that his swing set off. Fans jumped and screamed and embraced and spilled their beers and cried; Bautista, alone at the plate, joined the bedlam in the most natural way possible.
Bautista showed emotion in an emotional moment, because that’s what human beings do. We feel, and we react, and we have to be trained to contain those emotions, because it isn’t what comes naturally. We contain them because emotional outbursts are not always appropriate, and we don’t want to make others around us uncomfortable. But last night was an appropriate time to celebrate. It was a moment of release for a crowd ready to explode, the natural outflow of passion from a player who badly wants to win.
So often during the season, these very same players are criticized for making too much money, for turning a children’s game into big business. But then, when the games matter most and they remind us that they care deeply about the game itself and the competition it breeds, they get criticized for caring too much, and for not downplaying their greatest accomplishments.
I’m all for sportsmanship, for considering the feelings of others, and for not taunting your opponents after their best is not quite good enough. If Jose Bautista had this same reaction to hitting a third inning home run in May, when 25,000 people stood and gave smattered applause, then I’d have a different reaction. But the postseason is great in large part because the stakes are so high, because the tension is palpable, and because we live and die on the results of every swing. The players should have the right to feel the same way.
Jose Bautista wasn’t showboating last night; he was celebrating. It was a moment that will live on in baseball history, and the inappropriate response would have been to pretend that it didn’t matter. It did matter to everyone in attendance, to everyone in the organization, to his teammates, and to Bautista himself. And when he did something truly great, pushing his team to victory in the biggest game of his life, we’re all better off celebrating with him.
If you can’t celebrate in that moment, then none of this is worth anything.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
*exorcised
You call that a stare down?
Pitchers scream and pump their fists when the get a big out or throw a no hitter. Why the double standards?
Joey NoClass.
One of the most memorable innings in MLB history.
Pitchers that do that while looking at their teammates or bench or away from the hitter are right. Pitchers that do that while staring down the batter or the other team are wrong. It’s not brain surgery.
When they take it too far, people *do* call them on being douches (c.f. John Rocker), so there’s not a really hard line about it.
Typically, it doesn’t delay the game if a pitcher celebrates, but a player pausing at home is reveling (when he has another 15 seconds he can spend reveling as he rounds the bases)
. But plenty of people have criticized, for instance, K-Rod for celebrating excessively when saving a 3-run lead in a June game. It’s just rare to see it with pitchers.
You, my friend, are a rancid piece of shit.
I love celebration but my problem is with Bautista immediately staring down the pitcher, flipping bat at the Rangers dugout, and tough-guy pose.
That’s not joy or happiness. That’s just trying to stick it in the face of the opposition.
There is good reason you see the same hitters constantly in the middle of this stuff (Carlos Gomez comes to mind).
Get rid off the macho/fake-tough crap.
He briefly glances at the pitcher, not sure I’d call that “staring down”
http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/94781376/v523054683/textor-gm5-bautista-hammers-goahead-threerun-shot
I honestly think he was a bit overwhelmed, if anything. It’s not like parked at home plate to admire his homer, instead he saw it going out to left-center, looked briefly at Dyson, and then broke into the spontaneous bat flip.
Nothing about this looked staged, like he was showing anyone up. I mean, this was only the biggest moment of his career so far.
I think you even missed a step in there:
1. A look towards the path of the ball just struck, but nowhere near long enough to see it land;
2. The briefest of incidental glances in the general direction of Dyson, IF AT ALL;
3. A brief stare off into space, during which some little voice in his brain said, Get on this;
4. The mildly over-vigorous toss – not flip, TOSS – of the bat, in a way that was cool while not being in any way contrived (He basically SHOVED it, which is normally not at all something that gets called ‘athletic’, but not at the Texas bench or towards any Ranger, just into the foul area, WHERE THERE WAS, AND NORMALLY WOULD BE, NO PERSON, being the same side he was holding onto the just-used bat with, and also the nearest of his sides to that foul area, WHERE THERE WAS, AND NORMALLY WOULD BE, NO PERSON.
To me it seemed like something a warrior would do, right after a prolonged battle with an intransigent foe during which the odds on the outcome appeared to shift wildly and repeatedly between the combatants. It wasn’t a dissing of anyone, but more of JEEBUS FRACKING CHRISTMAS, I’M SO GOLDARNED EXCITED, I CAN HEAR MY OWN BLOOD POUNDING THRU ME.
I feel like it’s related to Governor Howard Dean’s famous yowl on the presidential campaign trail in 2004.
Avattoir, I think you just nailed it. And maybe that little voice in his brain was saying something like this:
“Is there any obscure rule that would make this HR not count? Hmm….nope, just touch all the bases and don’t pass the guys in from of me.
Oh, and the bat. Gotta get rid of the bat…out of the basepaths right THERE!!”
Avattoir – you said it better than I could have. You got to get rid of the bat somewhere, and he did just that. Who knows, maybe next time Bautista homers he should just slowly and gently rest the bat down on the ground in foul territory, just to bust chops.
And turducken (love that user name), it wouldn’t surprise me if that kind of thought flashed through his head, so soon after that play with Martin and Choo.
“There is good reason you see the same hitters constantly in the middle of this stuff”
Well, there’s a reason, but it’s not a good one.
I have any easy solution for you, banish all of the hispanics from baseball. That seems to be what you want. There was no disrespect intended in what they are doing. I am a Cuban American who didn’t play baseball past High School but I can tell you that even as low as little league, you see the kids doing bat flips and celebrations in Miami that you don’t see in other places in the country.
People are different. You can call the (typically) Hispanic behavior “fake-tough crap” but I can call the other way uptight. People should have fun at work. There is nothing wrong with celebrating as long as what you are doing is worthy of celebration. If the blue jays were still down after Bautista homered then this would be stupid but that swing all but clinched the ALDS for them.
Wanted to echo what Los said. If you look at all the bat flippers, it’s all Latin American players – they have a different culture of how homeruns are handled. A celebration in another country can be misconstrued in North America.
Tom Lawless was a white man.
Zach Greinke is latin? 😉
At this point, I would ask politely how much you REALLY know about Latin culture and discuss how you know it.
I’m asking because I’m sure we all have an idea of what we think we know about “black culture” and I’m betting it’s heavily based on negative stereotypes.
Bat flipping isn’t really anything new or specific to one culture. We’ve seen bat flips from Reggie to Jack Clark to Brett Boone to Rickey Henderson to bat drops from the likes of Junior and Jim Edmonds to Andres Galarraga.
I feel like we’re creeping back into the area of using cultural norms to explain why Robbie Alomar spit in an umpires face. Like, the whole “cultural differences” over the word mother f*cker, and Alomar thinking that Hirshbeck was really saying Alomar enjoys intercourse with his own mother (or that it was the first time Alomar had ever been called a MF in his 10+ year career at the time).
The “cultural norms” thing may carry some weight in some circumstances, but there aren’t very many people in societies that don’t notice when other people strongly object to what they do. They notice and they continue to do it because they enjoy pissing people off, they enjoy the power it makes the feel, etc … they aren’t likely doing it because they haven’t noticed that it pisses other people off.
At this point, I’m having strong concerns over how “cultural norms” is being used in some of these sports discussions.
The Korean league bat flip culture >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Latin American.
I like the Korean batters that bat flip from the top of the follow through.
You should flip your keyboard for this post. Bang on.
Carlos Correa hit as big a homer in gm 4 vs the Royals (insofar as the homer that seemingly put a Div Series to rest) and didn’t have nearly the reaction. Not a Hispanic issue at all. Bautista, what a home run. Karma.
So not all hispanics are the same? Shocking!!! Kendrys Morales just put his head down and run when he hit a home run as well. I’m not saying that hispanics are incapable of not pimping home runs. What I am saying is that it is perfectly acceptable in their (our) culture to do so.
I was born in Miami to Cuban parents. I lived in Hialeah (74% of the population is Cuban) until my Senior year of high school (same high school as Gio Gonzalez). I have visited family in Cuba and have traveled to the Dominican Republic many times on business. I visit Miami (and not the South Beach clubs) on at least an annual basis. I didn’t learn English until I was in school because my parents never bothered to learn it because you are more of an outsider in Hialeah if you do not speak Spanish than if you do not speak English. Did I study Hispanic culture? No. Did I live it? Yes. I am not claiming to be an expert in everything related to Hispanic cultures and attitudes. What I am saying is that the behaviors people complain about from players like Bautista, Ortiz, and Puig is perfectly normal in the culture I grew up in.
I had teammates from Hileah (Miami Dade).
There also seem to be huge differences between Latin American culture and Mexican culture.
I’m glad you shared your perspective.
i don’t think it’s fair to take offense that quickly to something that isn’t racist.
It being against batflips is automatically evidence that someone dislikes Hispanics, then that’s a pretty weird standard for racism. For that matter, I think it’s pretty ugly to see a predominately white baseball fanbase constantly make fun of Harold Reynolds, a black man. That surely is evidence of Baseball Twitter’s racism.
The only way your Harold Reynolds analogy works is if there is a culture of being stupid about baseball among black people that people are somehow rejecting by mocking Reynolds.
Are you saying black people don’t understand baseball? I don’t think you are, which means your analogy is about as good as Harold Reynolds’ baseball analysis.
No people make fun of Harold Reynolds because he says stupid things like this:
“We we’re talking about foul balls in the stands up in Toronto and because there’s not a lot of people who grew up playing baseball in Canada, they’re not used to catching a lot of balls hit into the stands.”
Curt Schilling says plenty of stupid things and gets made fun of just as much, if not more. It’s not a race thing. It’s a stupidity thing.
Just because they come from a different background does not mean everyone should conform to their way of playing. If an American ballplayer goes to Cuba to play, he should learn to assimilate to their culture and not be disrespectful. This is something that many foreigners fail to grasp. If you like your way of playing baseball, play it there. If you come over here because you want to make more money, then have some awareness for those around you.
This is simple stuff that anyone over the age of 15 should grasp.
Bud Norris is that you?
I agree with your point though. Just like the White Man assimilated into the Native Culture, so should foreign players assimilate into the current culture.
This ‘White Man’ you speak of that failed to assimilate? What team does he play for?
The actions of ancestors should now be punishing the current ‘White Man’ culture that plays baseball today? Is that your argument? What do the current baseball players have to do with the people that pushed the Native Americans in to reservations?
Actually the game was played in Canada. And we’re fine with athletes celebrating success, no matter where they come from.
Any racist over the age of 15 should grasp is what you meant to say. Blows my mind that we basically stole this continent and yet the most ignorant and downtrodden spend their energy fighting the foreigners like they are the reason for their woes.
Jesus, yep it’s a racist thing. Why do so many of these people exist?! Just because you are a Cuban American, does not mean everything you do is right! You are not perfect and the way you play the game is fine where you are from, so stay there or learn to respect some tradition in America.
Ball scout thought the celebration was excessive. The article’s title implies that Dave thought it was borderline. Don’t you think it’s a little drastic (and probably offensive) to accuse him of being racist?
For my two cents, I’m sure Bautista meant nothing by it so my opinion of his character hasn’t diminished but when I first watched it, it did immediately strike me as cold, so I can at least understand how there might be explanations for Ball scout’s point of view besides, “Well you must hate Hispanic players.”
You don’t have to hate Latino players to be racist. Racism is a lot more subtle than that. Racism is about prejudice + structural power. Prejudice is reaching a conclusion about someone in advance or without full knowledge. That seems quite likely to be what a lot of people are doing here. The urge to impose Anglo cultural norms on Latino players can be problematic.
“There was no disrespect intended in what they are doing.”
