The Home Run as a Means of Shutting People Up

In lieu of real accountability, this season, Houston Astros players will face opposing fans making an ‘oooooo’ sound at them whenever they step on the field. Grating on the nerves, perhaps, or simply just annoying on the ears; but in either case, they’ll likely learn to tune out the noise and focus on playing baseball, a sport that requires a little more focus when you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen next.

When they aren’t tuning it out, though, the Astros would probably like to respond. They will have to pick their spots, as there is little winning to be done from a public relations standpoint. But these are young, competitive, professional athletes whose reputations have been irreversibly tarnished. They might know that they’re the bad guys in this story, but they don’t want to be booed. They want to be celebrated. They want to be championed. They want to shut their critics up by hitting something really hard, and since that something can’t be one of their critics, they’ll have to settle for a baseball.

George Springer walked out of the Astros dugout yesterday to the predictable sea of boos. In addition to the jeers, seven Astros hitters have been hit by pitches this spring, something that has been noted with delight by those waiting for drama to spill out onto the field. Springer hasn’t been one of them yet, but there was a moment during his at-bat against the Mets on Wednesday in which we seem to witness him attempt to send a message to the crowd.

Springer, while being booed, is not able to turn around and yell at the audience to shut the hell up. He has to act like he can’t hear them, even though he might really, really want to acknowledge them somehow. He might want to scream some kind of counterargument about how the Astros aren’t the only team that has cheated, or about how it wasn’t his fault, or how the cheating that happened was actually good for baseball, you see, presenting a detailed powerpoint entitled “Cheating = Good?” all while still screaming, of course.

But Springer can’t do that. Anything an Astros player says in regards to cheating or other people’s reactions to cheating will be an ill-conceived defense and received poorly. We’ve learned throughout this whole thing that while some Astros are better at apologizing than others, it’s difficult to believe any of them are sorry at all.

Still, on day five of spring training, when being raucously and enthusiastically booed is still a relatively new experience for Houston hitters, Springer seemed eager to shut everyone up in the only way he is permitted: by hitting the crap out of the ball. A long, mean home run that everyone would hate, sailing through Florida’s breezy spring air and landing in somebody’s drink with a little umbrella in it. It was his only means of communication with the booers around him, and it would send the only message Springer wants to give: Boo me all you want. I’ll just keep hitting.

The home run is how players talk to us. Not every one sends a message, but when a hitter is booed as he comes to the plate and crushes a meatball into the bleachers, it’s a statement. A lot of time, it ends the conversation.

The 1986 ALCS. Angels pitcher Donnie Moore reared back and fired what he had hoped would be the final pitch of the series to Red Sox slugger Dave Henderson. Instead, Henderson parked it over the fence in deep left field, giving Boston a 6-5 lead. Henderson went on to hit a game-winning sac fly in extras, and the Red Sox, who entered the game down 3-1 in the series, won the next two games to move on to the World Series. Henderson’s bomb was undoubtedly a turning point, as it crushed the spirits of over 64,000 explosive Angels fans in Anaheim Stadium.

“…it was if the whole world had gone deaf,” wrote Mike Terry in The San Bernadino Sun about the aftermath of Henderson’s home run, three years later.

Javy Lopez stepped to the plate with a high ankle sprain in Game 2 of the 2001 NLCS, facing the Diamondbacks’ Miguel Batista. Arizona fans were all worked up over a late 1-1 tie created by a Matt Williams solo shot in the previous half of the inning. No one expected Lopez to change the flow of the game, especially not on a pitch two and a half inches off the plate. But the Atlanta catcher flailed enough of his bat at it to put the Braves back up, 3-1.

“The home run silenced the crowd of 49,584,” said the AP, “the second-largest crowd in Bank One Ballpark history.”

Of course, it doesn’t need to be a tense postseason moment for a hitter to hurt people on the inside. Take a look at this cursed footage from April 2014, in which Phillies fans go through a complete emotional crash in slow-motion after a devastating Dan Uggla home run.

Brutal. Let’s stay with Phillies fans for a moment, as they have a special relationship with Brewers dream-puncher Ryan Braun.

The boo is the Phillies fan’s best friend; their one weapon in the fight against Things Happening on the Field They Don’t Like. Braun has historically found a way to take that power away from them, having become a .385 hitter with an 1.134 OPS and 202 wRC+ in 387 career plate appearances against the Phillies.

Specifically in his case, booing Braun not only doesn’t work, it somehow makes him more powerful.

His war on Phillies fans is especially notable now, as when Braun came around South Philly and hit those three blasts in 2014, he was the “Astros” of the moment, having recently returned from his 2013 suspension for PEDs. As Braun celebrated at home plate with his teammates after his third round-tripper of the day, you can still hear a desperate fan screaming, “CHEATER!” as though it could have any kind of effect on him at that point. Ten runs had come across. Braun had knocked in seven of them on home runs alone. No amount of booing was going to take those runs off the board.

So yes, the home run is a glorious atmospheric achievement. It also is a dagger in the soul of your enemies while you whisper in the ear of 64,000 people, “Your sounds are nothing against my power.”

The trick is actually hitting one, however, when your moment arrives.

Springer didn’t manage to do that. He swung hard and fell down.

This is the relationship we have with the players we hate; we don’t meet them for drinks after the game to talk things out, so instead we scream at them and they homer back at us.

Clearly, no one from the Astros should be talking. At least not with their mouths. Springer tried to do it with his bat and still failed, but it’s a long season. He’ll get around on a couple of 400-foot rebuttals. Other Astros players have homered this spring, and many of them will do so during the regular season. Their home runs will rile people up, stir debate over whether or not they’re still cheating, and infuriate those searching for some kind of cosmic intervention to deliver the justice the league couldn’t. It will be a conversation that lasts all season.

When we say we need to have a conversation about cheating in baseball, we might picture people in business attire at podiums, or smart people behind locked doors hashing out preventative measures. But given the league’s half-measures and the Astros’ rush to put all of this behind them, this exchange — we boo, they homer — is probably the most productive conversation we’re going to have about it. Fans get to say they’re mad with the only power they have. The Astros get to say “shut up” in the only way that they can. And the league will bumble through its plans to put live goldfish inside the baseballs, or something.

As the months go by, there may be nothing new to say on this particular scandal. But for people who, quite understandably, aren’t ready to move on — even though MLB and the Astros want them to — at least they can keep the conversation going.





Justin has contributed to FanGraphs and is a contributor to Baseball Prospectus. He is known in his family for jamming free hot dogs in his pockets during an off-season tour of Veterans Stadium and eating them on the car ride home.

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3rdgenbruinmember
4 years ago

A home run may quiet an entire crowd, but it can also be useful in shutting up one player. For example, when Max Muncy told bum to go get it out of the ocean. That was fun.