by Danny Knobler
Triumph Books
Hardcover
Excerpt:
Bat flips have been part of baseball for a while. With the help of GIFs on Twitter and YouTube videos, they're more acceptable than ever and more celebrated than ever. Many fans love them. Many players do, too.
And many pitchers have come to accept them.
So why did Jose Bautista end up getting punched in the face? It's a legit question. Bautista's bat flip in the 2015 playoffs was epic, but it came after a huge home run. Bautista's Toronto Blue Jays were tied 3-3 with the Texas Rangers in the winner-take-all Game 5 of their American League Division Series. Bautista's three-run home run off Sam Dyson changed the game and the series.
"I think that was a pretty big moment for the team and the franchise," Bautista said in 2018. "I'm not trying to justify anything, but if we want to talk about the moment, it's certainly an important one."
Bautista has never believed he did anything wrong that day, and I'm not sure he did. He definitely stood and watched the ball, which was clearly going out of the park. He dramatically flung the bat in the air. He may have turned his head a bit, but he didn't stare into the Rangers dugout, as some have charged.
Even so, the Rangers didn't like it. They didn't like losing, and they didn't like having to watch Bautista celebrate in a way they saw as shoving it in their face.
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| Author Danny Knobler |
We know that because of what they said in the aftermath — "Jose needs to calm that down, just kind of respect the game a little more," Dyson told reporters after the game — but also because of what happened seven months later in Arlington, Texas.
It was the final game of a three-game series between the Jays and Rangers, the final game the two teams would play in the regular season in 2016 (although they would again meet in the Division Series, with the Jays winning in a much less dramatic three-game sweep). Bautista came to the plate leading off the eighth inning in that May 15 game, and Rangers reliever Matt Bush threw at him.
It was a first-pitch 95.7 mph fastball, according to MLB.com's Statcast, and it hit Bautista squarely on the left side. Bautista took his base with little delay, but the umpires quickly warned both teams that no further such pitches would be tolerated.
But that wasn't the end of it. Far from it.
When Blue Jays first baseman Justin Smoak hit a ground ball to third with one out in the inning, Bautista did more than just break up the double play. He went in late and hard on Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor in a clear response to getting hit by the pitch from Bush. Odor responded with a fist to Bautista’s jaw, an image that was quickly shared around the baseball world.
The Rangers, it was said, finally had their revenge for the bat flip.
But why was revenge even needed? Did Bautista violate any of baseball’s unwritten rules, the way those rules are accepted in the modern game?
The Rangers obviously thought so. They weren’t alone.
“I know Odor gained a ton of respect in baseball [by punching Bautista],” said Ian Kinsler, the former Rangers second baseman, who was already gone from the team before both the flip and the fight. “He stood up for his team. In their eyes, [Bautista] was disrespectful.”
Bautista will always maintain there was no disrespect, and he bristles at the suggestion that his celebration was in anyway premeditated.
“I don’t think you plan that,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a script, and I don’t think you have time to figure out what you’re going to do. It just kind of happens, and that’s it. Would somebody apologize for making a diving play? It’s an instinctual moment.”
In contrast, the Rangers’ response did seem planned, at least the part with him getting hit by the Matt Bush pitch. They chose to wait until his final at-bat in their final regular-season meeting, with a hard-throwing reliever on the mound.
This excerpt from Unwritten: Bat Flips, the Fun Police, and Baseball's New Future published with permission of Triumph Books.
Copyright 2019 by Danny Knobler
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