And guess what? Intention doesn’t matter. I usually don’t intend to insult people, but if I do so accidentally, it’s my fault.
I disagree with most of what Ball scout says, but
“That’s just trying to stick it in the face of the opposition.”
There is definitely an element of this in Jose’s game and there always has been. Bautista grumbling at the strike zone is him working himself up. Angry Bautista has hit some epic bombs and his anger seems to make his bat faster and eye better. The feeling of the game slipping away because of a technicality (being correctly applied is irrelevant) just fueled his rage.
But here’s the important point. Jose channels his anger into a baseball play. He doesn’t throw at anyone or charge the mound. He seeks to get his revenge by making a remarkable baseball play. And he is amazing in his ability to do so.
And yes, he wants the opposition to know. That’s the bat flip and stare downs. He’s Angry Bautista and you don’t want to meet Angry Bautista.
It’s interesting how nobody seems to care when the pitcher does a fist pump or disrespects the hitter, but how dare the batter do a bat flip. No no, totally disrespectful.
As Dave said, this would be outrageous for a regular home run, but in a series defining/winning hit, that’s awesome.
Jose Bautista himself held a grudge against a pitcher for skipping off the mound after striking him out
http://deadspin.com/jose-bautistas-home-run-skip-was-part-of-a-two-year-old-1697406082
K-Rod got criticized for celebrating too much, as well.
No one is rallying against bat flips … just the most excessive of them.
I don;t see anyone rallying against a pitcher pumping his fist. Now, maybe pumping your first in the Carlos Perez (anyone remember him?) style … that seemed to piss off TONS of batters.
Anytime something happens out of the norm or to the extreme level, some are going to take offense to it. Just as there is acceptable and normal smack-talk, and then there is “fight starting” smack talk. There are norms to everything.
Yup, stick it in the face of the opposition. From the Blue Jays view, the umps gave the Rangers a run with that wierd play. This was “Ok umps, deal with this! This game is OURS!” (as well as the above mentioned years of frustration)
Not entirely on board with your full point, but I’m inclined to agree that his mien here was less jubilant and more aggressive. Certainly a big moment, and different people respond to big moments in different ways. But if I only saw his bat flip I’d assume there was some bad blood between TOR/TEX or Bautista and Dyson, which I don’t think there is.
Don’t play the Game the White Way != Classless.
Shut the fuck up.
I get the feeling you just scrolled on down to the comments to leave this without reading anything Dave said. You are essentialy proving the entire article by posting a comment that is the exact opposite of the thesis….. Well done, Dyson?
I get the feeling you just scrolled on down to the comments to leave this without reading anything Dave said. You are essentially proving the entire article by posting a comment that is the exact opposite of the thesis….. Well done, Dyson?
You’re a fuck up of biblical proportions. We’re you basically thrown down a set of stairs immediately after birth?
Go suck on an Eni Sarris taco.
Why does this get 142 negative votes? I totally disagree with Ball scout’s point – I loved everything about Bautista’s bat flip and even liked the stare down. But the whole point of these comments threads is to exchange ideas. Nothing from Ball scout was expressed idiotically, and some of it was though provoking (I love Carlos Gomez too, but considering he and Bautista are frequent fan targets, do they argue against the idea that Bautista was merely ‘celebrating the moment’?). Do people just habitually go around downvoting anything they disagree with? (And yes, by saying this I know I’m asking for down votes myself…)
Now thinking of it, I imagine he was so locked in, as to be in a trance, then when the crowd shouting woke him up, he came to, and didn’t know why he was holding that piece of wood, and so decided to discard it.
As a fan of neither, I’d say it was definitely a little showboaty, but it is also the playoffs and he wasn’t doing it to show up the pitcher, so I’m all for it.
As a Royals fan though, I hope he doesn’t have the opportunity to do it for at least a little while.
Right. This line: “Jose Bautista wasn’t showboating last night; he was celebrating” presents a false choice. He was very clearly showboating…in celebration.
I don’t really care for it, but I absolutely get it and I think the backlash is overdone.
100% with you sir. the twitter posts are highly ironic in their lack of respect, dignity, and honor…..
This is where I think the “play the game the right way” crowd is truly insane. You flipped a bat? Next time we see you we’ll try to end you life by throwing a projectile 98mph at your skull…
Or when we have to listen to “play the right way” from a guy like Cole Hamels…who hit a player in his FIRST plate appearance against Hamels. Because…[crickets]
Or that dumba#$ reporter who essentially said “back in my day, Bautista wouldn’t make it around the bases!”
Because…..WE PLAY THE RIGHT WAY!
WE PLAY THE WHITE WAY
rec’d for truth. haters gonna hate.
I took away from all of this that Sam Dyson is a small, small man.
I don’t understand how this continues to be a conversation. You nail it pretty well with the “white player lecturing a minority” comment. If you don’t want to celebrate, don’t celebrate. If you don’t want the other team to celebrate, pitch better. Who decided they get to dictate otherwise?
Yeah, and how about Dyson calling out EE when he was trying to calm the fans down, or patting Tulo on the butt. Dyson’s sure playing the game the right way there.
That’s being kind of tough on Dyson. I have no problem with the flip but Dyson was speaking right after giving up the game winning bomb and was surely incredibly disappointed and frustrated, so I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a small man for saying he didn’t like the bat flip in that moment.
Very true. Like Bautista, an understandable, spontaneous moment. No need to call in the emotion police on either guy.
I’m talking about his postgame remarks
If Dyson hadn’t gone out of his way to chirp at EE and tap Tulo on the ass I might be more sympathetic to his comments. But he can’t do that on the one hand and then follow it up with criticism of Bautista after.
And maybe mention to teammate Holland that wiping your butt with the other team’s towel isn’t that classy, either.
If Dyson wants Bautista to settle down his own team should too.
Super emotional game, no problem with anyone acting out a little.
agreed, it just seems like sour grapes in light of Dyson’s actions during the game
It was pretty understandable until he thought he could complain to our white player and have him sympathize against all those danged coloreds.
Sam Dyson is probably a racist. Book it, you can call him at home to confirm.
Yeah! He was totally out of line to talk to a lily-white motherfucker like E5!
It is all about Playing the Game the Right/White way.
Having respect for others, by the looks of many of these comments, appears to be mostly a white thing. It is called having respect for yourself. Something your father should have taught you growing up. If you win a million dollars, you don’t go up and down the street telling everyone that you never have to work again, you show humility, something that many White/Hispanic/Black players have no idea even exists. No matter how much you don’t understand it, it will always be the way to go because it is the noble thing to do. The fact that it is not popular now, does not change this and never will.
Dyson sucked, then blew hot air. Basically, he was the entire product line.
Your comment is a cool breeze on a hot day.
well done good sir
This is simplistic argument with a slippery slope. It’s saying there is no reasonable limit on what a player’s celebration can look like. What if he just walks casually around the whole basepath? What if he stares at the pitcher with a mean mug and breaks his bat over his leg? Most things aren’t so black and white.
Why bring up things that didn’t happen in an effort to argue that the thing that did happen was inappropriate?
If you think this instance crossed the line. Make that case.
And in the future we can talk about the events you mentioned…you know, if they actually happen.
How can you think seriously about an issue without defining boundaries? Why should you limit yourself to the same hot take that everyone has mentioned 100 times? Why can’t you have a non-black-and-white opinion?
Careful BenH, thoughts like that will get you labeled a white racist. You are not welcome. How dare you think that celebrations should have limits.
Guessing you have not had much to celebrate in your life, watching others do it must be maddening.
Nah, no evidence that Ben’s a racist. You, on the other hand, obviously are.
I’m mostly ok with the celebration. However, lines like “If you don’t want the other team to celebrate, pitch better” come across as pretty obnoxious. Carping about the other team celebrating come across as being a bad loser, but lines like that suggest being a bad winner. It suggests that the pitcher didn’t try hard enough.
Also, while the Rangers players may not have had a gripe about excessive emotions on the part of the Toronto players, they certainly had one about the Toronto fans. I’m willing to give them a little more of a pass because of that.
“If you don’t want the other team to celebrate, pitch better.”
I actually hate that criticism on the pitcher. Anyone in the MLB is, nearly by default, among the 500 best pitchers in the entire world. Home runs still happen because the other guys are also very, very good ballplayers. Pedro Martinez had one of the greatest, most epic, overpowering seasons ever in 1999, and he still allowed 9 home runs. Should he have pitched better to allow zero home runs just to make sure nobody ever celebrated a home run?
I have no problem with people celebrating…I just dislike the long pause, big bat-flip at home plate. It’s like “Look at me, I’m such a badass,” and less, “I’m excited about something awesome happening.”
To continue using Pedro as an example, one of those homers was given up to Chili Davis. Can you imagine him showing up Pedro as if he was somehow the better player in that instance? I can imagine a guy like that running to first and then raising his hands in excitement (to celebrate) when the ball clears the fence, since it’s so unlikely for a guy like him to beat Pedro.
This is the kind of comment that should be getting upvoted.
Most embarrassing celebration in toronto since Joe Carter leaping around the base in ’93.
C’mon Joe – act like you been there before.
Now Bautista?
Pretty sure that noone was yelling about Carter’s celebration because he didn’t stand at home plate, pause, look at the pitcher with this “I’m the s*it” kind of face, and then toss his bat fifteen feet in order to be noticed. Carter’s celebration looked like genuine happiness and he didn’t do it while standing at home plate. I thought this was pretty obvious to everyone.
I can’t recall anyone ever protesting players showing emotion while running the bases after a home run. One of the most iconic home runs ever is often represented by Kirk Gibson doing a fist pump between first and second base. As a Braves’ fan, one of the home runs most ingrained in my memory was David Justice hitting the go ahead homer in game 6 of the World Series, and he also did a fist pump as he rounded first.
That said, I’m on the fence. I’ve nothing wrong with players doing something spontaneous, and I seldom have sympathy for players complaining about the other team’s celebration, unless their celebration is something directly offensive like yelling, “I’m gonna bang your wife later, too! And her sister!” But personally, I prefer to see something akin to joy in celebrations. Bautista looked more angry than happy.
carters homer ended the world series, if that was the case it would have been a walk off celebration like any game but magnified. If Joey had rounded the bases like Carter then I would have been WTF also; the game was not over. I think the homer would have noticed bat flip or not.
I would say from your posts that Joey playing in Canada and looking more middle eastern than Dominican has your ire more than anything.
You might want to have your sarcasm detector checked. I don’t think it is working….
Clearly only the fans should be able to celebrate a player’s accomplishment. The players should not show any emotion whatsoever. They should all play the game the right way and not enjoy anything about it. They are there to do a job. The fans are there to celebrate if they do something good. Players play, fans celebrate. End of story.
I have no problem with Bautista’s behavior nor with Dyson’s response. All of our criticism should be reserved for the fans who threw stuff on to the field.
WFIB
I like this view. I get the backlash perspective: You don’t have to show a guy up in order to celebrate. There are countless examples of big home run celebrations that don’t show up the pitcher.
I also get the hitter’s perspective: it doesn’t get more exciting, satisfying, thrilling than a moment like that. Self-control may be far out of reach.
How big of a deal is any of this? Not very. Certainly not enough to have people thrown at, in my mind.
agreed.
This.
Also, if I were the Jays, I’d record a video message with some players urging fans not to do this anymore and show it on the screen prior to games 3-4-5.
Sam Dyson gets a pass and for the same reasons. Probably a close call between he and Andrus as to who was the most disappointed in their own performance.
