Brett Myers, Cole Hamels, and The Rangers are Mad About Jose Bautista's Historic Bat Flip
After Jose Bautista took the biggest swing of his career – what would become the game-winning three-run home run last night – he exhaled deeply and threw his bat aside like it had just said something horribly offensive to him. It was beautiful. The picture above doesn’t even begin to do it justice. You’ve seen it 100 times. Here’s 101:
https://youtu.be/ZsxiCXm0E-I
Unsurprisingly, because baseball players hate fun, people had a problem with Bautista letting emotion take over after the biggest moment in his professional life (in the midst of an extremely tense inning at Rogers Centre). Brett Myers had a problem with it. On Twitter, he said he’d throw at Bautista. Many people – including myself – pointed out that bat flips are not okay in Brett Myers’ rulebook, but domestic abuse is. He didn’t like that.
Another person who didn’t appreciate it is Cole Hamels. Hamels is such a stickler for baseball’s unwritten rules he once took a suspension because he couldn’t even pretend he didn’t plunk Bryce Harper on purpose. Said Hamels said after the game: “it’s tough to see … [and] a lot of us on our team don’t carry ourselves that way.” Right.
The guy who gave the homer up was more fired up about it, naturally, saying Bautista needs to “respect the game” more and “it shouldn’t be done.”
Allow me to get my two cents in here. Ahem. BULLSHIT. For all of the terrible garbage those fans were doing before (and after) he hit this home run last night, that stadium was among the most lively I’ve EVER seen. And even if Bautista somehow felt no emotion for his hit – “Ho hum, it’s just a job. I respect the game too much to show that I enjoy playing it and winning” – it’d be impossible for him to ignore the energy of that crowd.
Flip all the bats you want. Just as closers will continue to flex, guys hitting clutch hits will clap and point to the dugout, sky or roof, and pitchers will stomp their way into the dugout after a good inning, you should flip your bat as much as you want. It’s not showing up the pitcher – though if you don’t wanna be shown up, don’t give up game-winning three-run BOMBS – it’s celebrating that you just carried your team to one of the best victories in franchise history. And if you have a problem with someone celebrating that, I don’t know what the hell you do for fun.