Dear Jose Bautista,<\/p>\n
Congratulations. No one has ever sullied a glorious moment faster than you did yesterday. You hurled that bat in the clincher over Texas as if someone had smeared it with pig waste, and then stared at Sam Dyson as if he was the one who did it.<\/p>\n
Oh, that was a monumental home run all right. A laser beam in a pressure situation that won the game and sent your team into the American League Championship Series. It was hard to admire though, because your childishness immediately drew our attention from it to you. Some commentators have already opined that such actions will get fans excited about the game. If the home run that you hit isn\u2019t exciting enough, then the game is dead. And calling it a \u201cbat flip\u201d is like calling your home run a lazy fly that barely carried out.<\/p>\n
Jose, you can spare us that \u201cjust a moment\u201d nonsense, and that it was an emotional moment. We know<\/em> that you can control your emotions far better than that because if you couldn\u2019t, you would never have been able to hit that pitch so far and so well.<\/p>\n How do you think Dyson felt about giving up that home run? Probably the same way you did the 3,521 times you didn\u2019t reach base in your career, although it is doubtful any were as big a failure as Dyson\u2019s moment yesterday. Oh, you\u2019ve had your failures though, Jose, just like everyone from Mario Mendoza to Ty Cobb and you know, as we all do, that an inch higher or lower on your bat and that home run would have been a weak fly ball and the third out. Maybe half an inch.<\/p>\n That\u2019s exactly the problem, though, Jose. With that glare and that bat heave, you weren\u2019t celebrating your home run, you were wallowing in Dyson\u2019s failure. I\u2019m an old guy, but I try to avoid the \u201cold days were better syndrome.\u201d If guys want to perform a hand shake routine that\u2019s more elaborate than John Travolta\u2019s hand jive dance-scene in Grease<\/em>, well, fine. The game is supposed to be fun. And if guys want to wear their hats sideways and their pants low, it doesn\u2019t hurt me any, although I confess it bugs<\/em> me. And I\u2019m glad that Dyson didn\u2019t put one in Edwin Encarnacion\u2019s ear just because you hit a home run. That never made any sense, and just because Bob Gibson did it, doesn\u2019t make it right. He didn\u2019t act emotionally \u201cin the moment.\u201d But celebrating someone else\u2019s failure, crosses a line, the line that represents respect for your fellow competitor. Now you turn Major League Baseball into the NFL, which is busy turning itself into the WWE. That\u2019s not an old days versus new days deal. That is being an ass, whether it\u2019s 2015 or 1915.<\/p>\n Sam Dyson was not your enemy, Jose. This isn\u2019t war. Maybe the DiMaggios and Berras and Greenbergs and Fellers never acted this way because they had actually been in the real thing. Perhaps you should practice your perspective and not your bat heaves this off-season.<\/p>\n Baseball, as every player and fan knows, is a game of failure. You know that, Jose. You had a bright and shining moment of success in a historic setting yesterday, but you sullied it, you ruined<\/em> it by your childish antics. How will you feel if Wade Davis comes on to strike you out in the eighth inning of the seventh game with the Blue Jays down by a run to maintain a Royal\u2019s lead, and he glares at you and throws his glove fifty feet towards the dugout? You would deserve that, but here\u2019s hoping he simply walks off the mound. After all, getting you out is what he\u2019s supposed to do.<\/p>\n Tell you what, Jose; when you bat 1.000, then you can glare and slam bats to your heart\u2019s content. Until then drop the bat, run the bases, and understand that if that pitch had moved another inch you\u2019d be just another out. Your antics after that home run don\u2019t make you a man, Jose, it makes you a brat, and all the talent in the world can\u2019t overcome that. Not that you care what I think, but I am rooting for the depth of your character to match the breadth of your talent.<\/p>\n Most sincerely,<\/p>\n Austin Gisriel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Jose Bautista, Congratulations. No one has ever sullied a glorious moment faster than you did yesterday. You hurled that bat in the clincher over Texas as if someone had smeared it with pig waste, and then stared at Sam Dyson as if he was the one who did it. Oh, that was a monumental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":779,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,9,4235],"tags":[21239,21241,21242,21244,8599,21240,891,2286,21243],"class_list":["post-30097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-general","category-top-stories","tag-american-league-division-series","tag-bat-flip","tag-bat-heave","tag-excessive-celebrations-in-baseball","tag-jose-bautista","tag-sam-dyson","tag-texas-rangers","tag-toronto-blue-jays","tag-unwritten-rules-of-baseball"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/779"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}