The high and mighty Twitterati, however, should consider removing the sticks from their asses.
well said dave
Lots of apologies for what’s still a d move. Joe Carter manages not to perform an “epic” bat flip for smashing a World Series-winning homer…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F5HwiGm7lg
Yeah, but he jumps down the base line as he celebrates all the way around the bases. Why have bat flips been singled out as an unacceptable form of celebration?
I understand the level of emotion in yesterday’s game, but I also will point out that Carter’s homer won the World Series. Bautista’s gave them a lead in the clincher…of the Division Series. Very exciting and significant, but still a few notches below cementing a championship.
So the fuck what? The only moment that’s appropriate to celebrate is literally the clinching of a championship? We shouldn’t have our tender feelings hurt by the awful spectacle of baseball players celebrating but once a year?
Just to be clear, the only two homers that should have ever been celebrated by anyone are Carter’s and Mazeroski’s? Thanks for fixing baseball, buddy.
Can you pick me up some Ovaltine next time you’re at the store?
Dude. You’re talking about MLB. Where they turn the clubhouse into a frat party when they clich a playoff berth, a division, a wild card game, a division series, etc.
And you think they shouldn’t be allowed to celebrate any big play on the field until they win the World Series?
Right.
You’re right.
Next year, when the Giants win it all again, Mr. Bumgarner will drink 4 beers for the DS at once, follow suit with 5 beers after winning the CS, and an entire case at once when they win the WS. I mean, he must temper his celebrations to match the occasion.
They are considered to be showing up the pitcher. Jumping around the baseline on a walk-off HR isn’t.
If Carter had done that on a non-walkoff HR, it probably would have been considered poor sportsmanship to. Walk-offs have different perceived “rules”. You’re thought to be celebrating winning the game more than the hit.
Whether there is any merit to the perception that a bat flip is showing up the pitcher is a different question. The answers seem mostly arbitrary.
“They are considered to be showing up the pitcher.”
This a conclusory argument.
I’m not willing to accept that statement, just because you said so. WHY is it showing up the pithcer?
“This a conclusory argument.”
It isn’t an argument of any kind, let alone a “conclusory” one. I think you term you’re looking for is conclusory *statement*. And it isn’t one of those either.
The fact that it is considered showing up the pitcher is in evidence. Read the thread. Read the paper. Watch TV. There is no doubt that it is considered showing up the pitcher.
“WHY is it showing up the pithcer?”
Did you already forget what I said, even though you quoted it word for word? I said it is *considered* showing up the pitcher, not that is objectively is.
The end of my comment even acknowledges that the merits of that perception are dubious.
Read more carefully.
Jumping around can’t be perceived as a “fuck you.”
I love Joey Bats, but that batflip was absolutely a “fuck you” to the Rangers and the umpires.
there was a definite feeling of showboating in Bautista’s celebration. as well as playing to the crowd and celebrating the moment, he was pretty much announcing to the world that he’s a badass. Carter’s reaction was just total, pure joy without an ounce of selfishness in it. he was just way too happy for a human being to stay straight faced and on the ground for any length of time.
i dont have a problem with either one, but they are different in my eyes, and i say that as a Jays fan.
that’s your opinion. Bautista said after the game he was overcome with emotion after the hit. he blacked out and came to again in the dugout afterwards.
Joe’s wasn’t exactly a no-doubter like Jose’s.
carter had to run because he didn’t know if it would make it.
Joey, and all of us, knew right away.
I’m crying.
Agreed with this 100%. Anyone who was against Bautista’s celebration is a dinosaur who dreams of the games of yesteryear where everyone ran hard, didn’t celebrate, and didn’t make a ton of money.
Oh ya, they were all white too.
I honestly don’t know if this comment is sarcasm or not.
I legitimately cannot tell if your comment is sarcasm or not.
Not all people who question that celebration are pure dinosaurs, obviously. And his final comment about all the players being white: Barely anyone who watched the game pre-integration is even still around, much less expressing an opinion about this instance.
It shouldn’t take much imagination to realize that someone can be intelligent and rational and still have a different opinion than you.
Another case of a Dominican needing to be schooled.
Jason Kipnis tweeted;
If there’s anytime you should be allowed to pimp a home run.. Dammit that’s when you can do it! #dontbesensitive #thatwashuge
Somebody gets it.
https://twitter.com/thejk_kid
Here’s why bautista is a “douche”, and it’s not his race or ethnicity.
[1] He cannot stand any type of showmanship by his opposition. He remembers every inside pitch, every glare or yell from an opponent, anything and everything. He hates all of it, except …
[2] when HE does it, and when HE does it … it’s so far above and beyond anything his opponents have done that it becomes absurd.
So, basically everything his opponents do offends him, but yet his “retaliation” for being offended in its exaggerated form is just him standing up for himself or some such shit.
Jose Bautista is awesome and the bat flip is entertaining and cool to daydream about doing. But, it’s crap and if someone on the other team did it, he would find it incredibly offensive and be looking forward to the opportunity to “do it beack, even bigger” … even if that opportunity took 3 years to happen.
Reply got cut off.
As children, we have an idea of “right” and “wrong”. We may not understand it, but we have an idea of “fair”. We know this because we don’t like certain things done to us. We don’t think they’re fair … such as someone taking our seat, someone stealing our belongings, someone hitting us for no reason, etc.
But, also in children, when we do those things to others we can justify it … even with a bullshit reason.
We can sit here all day long and come up with reasons of why bautista isn’t a douche and just a demonstrative, macho guy from a Hispanic culture … but then that could also be encouraged and fostering and environemnt that allows him to keep acting like a douche in a sport made up of varying ethnic and racial participants. Respect and tolerance is not a one way street.
I think this has more to do with Bautista as an individual and less to to with Bautista’s culture. When opposing players do things to Bautista and Blue jays, he certainly doesn’t write it off as “Oh, theyre just being joyous in the culturally accepted manner they know”. It offends him, and he remebers it for years, and looks forward to when he can put their nose in it ever moreso. I can respect that, but let’s not act like it’s not “douchey”.
This times 100.
You may give your grandfather a “pass” for saying something or doing something insensitive or flat out wrong, but this 30 year old should be held accountable.
If Harper or Arod did anything close this it would be on every show 24/7 and the commish would likely fine them.
“f Harper or Arod did anything close this it would be on every show 24/7 and the commish would likely fine them.”
No, he wouldn’t. When has an MLB player ever been fined merely for celebrating? You’re probably thinking of that lesser American sport, football, where stupid things like that happen all the time.
The butt hurt is real
I get it…Toronto should bring in Papelbon to choke Jose into knowing his role…
Very helpful. It’s OK, though, because the mewling masses just want someone to end Jose’s career or life for being emotional in the most emotional moment of his career. Then we’ll all learn a valuable lesson in acting with class…
They would have to do something considered wrong to be fined. Showboating is not a fined offense. Now, a pitcher throwing a 98 mph straight at the head of a batter? That is. Ditto a super late slide into 2b aimed at the legs of the defender.
But pimping a home run? No
I don’t remember José Bautista being angry because of an opposing team bat flip, much less of a big homerun in a playoff game. He does get angry at people throwing at him or his teammates, as most other MLB players do. He also gets angry at umpires when he perceives a called strike was a ball, as most MLB players do. He also has been target of a lot of criticism and even blame for the team’s failures, because of his perceived lack of leadership. My belief is that he showboats his detractors, including those who criticize bat flips and homerun admiring.
Beanballs and pitches thrown behind you are showmanship now?
Seriously, other than when he gets thrown at, I want you to come up with ONE instance of Bautista getting pissed off at someone else pimping their accomplishments.
Other than this HR, the only other times I can remember him pimping a HR is after he’s thrown at.
In June 2013, Darren O’Day struck out Bautista to end an inning on a 3-2 pitch with runners in scoring position. O’Day responded by pumping his fist and shouting in celebration.
The next time Bautista faced O’Day, he hit a HR. He yelled at O’Day for most of the trip around the bases and eventually slowed to a near-walk down the third-base line, at which point he continued shouting and began gesturing at O’Day. The gestures appeared to be a sort of “talking” hand motion, and the meaning of the display was quite clearly that O’Day shouldn’t have celebrated his K in the previous AB. It was probably the most flagrant showing-up of a pitcher in recent memory (non-Carlos Gomez division).
Apparently it’s okay for Bautista to pimp a HR right in the face of a guy like Sam Dyson, but it’s not okay for O’Day to celebrate striking him out. Either there’s something special about hitters that means they can celebrate while pitchers can’t — or else MAYBE it’s just that Bautista doesn’t appreciate feeling like someone is showing him up, even when he clearly doesn’t hesitate to do exactly that to another player.
The post you responded to was spot-on. It has nothing to do with boring old baseball dinosaurs. I’m a young fan, and I’m perfectly fine with bat flips and celebrations and the like. It has nothing to do with grumpy white guys not being okay with the idiosyncracies and greater flamboyance of Hispanic culture — in fact, in this situation, I’d suggest that those who attempt to defend Bautista by simply lumping him in under the umbrella of “well he’s Hispanic and hey, they like to celebrate” are the racially/culturally unaware ones.
It has everything to do with Jose Bautista. With him being the worst kind of hypocrite, the sort that staunchly and angrily defends a hard-line principle when it suits his purposes — yet conveniently ignores that same principle when it doesn’t. Maybe he’s like that because of the huge chip on his shoulder due to being cast aside when he sucked for a decade in pro ball before magically learning how to hit HRs in Toronto. Maybe it’s because he’s just naturally an asshat.
But the meaningful objection to his antics is not related to him being young and enthusiastic, or Hispanic and enthusiastic — it’s related to him trying to have it both ways and taking two totally different positions on whether enthusiastic celebration is disrespectful, depending entirely on whether it’s being done TO him or BY him.
I’m saying for a player that likes to pimp as much as Bautista does, and he does, and that’s his right … he sure has rabbit ears and thin skin when others do it.
That’s ALL I am saying.
UI talked a ton of shit as a pitcher in college. That means when you screw up and someone gets the best of you, you HAVE to listen to it.
You don’t get to cause storms, and then complain about the rain.
I don’t see the hypocrisy. Yes, he takes it VERY personally when someone – in his mind – shows him up, but I would bet when he does it back he absolutely wants and expects them to take it just as personally. It’s not hypocrisy, he’s not calling these guys out in the media, or trying to charge the mound, he’s trying to beat them with baseball, and give it right back to them. Thin-skinned? Absolutely. Hypocrite? I don’t really see it, I would call it competitive spirit.
Didn’t O’Day say something directly to Jose after the incident?
I’ll admit I thought he overreacted a bit initially too, but he’s been thrown at multiple times by O’Day and the Orioles, so suggesting his home run pimp was only due to one celebration is a bit silly.
Orioles pitcher struck him out and showed some emotion.
2 years later, Bautista homered off the same pitcher and pimped it extra.
I don’t know the name of the Oriole pitcher, but it could be found if the interest is there.
The documentary I saw was on how Bautista remembers everything …. pitch sequences from at bats the previous season, times he felt he was shown up, comments opponents have made to him, etc.
I’m not making stuff up. I have nothing against Jose Bautista. I’m not using his situation to make a more far-reaching comment.
I’m saying, for a player that really doesn’t like it when opponents celebrate when they strike him out or things of that nature, he sure does do it himself.
It’s douchey to dish it out, but not be able to take it …. or to talk smack, but not be willing to hear some back.
The moment was worthy of celebration and emotion. The change in players has been that their joyous moment is in the insulting or disrespecting or displaying alpha male on the opponent.
So, we get grown men trying to “stand over” other grown men when they dunk on them, truck them, etc.
To me, Jose’s “celebration” was much more “I just punked you out, bitch” than it was “Yes, I just hit a 3-run homer to give my team a lead in the elimination game.”
