Baseball Culture: Time for a Change

As I stepped up to the plate, I already knew what was coming. It was the first inning of a scoreless game and I was leading things off for our side, but my outcome had been set in stone. I was ready to be drilled by the first pitch.

Instead of going up to the plate with a mentality of “looking for the right pitch,” I approached hoping, “don’t hit a bone, please.” Sure enough, the first pitch made a loud thud on my quad, and I didn’t quite know how to react. I was initially pent up with anger, but charging the mound wasn’t an option considering my significant weight and strength disadvantage. So I settled for an angry stare back at the pitcher. Many MLB players, however, wouldn’t have taken such a path following the same incident.

In my case, getting thrown at was retaliation for me unintentionally hitting the leadoff batter of the opposing team, so as both baseball and the mob dictate: “You hit us, we hit you.” While I never saw a single player on that team again, the same certainly can’t be said between Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista and the Texas Rangers, who have had an ongoing beef since the 2015 playoffs.

In the do-or-die game five of the American League Division Series (ALDS), Bautista hit what would end up being a game-deciding three-run home run. At the crack of the bat, he and the 50,000 fans in attendance knew it was gone, so he did what any human being would do at that moment—he celebrated. The moment of celebration in a bat flip—not the fact that he gave up a series-clinching home run—didn’t sit well with Rangers pitcher Sam Dyson, who remarked after the game that Bautista needed to “calm that down.”

Bautista was 34 years old when he hit the biggest home run of his career, and one of the most famous home runs in recent baseball history. About 31 years of hard work—since tee-ball—had finally paid off and turned him into an icon in Toronto sports history. And he’s supposed to calm down? If you look around in other sports, “calming down” isn’t a common theme. Cam Newton and Odell Beckham Jr. celebrate for extended periods of time in the endzone, while James Harden and LeBron James have picked up signature celebrations following big shots. But in baseball, where tradition reigns, the same tradition that kept black players out of the league until 1947 and refused advancement in the form of instant replay for decades, Bautista is in the wrong.

The Rangers would retaliate, as a bench-clearing brawl ensued on May 15 the following season, and Bautista took one in the chin from Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor. Yet, in the grand scheme of things, Odor wasn’t the villain for punching an opponent during a baseball game. No, it was Bautista who had it coming for his moment of celebration.

He isn’t alone in being villainized. Carlos Gomez has been thrown at several times for bat flips, Manny Machado has thrown his bat at opponents after being thrown at, and Alex Rodriguez was thrown at by then-Boston Red Sox pitcher Ryan Dempster for steroid use, despite already receiving a suspension of over a year from the MLB.

For over 100 years, baseball has policed itself through bruises and insults at all levels. Back then, it may have been different, but today, it’s a bunch of players who are more concerned about their personal beef than winning. So, the next time I get hit, retaliation or not, I’m going to jog to first and happily take my base. Hopefully, MLB players will start to do the same.