Tom Lawless for the Cardinals has just as exaggerated bat flip in the 1987, and it was as ridiculous then as it is now.
When you’re Tom Lawless in a World Series game, I think you get to madly celebrate facing the right way in the batter’s box.
You’re right. =)
I also wanted to point out that some of my “facts” in the opost above were inaccurate about the O’Day-Bautista situation, but the gist of it is reliable.
“But, it’s crap and if someone on the other team did it, he would find it incredibly offensive and be looking forward to the opportunity to “do it beack, even bigger” … even if that opportunity took 3 years to happen.”
The thing is that Jose tries to get his revenge through a baseball play. Throw a baseball at his head, he doesn’t charge the mound. He hits your next pitch for a massive dinger. If you are going to retaliate, that’s how you do it.
I’ve seen him take exception to being thrown at (or at least thinking he’s being thrown at) a lot, but I’ve never seen him get mad at a pitcher celebrating striking him out or anything like that either. Pretty sure everything you wrote there is something that only occurs inside your own head.
Count me in the camp that doesn’t really care about the bat flip, but as to your question of one time… How about game 2 when Donaldson thought Kela quick pitched, yelled at him, and Kela responded. Look at how Bautista was acting at that time (he was… animated). No it wasn’t mad at a player celebrating, but it was a little ridiculous. But I’m sure it was Kela’s fault for not brushing off Donaldson’s FU.
I think Kela shouted at him first, on the replay he immediately marches off the mound towards the plate while Donaldson is watching his ball go foul.
In what way is a quick pitch celebratory?
Your comparing apples to dinosaurs here.
You’re right! A quick pitch can’t be taken, in any way, shape or form, as trying to show someone up.
It’s part of the game.
An awesome batflip isn’t.
So what’s your opinion of Aubrey Huff?
Bautista and Freese homeruns will be displayed a lot between now and the end of time as a good reminder of our failings.
It was like a deleted scene from Game of Thrones. Except they have dragons and we have Twitter.
Stop whining and get the guy out. When a pitcher stops pumping his fists and yelling after a big strikeout or a baserunner stops jumping up and screaming after scoring a run we can talk about a batter accomplishing what may be the hardest feat in sports getting excited. GET…THE…GUY…OUT.
I could watch Bautista’s swing, glare, and flip on a loop for hours. But I think the ill-will aimed toward Dyson is somewhat misplaced — he too was in a deeply emotional state of the opposite sort. He undoubtedly felt he failed and failed his teammates at the most important possible moment, and that’s a huge weight to try to bear without deflecting some of it elsewhere. (If you think he should have been able to suppress his emotional response by the time he talked to the press hour later, you’re crazy; should the players in the Jays clubhouse had their emotions in check?)
I wonder what the play-the-right-way folks think of Adrian Beltre. An incredible player who plays through pain and injury just like they want, but also cried when having to leave game 1 and openly collapsed on the field when Bautista homered, two things I was sternly taught in little league not to do during the game.
Its funny, Beltre and Carlos Gomez played through injuries for their teams in the playoffs, injuries that would have put players out for over 6 to 8 weeks… yet they dont play the right way? Or “respect the game.”
Michael Baumann has a great piece on Grantland about the whole range of emotions in that inning…
I don’t like Bautista, I don’t like the Blue Jays, and I don’t generally like showboating, but I have to admit that my instinctive reaction was to like what he did here. The 7th inning was such a mess, with both teams and the umpires all fouling things up and practically no one doing anything positive, you just didn’t want a sudden-death game to be decided like this, and then Bautista’s home run, finally something positive, brought things back to reality. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
And assuming the GIF wasn’t slowed down, I count 2 whole seconds there. Tops. With just the barest glance at the pitcher. Man, what are people finding to complain about there??
Excellent article, but the comment that the Jays have been lousy for most of these past 22 years was very unfair. Despite playing in what’s often been the toughest division in professional sports, we managed pythagorean records of above .500 in 11 of the 21 seaskns between ’93 and ’15, and had only one 90-loss season in that span. The playoff drought wasn’t a result of being “lousy”, it was a result of being stuck in a division with the Yankees, Red Sox and, in recent years, the Rays.
In fairness the Orioles made the payoffs 2 of the last 3 years too. Before this year, every other team in that division had multiple division titles since the Blue Jays won theirs so it is a pretty fair criticism.
That is all in the past now though so go Jays!
Ok, so rarely lousy, but also almost never good.
We are empathizing for a crowd that had “Touch em all Joe, you will never hit a bigger home run,” now?
I would bet a huge portion of that crowd was either too young to remember or didn’t live in Canada when Carter hit his home run. I was 12 when it happened and I still struggle to remember much from that night except for all the car horns going off in the neighborhood.
As a 6 year old Phillies fan, I remember crying.
You have to remember that this crowd is composed predominantly of Maple Leaf fans. They deserve all of the empathy they can get.
Um…why shouldn’t we?
The closer in last night’s game wasn’t born when that HR was hit, and I’m guessing a good proportion of the crown last night either wasn’t born or was too young to remember much or it.
Didn’t we empathized for the Royals fanbase prior to last year? Jays only won 8 years later.
Wouldnt have touched home on my watch.
To be fair, NYY Brian McCann has softened up on the No Fun League gig.
But ATL Brave McCann? Jose wouldn’t have made it past 1st.
Every single player in the league, including Gomez, thought that Gomez went way too far. Currently, there is no such thing as “unsportsmanlike conduct” in baseball. Gomez literally talked shit the entire way around the bases, to pretty much every player on the Braves team. It was arguably the worst sportsmanship displayed in a baseball game in the last 20 years that did not involve actual physical harm. There are zero teams in baseball that would have just “let that go.” What McCann did was a thousand times better than what most teams would do, which is just plunk him (possibly in the head).
Baseball should consider fines/suspensions/ejections for truly ridiculous unsportsmanlike behavior. They do that in other sports. It’s time to do it in baseball.
I’m Scottish, his celebration last night lasted about 10% of the time an average schoolkid here takes celebrating a goal in soccer. Stop being so uptight about people enjoying doing something good in a game ffs.
What Bud Norris says in the article linked above is worse than anything Bautista or any other so-called hot dog has ever done. Racist paternalistic colonialist crap.
>>“I think it’s a culture shock,’’ Norris said. “This is America’s game. This is America’s pastime, and over the last 10-15 years we’ve seen a very big world influence in this game, which we as a union and as players appreciate. We’re opening this game to everyone that can play. However, if you’re going to come into our country and make our American dollars, you need to respect a game that has been here for over a hundred years, and I think sometimes that can be misconstrued. There are some players that have antics, that have done things over the years that we don’t necessarily agree with.<>“I understand you want to say it’s a cultural thing or an upbringing thing. But by the time you get to the big leagues, you better have a pretty good understanding of what this league is and how long it’s been around.’’<<
Yeah, that was unsettling to me as well.
Luckily, Bautista didn’t come into “our country” for this celebration, and he carried it out making Canadian dollars.
Disagree, what he says is spot-on.
If you live in a country, you need to follow the laws and respect the culture. Americans have a bad image because of how they act in other countries and it makes it worse for those that do the right things.
Let’s remember that others have come in here and lived up to the standard, so when someone doesn’t Dave Cameron shouldn’t excuse it to cultural differences…he should point out those differences out so “we” can better understand their emotions, but let’s not pretend that that it is acceptable behavior.
???
Other than that it isn’t “spot on”, good point. You can’t complain about “the Ugly American” abroad, then say we here have to make cultural allowances for our visitors, though. Just think myself either way (all everywhere fit in or all everywhere make allowance) is consistent and defensible, rather than one being spot on and the other wrong.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Clearly laws don’t play into this, so the question is why does one subset of people get to decide what the culture should be and what are the “right” things? Even if we accepted that “no celebrations” are a cultural norm, do we really want to debate that current American culture must be preserved after such care was taken to preserve the culture of the natives who occupied this continent a thousand years ago?
You’re making an assumption that people who dislike baseball celebrations represent the majority, and further, that sports celebrations somehow reflect on the culture in general. Do you really think the stereotypical American is disliked because of professional sports celebrations when he visits a country that goes absolutely insane for even a football friendly?
First of all it didn’t happen in the US and second who says you and the Bud Norris’ of the world get to make up rules for anyone.
TL,DR
What you said boils down to this:
“Must play the game the white way!”
-Brain McCann
The last team to insist on playing the game the white way was your dear Red Sox, buddy.
The way Bud Norris is pitching he might want to learn the way they play the game in Korea.
That would be awesome if Bud Norris played in Korea or Japan and got mad about their cultural mannerisms.
Same guy who criticized Singleton for taking a contract offer that he must now be thanking his lucky stars he did.
I know it’s been said before, but, if you don’t want them to celebrate, don’t throw a pitch that they can hit 450 feet. Baseball players (some of them anyway) seem like very emotionally fragile people…
I’m sure some people aren’t going to like this, but boring, conservative white people want everybody to act like boring, conservative white people.
As a white person who would probably be called conservative, and definitely be called boring, I have NO desire for everyone to act like me. Nothing sucks worse than people acting like what they are not, except maybe boring people like me acting boring lol.
So please William, no stereotyping 😉
You’re right, I’m generalizing… it’s the racist minority of conservative white people that don’t seem to like different ethnicities “acting out”. I am a white person, and have grown up in a conservative household, but the older I get the more I get away from that. I have no problems with Bautista’s emotion, and actually, I kinda support Dyson’s as well. I don’t agree with his point of view, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t show it either.
I’m totally with you on that William. Bugs me that a lot of sportscasters fall into that very category.
Well, now you’re generalizing about ‘conservatives’, WILLIAM. Liberals are equally biased, just against different groups is all.
Of course, liberals can be just as wrong as conservatives.
It is all about playing the game the white way man.
Congratulations! You have successfully fallen into one of the two groups that we heard Americans into like cattle.
I didn’t care for the bat flip. I appreciate that baseball is perhaps the last sport where self-discipline is emphasized and valued; understanding that your actions have consequences beyond yourself. I don’t think that means you can’t celebrate. Go crazy with the fans, with your teammates after the HR. I don’t think anyone really cares what happens once you round the bases. The reaction, I would think, has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. I see it more as a community reacting to what it perceives as a violation of a valued principle. But I might as well have said blah, blah, blah because we all know Joey Bats (or another Blue Jay) is going to wear at least one next year as a consequence of his actions.
The principle is “Play the game the WHITE way”.
So it got everything to do with race/ethnicity.
Just keep spamming this thread, bromigo!
Maybe that line will become funny and/or insightful at some point!
Let’s discuss if this HR was hit off of Madison Bumgarner, or if the catcher behind the plate was Brian McCann, the two unwritten rule police that come to mind.
Please, Fangraphs, don’t be one of those websites that screen grabs tweets, implying that they are representative of anything other than the douches that tweet their anger.
Note: I wrote this, not from anger, but from love.
Not to mention that the tweets were clearly the result of a twitter search for ‘Bautista douche’.
Do you honestly think there were not a lot of fans who were angry about the bat flip? Honestly?
That’s all that is being illustrated here. Do you genuinely think the article is trying to represent something that is not a real phenomenon?
I’m imploring Fangraphs not to use Twitter as an instant barometer of anything. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that people are upset by the bat flip or to have predicted it. If I’m not mistaken, Fangraphs already has a mechanism for garnering fan feedback. Instant hot hate from Twitter adds nothing to the discourse.
Ah Whiteball, where bad players throwing at heads and breaking legs on the basepaths show good character, but good players celebrating historic feats shows lack thereof.
Go Whiteball Go!
Basically this is a cultural issue and the anti-bat flip crowd is not going to get much sympathy from Canadians who celebrate hockey goals with even more panache ( think Tiger Williams riding his stick to centre ice in past times).
At some point White Southerners ( such as Florida born, South Carolina educated Sam Dyson) need to stop trying to ram their values down everybody else’s throat, and I mean everybody; ever watch a Cuban or Korean baseball game, an important soccer match or international basketball contest ( not to mention the NFL) ?
It’s sports, played with emotion, get over it.
Give me a break with your stupid stereotyping. I’m a Southerner and as white as they come, and I think what Bautista did was great.
I don’t care if Sam Dyson is from Florida or from Mars. If he didn’t want Bautista to flip the bat, all he had to do was get him out.
I think people are looking for a concise label, and that’s impossible. There’s no easy answer, but I do believe the majority of people who say “the game should be played the right way, etc” are white. And I do believe there are some racial elements to it. There is a lot of generalizing and stereotyping… but there are real reasons they exist.
Solid post Dave. But too deferential to the unwritten rules police. Celebrating is fine in April and May too. Sports should be fun.
Why do people get up in arms about bat flips differently than slam dunk struts or touchdown dances?
Bat-flip policing is NOT “sportsmanship.” It’s a strain of old school racist douchiness that exists only in baseball and in no analogous context of other sports. Don’t give it even the slightest bit of credit or understanding.
If your reaction to Jose’s flip is anything other than “that’s f***in awesome,” you’re part of the problem. No caveats.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2015/10/15/mini-bautista-is-the-blue-jays-true-hero/
The outrage is definitely over the top, but so is some of the criticism of the outrage. People are trying to inject race into this, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. If Bryce Harper had done the same thing do you really imagine that there would be no outrage?
I don’t buy the “raised in a different culture” argument either. Every workplace has it’s own culture. Let’s say I was raised by the docks around sailors. If I wanted to work at Google, I’d probably have to act differently than I would at the docks, right? I couldn’t go in there telling raunchy jokes and whistling at every female that walked by and then claim it’s just the culture I was raised in. That’s not a valid excuse. Baseball has its own culture, and this type of thing is frowned upon. Doesn’t matter what we think because we don’t work in baseball. Bautista does, and he’s been around long enough to know the culture and expect some blowback when he does this.
That being said, though, epic batflip!!!!
It’s the southern white people that frown on it, not baseball culture as a whole. The southern white people lost the war, they can’t impose their values on everyone else no matter how much they want to.
The south can be blamed for a lot of things; the Civil War, NASCAR, cholesterol, Britney Spears. But I don’t really think “not enough batflips” can be pinned on the Confederacy.
Please, quit categorizing all southern white people as being the same. We’re a culturally diverse group, too.
Racists assert their superiority by acting other than the way THOSE! people do, anti-racists assert their superiority by thinking other than the way THOSE! people do. Each just use THOSE!-ING to self-exalt. Ain’t gonna stop, tct.
Dead-on about the batflip, though. FAN-TAS-TIC!
You’re right that it’s not just a race thing, but people aren’t injecting it, it definitely plays a big part. What you have is old white men complaining about people who are different (less reserved) than them. Whether it’s because they are younger or darker-skinned, they aren’t part of the club, so when they do something different they get derided.
Finally a sensible comment.
The answer is simple. If you don’t like emotion and passion in baseball, follow golf.
1) There def is subtle and subconscious racism for being on the “tradition” side of the sport.
2) If baseball wants to keep up with the NBA, they need to make our youth fans. Not going to happen if you can’t, wait for it, *FLIP A BAT*.
3) Why are people so afraid of change/progress?
1) I think what you mean is ‘cultural’ since there’s only one race represented in MLB: human.
2) Why on earth would MLB want to keep up with the NBA? It’s usually the other way round. MLB owns the NBA in so many categories. If anything, MLB competes with the NFL as the nation’s primary sport. The NBA is a distant third in that race by any measure.
3) No sport has changed more in the past 20 years than MLB. What you’re talking about isn’t change, it’s acceptance of rude behavior by players that has traditionally been corrected by the time the reach the majors. I’m sure that the owners of the sport would be fine with it as long as it enhanced their bottom line.
There are many races represented in MLB, its a sports league, kumbaya sentiment in your human representation comment not with standing.
You are right, MLB is competing with the NFL more so then the NBA, but the NBA is catching up, the LeBron’s of the world are taking the NBA back to it relevant time when MJ ruled the earth, MLB cant take there foot off the gas.
Yes MLB has changed a lot but a couple things that haven’t changed are that the game is ruled by old white money and guarded by all these old “white/right” way to play the game rules, just because progress is made doesn’t mean its perfect.
Please don’t fall into the same narrow view of humanity as so many others. Despite the wide and varying differences in human appearance, there is only one race of human being. Here’s the science:
http://www.physanth.org/about/position-statements/biological-aspects-race/
It would be smarter and more accurate to not refer to Mr. Bautista as being of a different race as Mr. Dyson. While they may look and talk differently, they are of the same race.
Rarely hear this criticism when a RP celebrates after a save.
I think there’s a difference in the celebrations. Most pitchers– and most batters, for that matter– who celebrate such a moment do so while expressing obvious joy and relief. Throwing your arms in the air, kissing the ground, giving a fist pump, all with facial expressions of happiness and celebration. By contrast, Mr. Bautista displayed nothing but aggression in his body language, his facial expression and his rather dramatic bat toss. There was no joy in his reaction. For that, I would point you to Kirk Gibson in ’86, Joe Carter in ’93 and even Bobby Thomson in ’51. Those men all exhibited joy. Maybe today’s players like Bautista could learn from their example.
But what if Jose just has a different way of expressing emotion, joy, and relief. What if his method of enjoying the moment was being a complete boss and giving that bat a whirl?
Yeah, maybe his expression of joy is a giant “FUCK YOU” to everyone else on the field!
Who are we to judge whether a giant nonverbal “FUCK YOU” is rude?
That’s my point: that how you celebrate communicates your emotions. Being a boss implies status over others, so such a celebration would indeed be aggressive towards his opponents.
To put it another way, he’d be celebrating what the other fellow couldn’t do instead of what he himself could do. Small but critical distinction.
Perhaps because the RP celebrates essentially after the conclusion of the event? I think some do celebrate mid-inning outs, but the celebration is normally for escaping an inning or the game.
There’s also no criticism for walk-off celebrations, or anything the home run hitter does after rounding the bases and touching the plate.
There’s a perception that celebrating when the outcome is in doubt is showing up the opponent. When the outcome (of the game, of the plate appearance, etc.) is settled, there’s little criticism.
Since celebrating after a walk-off or save is considered to be different in context because it ends the game, could that not then be considered more unsportsmanlike than Bautisita’s bat flip because the opposing team then has literally no chance of coming back?
Can someone, anyone, do a Win Probability Added for the game of Elvis Andrus? 0/4, failed sac bunt, caught stealing at 3rd, 3 runners stranded, 2 RISP, K. Oh, and the seventh inning on defence…
I pray the day comes when all pitchers unite and “blow the smoking gun” after every strikeout against a bat flipper. Then there’s a consequence- and all that crap stops. Balance will be restored.
This is fantastic, Dave.
If Sam Dyson doesn’t want Jose Bautista to flip the bat on him, then he shouldn’t let Jose Bautista hit the ball into the second deck off him.
If he gets Bautista out, it doesn’t happen. Simple as that.
I’ve got a walk-off bat flip for you…(pfft!).
hahahahahahahahaha, eh!
The reaction from Bautista was actually pretty underwhelming if you have ever watch the Dominican Winter League. God that is fun, lol.
If a batter can pimp a homerun a pitcher should be able to do some sort swaggy arm thing or blow on the finger after every big strike out.
Rather than obsess on the bat flip– and, really, it was more of a bat toss– I was bothered by his overall body language and facial expression. He was not exhibiting any exhilaration or joy, he was expressing anger and aggression. And that’s the problem: so many players today who mix/confuse joy with aggression. It seems increasingly difficult for professional athletes to express joy and happiness in their own accomplishments without doing so through trash talk, verbal assaults and physical challenge. Mr. Bautista reacted as if someone had questioned his manhood. While that’s a great way to inspire performance, no one had actually questioned his manhood! Why react as if they had? Hank Aaron never did (and lord knows he had plenty of reasons to do so).
I think you’re projecting a lot of weird stuff onto him. He looked celebratory more than anything.
A valuable question to ask re: Bautista is why are so many commentators so eager to police his emotions? I think that’s especially problematic given the fact that Bautista is a hispanic player.
He’s hardly the first player to receive such scrutiny, and so far I’ve not read any criticism of his ethnic origin. How does that come into play?
I project nothing. I’m just telling you what I see.
aka “Black People are Scary”
yeah, pete rose ty cobb george brett etc. etc. were all aw shucks and smiles.
Um…. wha?!? I don’t follow your point. Perhaps you could try to compose a more thoughtful and reflective response rather than fall on a tired cliché.
Who are you to subjectively translate his facial expressions into your own interpretation of the emotions he was feeling in the moment?
The fellow who’s read and understands this:
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/17/2/124/
Ever seen Novak Djokovic react after a big point he wins?
Hardly any joy in that face.
This really is a ton of unwarranted projection. When I looked at (and look again in replay at) that body language and that expression, I see focus, passion, intensity, seriousness, great satisfaction and a triumphant celebration — yes, even a joyful one, given that it took place three seconds after he had to be focused on his task of hitting with great intensity.
Apart from the fact that it’s a competitive game, I don’t see any good reason at all to take Bautista being fired up as either violent or joyless; he seemed quite the opposite to me. Not everyone expresses their joy in the same way; maybe his way isn’t yours, and that’s fine, but you don’t have to be this blind to it and he doesn’t have any reason to change it to match your expectations. And I don’t think it’s off base to at least observe that people, in general, tend to say this kind of “trash talk” and “verbal assault” and “questioned manhood” stuff about black and Latino ballplayers very disproportionately.
I don’t know what ‘people’ tend to say but I know what I say, and that’s that such behavior is cultural and not racial. This is true primarily because the concept of race is a myth. Check this out…
http://www.physanth.org/about/position-statements/biological-aspects-race/
Oy vey, buddy.
(And just to be clear enough that even an incredibly dense person WHO MIGHT ALREADY BE IN THIS CONVERSATION could understand, that’s an eyeroll at the insanity of this totally non-germane left-field response, not an eyeroll at the obvious and undisputed truth that the nature of race is social, not biological.)
Nor do I “call” for anyone to change the way they behave. Mr. Bautista has the same rights as anyone else and can do whatever he wants. I’m simply commenting on my opinion as do we all.
Jose Bautista should act like he’s hit the winning home run in the deciding game of his first ever postseason series before.
Damn kids.
Don’t forget also your evil plot would’ve worked if not for them. And that stupid dog that refuses to learn english even after all those shows in this country.
I don’t see what the big deal is about a bat flip
My (limited) understanding of Bautista is that he is one of those guys that crowd the plate, then glares at pitchers most whenever he does get hit. Is this so?
If so, I’ll give Dyson extra excuse points for that (as many have pointed out, he does deserve tons for what he just professionally went through), and a small excuse point for each of the Twitterati.
Your understanding is the basis of Orioles fans and San Dyson. Most of the time, Bautista just acts normal. Since he has a REALLY good batting eye he gets pissed off at shitty umpiring (he’s proven himself to be right most of the time, too) when it goes on for a long time or in other certain situations that for the most part I’m personally surprised that more players don’t also get pissed off at.
People are just bothered because he’s a very fiery, very good player that doesn’t let people get away with shit without saying something about it. Basically, he’s not “baseball politically correct” as often as most players are.
I feel like more players should play with fire in them, myself. Maybe we wouldn’t have so many shitty umps if someone else complained about them once in a while. I mean, instead of fans, who basically only complain about umps.
Let me guess. You’re a Blue Jays fan?
If he is a Jays fan it doesn’t make him any less right, if anything he would have a better understanding of Jose then a non-Jays fan.
I’m not a Blue Jays fan and I think this comment is a great, fair, accurate, and perceptive description of Bautista’s on-field personality.
Not against bat flips, but that bat flip was in defiance of God and nature. I feel ashamed that women and children across nations were exposed to something so heinous. I am writing an open letter to FOX for allowing deviant pornography to be aired without so much as a warning. At least it was FS1, which probably limited the exposure.
BATFLIPSBATFLIPSBATFLIPS
Amirite?
Bautista should have torn his jersey off, ran around the bases screaming with his arms in the air and then did a knee slide into home base while the announcer yelled “HOMERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR” for as long as humanly possible.
You know, sort of like they do in actual football for every single goal of every single game of every single day all the time constantly. Sort of like even the women did in the Olympics and were cheered for it.
You get the point.
Anyway, it’s stupid to complain about him being passionate. Who cares what the target of that was? He just won the series for the team. I’d have been pissed off it he didn’t flip his bat and show how awesome everything was.
Great post idea for a sure-fire comments bonanza. For the record I was mildly disapproving of the posturing, and really only because of the stare at the pitcher (and really just because I was rooting against the Blue Jays honestly). But whatever. What a shot – go celebrate.
My issue is that this thread of posts is just embarrassing in how deeply race-baiting it is. Dozens of you spouting vitriol about “white people” and “white culture.” How do you know when you’ve crossed the line from fighting the problem into being the problem? Maybe by noticing when you’re saying the same things about one race that you excoriate people for saying about others. Just because “whites” are the “majority” in the USA doesn’t make it OK for you to say racist things about them. Grow up.
Also the logical fallacy of dismissing a legitimate opinion because of your presumption of the race of some/most of its holders is astonishing. I thought this community is supposed to be intellectual…
Kids might read your comment and grow up to be disrespectful of other racist commentators so you should probably tone it down some and just accept it for how it is. Otherwise you’ll get called a douche on twitter and heaven forbid that!
Umm, how long you been here, Brian??
It’s impossible to be racist against white people.
I don’t remember people losing their collective minds when Kirk Gibson was pumping his fists while limping around the bases.
I don’t remember Twitter in 1988 either.
ChrisS takes home the trophy. Brilliant………
i don’t get where people think he was staring at the pitcher.
he was staring at the ball.
People will always state opinions that support their own beliefs whether they’re accurate or not. It’s human nature.
So, pitchers (specifically relievers) can celebrate after a strikeout, which happens 20.4 percent of the time, and REALLY celebrate when it ends an inning; however, a hitter can’t celebrate a home run, which happens 2.7 percent of the time. By my math, the hitter’s celebration should be roughly 7.5 times as epic as a pitcher’s response to a strikeout.
I wonder how many of the people who complained about Bautista’s action would have been equally negative if the situation had involved their own favorite team and one of its star players.
Nice attempt at rationalizing his act. I’m neither a Rangers or a Blue Jays fan, but I am a baseball fan and his show left me shaking my head. Bautista will continue his antics, but it doesn’t make them any less childish.
Childish = loving life and having fun?
Odds are 1000% Tom is an old, white man.
“There’s no point being grown-up if you can’t be childish sometimes.”
– Fourth Doctor
Anyone who takes issue with any bat flip is a racist, fun-hating pedant.
What if it’s a white guy taking issue with a white bat-flipper?
What if it’s a wide guy taking issue with a wide fat hippo?
Yup, you heard it here first. Chris Archer: confirmed racist, fun-hating pedant.
LOL if you think Archer would have a problem with Jose’s majesty.
LOL if you think Archer would have a problem with Jose’s majestic bat flip.
Fuck Fangraphs get a real fucking comment system.
Listing those tweets shows that twitter is mostly a wasteland for losers with no life. Guess “douche” was the cool word of the day
This is such an unnecessary article.
You can’t claim “this kind of bat flip should be totally ok with everyone” and then make a big stink after every bat flip and show posts of random people complaining on Twitter and use it as some sort of evidence of ignorance.
And for what it’s worth, Bautista made this a personal “fuck you” directed towards Texas with the stare down/bat throw towards the Texas dugout. That would result in a bench clearing brawl in the DR. So stop using this exaggerated cultural gap as a way to justify every time some asshole throws his bat and stares down his opponent. It is rude. People are allowed to not like it.
Yes they are allowed to. But they shouldn’t.
No is taking away your right to be a humorless, overly sensitive, whine-baby.
We’re just saying you shouldn’t be a humorless, overly senstive, whine-baby. Because you have no good reason to be one.
Fuck you.
What perfectly humorless, overly sensitive response.
I’ll tell you what Jose didn’t do. Run out of the baseline to slide into a shortstop and break his leg. There’s “playing the game the right way” and playing it like a thug. Bautista’s bat flip hurt no one.
Who the fuck is saying anyone’s a “thug”?
A break up slide is trying to help your team win. Pausing before a giant bat flip after a home run is saying “fuck you” to the other team.
The question isn’t whether Bautista was being an asshole. He was. The question is whether he had earned the right to be an asshole. I think he had.
Yeah, I disagree with sturock. The problem isn’t with the players that takeout slides exist, it’s with the MLB for allowing them to exist.
But. bat flips are awesome, and the moment was ripe for an awesome bat flip, and they’re fun and cool, and Joey Bats is great!
Geesh…
The comments section here is a joke. Race relations in America are in such a bad place. Yikes.
It doesn’t matter if it was a white guy or a black guy or a Hispanic guy….staring down your opponent aggressively is going to make people mad.
People “bat flip” and admire homers all the time. Hell, I’ve seen a bunch of guys bat flip on walks. Nobody bats an eye.
Even on homers, most bat flips are not going to cause outrage. It is the “stare down your opponent aggressively” stuff that naturally creates tension. And it is uncalled for really.
Oh, and whoever said that mlb needs to try and be more like the nba….I threw up in my mouth at that proposition
Proof he was staring down the pitcher, and not watching his HR (another “big” no-no), but still?
“Race relations in America are in such a bad place. Yikes.”
Yeah. You’re part of this problem.
And let me make it clear, I love watching bat flips and all that stuff because it usually leads to fights and high tension baseball. Which is fun to watch.
But it is ok to enjoy something while also admitting that it is going to piss people off.
It’s interesting to me how authors keep attributing loud, flambuoyant, confrontational, etc as being “hispanic culture”.
My experience is that Hispanic culture is just the opposite.
I don;t think it’s fair to characterize a whole culture on the grounds of the Carlos Gomezes, just as I don;t want to be represented by Papelbon.
In the Hispanic culture, there are some assholes. That doesn’t mean the behavior of the assholes represents “the entire culture”.
We are too close to accepting what are, in my opinion, dangerously inaccurate stereotypes.
I don’t think that the narrative is that all Hispanics in all aspects of their lives celebrate like this…Its not like mom made a great dinner and she “bat flips” the spatula, I’m thinking they are just more referring to the wearing of emotions on there sleeves, specifically in respect to sporting events, which IMO is a great thing.
People are talking about the culture of how you act during baseball games, not the culture as a whole (and really mostly people are talking about Dominican baseball culture specifically, and maybe also Puerto Rican at most).
I Googled myself just now, and all 8 hits were on this here web page.
That’s 8 more Google hits than the last time I did it.
Here’s a novel idea for pitchers that don’t like bat flips. Don’t give up home runs and no one will “disrespect” you. These are grown ups playing baseball, and if a grown man can’t handle someone celebrating home runs that person needs to figure out how to pitch less of them. I thought Bautista’s flip rivaled only those of Luis Valbuena.
I feel bad that Dave’s excellent article also contains the worlds most tedious comments page.
I have no idea why we feel like we have to worry about people’s emotions or how they display them. Bautista was thrilled and acted in his own way. Dyson was pissed and said so. Do we need to care that Dyson (and some subset of baseball fans) were pissed? I don’t think so. I’ve seen people bring up Boone, Carter, Lawless, Rickey, etc. all day to show that this instance isn’t unique, but of course I’m sure there were people who were pissed at Boone, Carter, Lawless, Rickey, etc. back when they did all that stuff too. You’ll never get all people to see the same thing the same way, ever, so why worry about it? Let Bautista be happy and do what he wants. But also let Dyson complain about it if he wants to. We don’t need to tell Dyson how he should feel either. He just shouldn’t go trying to extract revenge through violence when he sees Bautista next year.
Exactly. I mean, when I was trudging through a ridiculous workday the last 32 hours because of things outside my control, I was pissed like Dyson. When the thing I was working on got done successfully, I was somewhere between a fist pump and a bat flip mentally. And nobody aware of my circumstances made any kind of fuss over my spent-looking face overnight or thought I was gloating when I had a little spring in my step for getting the job done.
But these guys, their job plays out in front of a bleep-ton of people. We shouldn’t get so uppity when they show emotion with the highs and lows of their job.
One of the most storied and beloved moments in MLB history is a player showing up the pitcher BEFORE he hit a home run.
A little consistency folks. That’s all we ask.
Unless someone wants to make the argument that Babe Ruth didn’t play the game the right way.
Now THAT was showing up a pitcher! Kids these days have a lot to learn.
…but Babe Ruth didn’t play the game “the right way,” haha. He was notorious for it.
Breaking people’s legs on a slide is hardnose baseball. Stopping after a homer to admire your work, and then throwing your bat 30 feet, is being a diva.
I’m not saying that’s a good or a bad thing. I’m just saying that’s the reality.
Good article, Dave Cameron.
I was at the game. It was pandemonium. Jose is an emotional guy. He got wrapped up in a crazy moment. He crushed a ball to give his team the lead. And the bat toss, after everything that had happened to that point in the game, seemed like a very natural event.
Comment #200!!
Dont care about the bat flips or staring. I spent a couple decades hating the Jays (was an Expos fan) and even I thought it was incredibly badass when he did that.
What makes me dislike Bautista is how he whines about nearly every called strike or call that goes against them, slams his bat everytime he pops a ball up and reacts to every inside pitch like someone just tried to shoot his mother. Its like he is saying “How dare you do that to me! Dont you know who I am?” which is just the hieght of douchiness. He isnt the only offender on the Jays but he is the worst.
Jose has a top 5 eye at the plate so when he thinks it’s a ball here’s usually a reason, similar to votto.
And being hard on himself for not performing is hardly a douchey trait.
We complain when players show no emotion, we think they aren’t trying or don’t care but when players do show emotions we attack them for being hot dogs or douches.
Which reminds me have you ever noticed how everyone who drives slower than you is a slow poke and everyone who drives faster than you is a wreck less idiot?
Perception is everything.
I’ve yet to see a single person who took issue with Kendrys Morales’ reaction to his three run homer last night. Sure – there was no batflip. But there was absolutely celebration, from the moment the bat struck the ball, all the way around the bases, and into the dugout.
You know why no one has said anything? Because Dallas Keuchel isn’t uptight and didn’t immediately lose his mind on the field or in the media.
Celebratory behavior happens literally all the time, by every team in baseball. It only becomes a ‘thing’ when someone unnecessarily gets his panties in a wad about it. Like Sam Dyson and Cole ‘I Plunked Bryce Harper Because He Had the Audacity to Be 19’ Hamels.
…but that’s the exact point people are making.
No one has a problem with celebration. They have a problem with staring down your home run, and then throwing your bat 30 feet.
Kendrys was ecstatic. Joey was saying “Fuck everyone on this field, including the umps, for trying to beat us.”
I don’t have a problem with Bautista, he’s one of my favorite players, but come on.
That’s a ridiculous take on his celebration
Nah, Kendrys was definitely ecstatic.
Cole Hamels was definitely a giant turd for doing that. And I’m happy any time it’s even slightly relevant to mention that.
You really don’t think it is possible the different reactions had to do with something else? Really?
I’m an “act like you’ve been there before” believer (Jim Brown made that phrase famous, by the way). However, the baclklash is way over the top. It’s not like Bautista broke anyone’s leg, or just stood at home plate for fifteen seconds glaring at Dyson.
What I find ridiculous are those criticizing Bautista for poor sportsmanship by calling him a “douche.” Criticizing someone for bad sportsmanship by name calling? Pathetic, not to mention hypocritical.
If I’m Dyson, next time I face Bautista and strike him out, I’d do a somersault on the mound followed by some moonwalking. That’s the best way to get revenge.
Yes, but sadly he’s more likely to throw at his head, which makes his comments pretty ironic.
Yeah, that’s the disgusting side of this.
Celebrating is fine. It’s also fine if players on the other team-also emotionally invested-get irritated at that celebration. It stop being fine at the point where people are trying to injure others in retribution for something so petty.
The one time I tried to flip a bat, he got angry and tried to bite me.
I wasn’t able to get through all 200 comments but Bautista’s outburst of emotion after hitting that homerun was a culmination of an entire season to that point. Winning the AL East, getting home field in the first round, losing the first two games which included getting hosed on a replay call in Game 2, fighting back on the road, seemingly about to get hosed again on the most bizarre play in baseball history (the Martin throw), the BOOM! One swing. Ballgame. I think I’d be pretty pumped up about that if I did that in an old timer’s recreational league!
Also, about Bautista taking small slights and blowing them out of proportion as motivation. Don’t most pro athletes do this? Didn’t Michael Jordan do that? Doesn’t Tom Brady still have the list of QBs drafted ahead of him posted in his locker or something? Someone fist pumps after striking him out and he wants revenge? DAMN RIGHT! These guys are competitors that don’t want to lose. That is a good thing.
love it when Dyson is holier the thou but here is twice walking up to the plate and instigate altercations, role model my ass
One of the great things about baseball as opposed to other US sports is that there is no clearly dominant cultural norm so that you get different behavior and attitudes, whereas in basketball and football everyone is a hotdog while in hockey no one is. My team (the Giants) is basically made up of southerners (like Bumgarner, Posey, and Peavy) and really quiet Hispanics (like Casilla, Blanco, and Lopez)–the one exception was Sandoval and now he’s gone, and Romo is just too charming for anyone to get annoyed by–so they’re clearly on the non-hot dog side, but I can still appreciate players on other teams who get more exuberant, and I can also enjoy it when one of the Giants (usually Bumgarner) gets pissed about it. It just makes things more interesting.
Except Peavy is one of the loudest, most exuberant pitchers in baseball.
But he does it in a redneck way. No one could call him a hotdog.
I’d frame this comment if possible
Meaning what?
that it was awesome
Hall of Fame bat flip.
What about Dyson’s sexual assault on Tulo at the end of the inning. It’s seems to be an act acceptable in baseball culture. But lets talk about bat flips instead.
The situation is getting overblown. had Dyson just said something like “I thought it was too much”, people might agree with him. Bautista might even concede that the whole bat throw was excessive.
anyway, it all resulted in one of the best memes ive seen. an overhead pic of wrigley scoreboard with an arrow labelled “schwarbers ball”. right next to it another arrow labelled “Bautistas bat”. classic.
This is all about people and their Twitter muscles.
None of this is new. Rickey Henderson was a huge showboat 30 years ago. A middle infielder for the Cardinals bat flipped my Twins on a wall scraper in the ’87 World Series.
Pitchers point fingers and shoot arrows and do god knows what when they close out games.
All these guys, justifiably, have a lot of pride. Sometimes when they fail, they don’t react well. But the only things that’s new about any of this is the velocity and volume (both senses of the word) of today’s media.
Joe carter jumped up and down on his way to first.
Roberto alomar pimped the shit out of his HR in the CS, idiots just didn’t have an outlet to call people douches back then.
The internet didn’t invent stupid people it just gave them a microphone
Imagine twitter in the 1920’s and 30 when MLB had the Ty Cobb’s and the babe Ruth … two very strong personalities and very different philosophies on how the game should be played.
Babe Ruth might be the biggest violator of “how the game should be played” or “how ballplayers should act” unwritten rules ever.
IMO, babe would have had twitter wars going on with essentially every team, at the same time.
Ted Williams on twitter would have been amazing.
As a Jays fan I couldn’t really care less about how Dyson or the Rangers felt about Jose’s bat flip or anything else, that was an emotional moment for a very starved fan base and the players. The unwritten rules of baseball seem to be enforced only when someone cries loud enough about a perceived slight, but if Joes was showing up the Rangers with his celebration how about all the times Odor celebrated when scoring or stealing a base, how come that isn’t “showing up the other team”?
Just to clarify, I’m not complaining about Odor or the way he carried himself, I found him to be a treat to watch play the game, without him the Rangers were probably playing golf or hunting after the first 3 games, definitely a fan of his now.
The real classless bunch are the morons throwing stuff on the field and into the stands, these idiots could have hit a player, a fan or worse a child, they should be ashamed of themselves.
Is it any different from a pitcher clenching his fist and throwing a punch in the air while screaming at the top of his lungs after getting a batter out in a big spot
So sick of pitchers are their fragile egos.
If you don’t like it Dyson then keep the ball in the park, you cost your team the game.
I kind of think Bautistas bat flip was no more an issue than Fisks theatrics in game 6 of the 1975 WS. It was a big HR, you should be able to celebrate it
But a giant bat flip is different from running around screaming.
Last year, a black guy jumped into the air and screamed after hitting a walkoff single in an irrelevant game. Everyone was happy for him.
It’s the difference between “YES!!! I DID IT!!!” and “Fuck all of y’all! I did it!”
Gave you a thumbs down when I meant to give you an emphatic thumbs-up. I agree.
I hate to define these distinctions, but I’m much more sympathetic to a player who is demonstrating joy than I am to player who looks like he’s pissed off after something awesome happens.
You don’t get to decide what the meaning of his bat flip is.
It’s your perception.
The game was intense as fuck and emotional but not Jays vs Rangers or dyson vs bats. It wasn’t a fuck you it was a fuck ya
In the same post you said …
[1] You don’t get to decide the meaning of the bat flip.
and then …
[2] You decided the meaning of the bat flip.
I didn’t decide shit
So, what you’re saying is, you have no way of knowing what it is either, so it would be hilariously stupid of you to say something like:
“It wasn’t a fuck you it was a fuck ya” with regards to the meaning of the batflip?
Glad we’re on the same page.
> Bautista showed emotion in an emotional moment,
> because that’s what human beings do. We feel,
> and we react, and we have to be trained to
> contain those emotions, because it isn’t
> what comes naturally.
To be consistent with that, one has to allow for a white pitcher to take offense and display it when, on a purely instinctive, emotional, pre-rational level, he feels insulted and aggressed upon by hitter doing a bat flip.
That works for his on field response.
Not the quotes he gave well over an hour later.
That doesn’t work for Cole Hamels’ comments said in a similar time frame.
Nor does it work for the scores of fans of baseball (but not the Rangers specifically) who are offended by it.
Besides…who are you arguing with? Even a strawman would bring something that weak.
It’s not just a white pitcher. I seem to recall plenty of instances when Bob Gibson and Dave Stewart took issue with batters.
I was less disappointed in Bautista than I was with the Toronto fans. Don’t like a call? Throw trash on the field, risk some kind of penalty, make stadium employees pick up after you even more than they already have to.
I thought Canadiens were supposed to be polite. Guess I need to watch more Trailer Park Boys.
I’m told the entire roster of the Montreal Canadiens are
I challenge you to identify one fanbase that would have done any differently. In the 7th inning of the deciding game, you have a bizarre play that results in the home team being down a run. No explanation and no understanding. The whole stadium lost its collective mind in anger.
Add into that, every fanbase has idiots. And idiots do what idiots do, which is toss garbage or semi-full tallboy cans.
The one thing I do know is that is the last day you can buy beer in a can at the Rogers Centre.
Well said! That bat flip was so awesome.
Honestly, if you can watch that clip and think “man, I’m so disappointed this is what baseball has come to”, then man. Jeez. I just don’t know what to tell you. You clearly do not enjoy fun.
Just to see what happens….I’m now rooting for Bautista to homerun walk off game 7 of the world series.
I thought it was an amazing moment and have no problem with Bautista. But throw the bat like that enough times and someone will eventually get hurt.
I find it humorous that Sam Dyson is preaching about being a role model while looking like a fucking bum.
I thought this country was moving past the ‘White Guilt’ phase. It is definitely still alive and well it appears.
If YOU were to get a job in China because your profession paid you $5 million per year, you would do well to try and learn a little about their culture and what is accepted and not accepted. It is not China’s job to say: “You are an American, so you can be allowed to disrespect our traditions and ideals.” YOU are going over there because you want money. This rule should apply both ways.
Queue the comments stating that having any pride in your own country’s way of doing things is racist/prejudiced, etc.
Congratulations.
You have self-identified yourself as a racist.
And a bit of a troll.
Sleep well.
Thanks for rooting out another heretic for us, Komrade. He will be taken to the Ministry of Love forthwith.
Did you just say don’t throw your bat cuz ‘merica ?
Guy, there’s something you’re not getting. This is baseball. This isn’t whatever the heck normal people do as jobs. When the day comes that someone is paying you millions a year, and you have millions of people watching you do your job, then you can act as an example that is befitting you.
All those complaining about how players never did this in the good ol’ days need to Google “Jimmy Piersall how run.”
And I fail to understand why players in every other sport are allowed to celebrate but baseball players aren’t. Look at any TD celebration or how NBA players celebrate any dunk or 3 pointer. Hell, golfers and tennis players throw their clubs/rackets after wins. Look how soccer players celebrate routine goals — and not just Hispanic soccer players…White ones, too.
Jimmy Piersall home run.
Strawman argument. Noone says that players can’t celebrate. They say that they should do it a certain way that does not disrespect others around them.
Just as much straw. Who decides what constitutes disrespect. Certainly not Bud (this is our game and don’t you forget it) Norris and that moron Papelbon, who many of the “respect the game” types said was right to attack another person in his teams dugout.
The players can decide what constitutes disrespect. Not sure why you are referring to Papelbon and Norris.
The difference is celebrating your team/yourself vs. a “fuck you” to the other team/their pitcher.
Piersall was a dick for doing that, but more power to him.
Just like Joey was a dick for his batflip, but he had earned the right to be one after that homer, so more power to him.
if we are really trying to derive the message a bat flip is trying to deliver
Isn’t Bautista really saying FUCK YA or IM THE MAN and not fuck you?
And here’s the thing, as a Jays fan I’ve seen Bautista do the fuck you. I think it was David Robertson or someone hit someone or him or whatever and he hit a no doubter and stared in to the pitchers soul for about 4 Mississippi’s. That’s a fuck you to the player/ team
This was that it was just pure joy and excitement
I have one last thought on this. Please don’t get too angry at Rangers fans who were mad about the bat-flip. Because as excited as Bautista was, and all the Blue Jays fans were…Rangers fans had to be absolutely miserable. They have no control over the situation and they’re crushed by that sequence of events.
Surely you can understand some frustration at watching an opposing player celebrate the fact that their season came crumbling down.
Shouldn’t they be more upset at dyson for throwing the pitch or andrus for dropping 2 maybe 3 routine as fuck balls to allow for this glorious moment?
And it’s funny too, the Rangers were all smiling cheering and laughing when odor scored on Martins mistake. Odor clapped his hands and laughed his way in to the dugout, that’s perfectly fine?
They can be mad about multiple things. Fans can’t call Elvis Andrus a worthless pile of crap, but they did that and worse in response to Andrus’ goofs.
Let fans have their emotional reactions, too. MOST of them will be over it by the time the next year starts. Those who aren’t over it by then can be ignored. And feel free to judge the Rangers if they throw at him next year-that’s clearly wrong as well. But if Bautista can have an emotional reaction, fans can also have a emotional reaction. It doesn’t make them bad people.
If I’m a Rangers fan though, I’m upset because we lost and I’m upset dyson served up a meatball to one of the best power hitters in the league.
Whether he pimped it or laid down his bat and put his head down or stripped naked and moonwalked around the bases makes absolutely no difference to the outcome of my game.
If I’m a Rangers fan I’m embarrassed over dyson and hamels for their comments. You got beat take it like a fucking man.
DC-My last comment and I’m out of here.
The entire reason we even talk about sportsmanship is because we realize there’s a reverse side to each situation. It feels really good when you win a big game BECAUSE it feels so awful to lose. It really, REALLY sucks having to see the other team have their big heroic moment, and in that instant, where they’re already irate, they don’t want to see other people celebrating. So forgive those fans if they overreacted on Twitter or facebook or whatever. That’s also an emotional reaction, and it’s just as valid as a Toronto fan’s reaction.
Baseball, where it’s perfectly acceptable to slide dangerously in to an opponent to break up a double play, chew tabacco,or throw 100 mph fastballs at a batter with intent to injure or ‘teach them a lesson’
But it’s not okay to throw your bat in the direction of no one in a burst of emotional joy after home run.
Idiots like dyson or all the big mouths who took to Twitter are hypocritical if nothing else.
If you don’t like the way an opponent acts after he hits a homerun don’t fucking let him hit a homerun.
Did “acceptable” get a new definition without me knowing?
Sorry, the above post had the wrong quote.
Did “acceptable” get a new definition without me knowing?
How much upheaval did utley create?
or any pitcher intentionally throwing at someones head this year?
To many many players and fans, those things are considered “playing the right way”
No one likes headhunters.
Doing whatever it takes to win, while following the rules? That’s playing hardnose baseball.
Staring down a home run, then throwing your bat 30 feet? That has nothing to do with trying to win. It’s just being a dick.
I don’t have a problem with him being a dick, but I don’t understand why anyone is pretending he wasn’t.
I was ok with Bautista’s actions at first, but after looking at the tape again, I’m having second thoughts.
I mean, he crushes the pitch. Then he makes fleeting eye contact with Dyson. So far, so good. Nothing wrong there. But then when he places his bat between his thighs and starts stroking it without breaking eye contact for 30 seconds and then pantomimes ejaculating all over his chest… Well, I guess it seems to me that he should have just started running to first.
It’s fascinating to me how two (or more) people can watch the same exact thing and not be able to agree on what they saw.
I’ve always thought people were way too uptight about players who admire their home runs. What’s wrong with expressing joy? The seemingly endless criticism Carlos Gomez is subjected to seems absurd – he looks like he’s having fun and feels free to show it. Good for him.
To me, the Bautista display looks entirely different. There is _nothing_ in his reaction that looks like any celebration or expression of joy; it looks 100% like preening arrogance and in-your-face confrontation.
But other people watch the same thing and see him “having fun.” I have watched it over and over and have no idea how anyone could see that. But the people who do see that can’t begin to understand those who think it shows him being WWE-style showoff, or a Papelbon-style crotch-grabber (same thing, I guess).
Those who see it one way will never see it the other way. But I think the camps have more in common than we might think. If I thought that was Bautista “celebrating” or “expressing joy” I’d be all on board. And I think most other people would be too. The idea that he should just hang his head and run around with no emotion is ludicrous. It’s a huge, huge moment – he may never have another. Enjoy the hell out of it.
They are a team of loud mouth showoffs. Bautistas bat flip was a celebration of Bautista. Not of the Blue Jays. They are mostly all players like that. I’m sick of people defending it. It’s not the NFL or the NBA. We don’t do this in baseball. Because in baseball – the penalty for over celebrating a home run is not 10 yards, or a free throw, or even sitting in a box. .. It’s getting 100mph rocks thrown at your head. And it would serve him right after that garbage.
i was going to respond here to counter your argument using the evidence that their team motto is something along the lines of, “he is me and and we are one. if he is strong then I am strong” and refer you to some recent post game quotes from players surrounding the idea of a team win and print that above all, as opposed to lauding individual achievements. that would all be to lay the groundwork for a solid argument that this blue jays team is actually particularly unselfish and team oriented, contrary to your accusations.
but then I read the end of your post and realized that you are a Neanderthal.
I think you are being demeaning to Neanderthals…
So your response to what was (to some, not all) a display of bad manners or breach of etiquette is to advocate a violent response that could injure, possibly kill the offender.
By your twisted logic any batter who has a ball thrown near his head should have every right to attack the pitcher with his bat, right?
That would be more reasonable than throwing a ball at someone because you didn’t like that they were happy for a sec.
I think the first time Bautista strikes out in game one, the pitcher should do a backflip and then go into the splits.
I hope we get to play them in the World Series, just so I can do that.
Please don’t. We’ve already had one World Series interrupted by a major earthquake.
I’d love that to happen. That would piss off Bautista for sure, and we’ve seen what happens when he gets angry.
I can’t stand all this “respect the game” bs. Dyson and everyone complaining about this are bunch of babies and sore losers as far as I’m concerned. What’s wrong with celebrating a HUGE home run for your team? I agree it’s completely ridiculous to celebrate a solo home run when your team is down 5 runs in the 3rd inning or something, but if you hit one in a big spot like that, why not admire it, flip your bat and moonwalk around the bases for all I care. If you don’t want to see a guy celebrate in a big spot like that, then don’t give up the hit. It’s as simple as that.
I admit the “respect the game” rubs me the wrong way.
When players say that I think what they really mean is “respect your opponent”, and well, an opponent’s concern isn’t really going to be how his opponent feels. Many athlete’s use hurting your opponents feeling as a motivator.
We all love bat flips, and enjoyed Bautista’s exaggerated bat flip … if for nothing other than entertainment value. But, by the same token, some of the bat flips are just too much.
So Brutus is an honorable man? “If Jose Bautista had this same reaction to hitting a third inning home run in May, when 25,000 people stood and gave smattered applause…”
I think of myself as a baseball fan and my (conservative I guess) views on the game were developed during the ’50s and ’60s. But do I follow the Blue Jays nowadays because they are mostly who I see up here. I think that Jose Bautista actually is a showboat, thin-skinned and overly impressed with his batting eye, even a chronic crybaby about umpires’ calls to the point that it sometimes seems to backfire on the team.
But I look on this as basically my own problem. Just look at football, hockey, soccer. Bautista’s celebration wasn’t anything particularly over the top in the context of today’s professional sports. He hit a hell of a homer in a very tense atmosphere. So while I winced a bit at the bat toss I could not help admiring the whole thing – what a moment. To me it was just instant exultation mixed with tremendous relief. I think Dave Cameron got it right.
The fans throwing trash on the field is another matter and not good. But I think it might have derived in part from the old hockey tradition. In earlier years at least (maybe still but I don’t watch hockey anymore) it wasn’t all that uncommon to see the ice littered with debris after a referee made a bad or at least unpopular call (as Scott certainly did), or in celebration of an important goal. It happened in all NHL hockey rinks back then, up here and in the U.S. alike. Possibly just another sporting culture thing spilling over to a different game where it is, properly, viewed much differently.
I agree that the fans’ “hockey culture” reaction was a horrible display. Fine Comment, Paul.
However, I respectfully disagree with your opinion of Bautista. Here is a guy that nearly had his career derailed by an incompetent Rule 5 system. When Toronto gave him a chance, and Cito and Dwayne Murphy helped refine his swing, his talent was able to flourish. He signed a very team friendly contract and every year would hear that “this was the year” and when the team didn’t do well, “be patient”. Last year’s inaction at the trade deadline was a huge letdown. This year, as the deadline approached, they were a .500 team and grossly underachieving, roughly 8 games below their pythagorean and with the best SRS in MLB, by a long-shot. Another year, another implosion. But this year, AA hit back-to-back-to-back home runs as the deadline and the team was able to put it in high gear and redeem themselves. As another commenter said, the ALDS to that point had been a roller-coaster of results and emotions: two losses at home to open – WTH? here we implode again – followed by two road wins to set up game 5. And then there is the top of the 7th, a weird, fluke play compounded by Dale Scott calling time or dead ball, I’m not sure which – at least the second time that he’s done that when he shouldn’t. The entire Jays dugout was steaming but Jose, possibly the most. He accepts fallibility, but detests incompetence. (He’s probably one guy that would welcome robo-umps strike and ball calling, despite the negative impact this would have on Martin and the pitching staff.) His adrenaline level was likely off the charts when was in the on deck circle. Then he came to the plate after Rougned Odor – who was most responsible for setting the Jays back in Game one, and someone that I greatly enjoyed watching throughout this series – misplays a flare by JD. While a run scores to tie the game, those “other guys” are far from vanquished…
Until BAM! All that anger from a career of frustration, setbacks, dealing with incompetence, gone. No, not gone – the journey is not complete, the ship has been righted and the quest continues.
Dang! I’m looking forward to the ALCS – and I expect the WS!
Understanding something, and having it be acceptable are two different things.
I’ll spare everyone the 513 real-life scenario analogies to illustrate the point. I’m sure you can think of your own.
This is a fantastic post, Dave. Really great job of capturing the nuance of the situation. Thanks for writing this.
was Sam Dyson “playing the game the right way” when he intentionally walked Alex Rodriguez in Yankee Stadium, presumably to avoid being on the wrong side of the highlight reel of his 3,000th hit?
Was O’Day playing the game the right way when he barely hopped off the mound after whiffing the immortal Joey Bats? Not according to the Legend himself, who took deep umbrage.
I am looking forward to how Joey and the Jays react to all the showboating they gonna get from here on out. Will see who the fun cops are then.
Nice perspective here:
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/jonathan-kay-baseball-at-its-most-baseballiest
Do people understand that even white people have different “cultures” within their own ethnicity? That “we” don’t all “grow up the same way”.
If baseball were “all white”, and it has been, there would be (and were) consistent conflicts between players.
We all know that Mickey mantle joking referred to Pete Rose as “Charlie Hustle” when rose climbed the LF on a home run in the 14th row during a spring training game, right?
At this point, we should understand, and should have learned from sociology that people have more in common with different ethnicities in their social economic class than they do members of the same ethnicity in different economic classes.
So, by reading all of this, I am left with the impression that in a Latin baseball game, there are conflicts and fights over showboating or physical displays of joy, aggression, etc because they all understand “that’s just how they are”.
Same thing on a basketball court or football field with black players. Rarely any conflict because they all “know how they are”.
My life experiences and observations have been different than most, I guess.
I’m actually surprised Dyson commented on the behavior of a non-white player. Is there any way to do that in a negative fashion without being labelled something derogatory? Didn’t all white people learn that lesson in like 3rd grade?