How José Bautista’s bat flip saved baseball

‘The right way to play the game’

At the same time as the death of baseball was being considered, something else was happening within the game – the crescendo of a longstanding debate over ‘the right way to play the game.’

This was a debate over unwritten rules, over how to show respect for the game – should the player who celebrates after a home run be applauded, or should the pitcher who throws the next one high and tight be the hero?

On one side of the debate stood standard bearers like Yasiel Puig, Carlos Gómez, and David Ortiz, players who weren’t afraid to look flashy and play the game with exuberance. On the other, were traditionalists who believed that the game should be played with a sort of respectful stoicism, people like Bud Norris, who asserted in a 2015 interview with USA Today, “if you’re going to come into our country and make our American dollars, you need to respect a game that has been here for over a hundred years.”

Certainly, the game of baseball “has been here for over a hundred years.” Yet, it has also been elsewhere, in places where showing “respect” for the game means something entirely different.

In Latin America, of course, baseball is played with far more emotion, with players celebrating their feats in front of adoring fans who dance, sing, and blow horns. Meanwhile, in South Korea, bat flips are embraced as an “art.”

Even in the US, an American way to play the game has not been homogenous. One need only think of the famous stories of Satchel Paige instructing his teammates to sit down on the field while he struck out the side to see that in the Negro Leagues the game was played with more flair.

But that’s the point. The way traditionalists like Bud Norris believed the game should be played and respected was tied to a very specific version of American identity, one not inherent but intentional.

That is to say, the so-called ‘right way to play the game’ didn’t just drop out of the sky.

“A certain set of values”

At the time MLB was founded, around the turn of the 20th century, the United States was in the process of taking up a new position of prominence on the global stage. As Europe’s traditional powers declined, the US extended its sphere of influence over Latin American countries like Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, as well as far-off locales like Hawaii and the Philippines.

As this took place, the game of baseball became an explicit and intentional tool for Americanizing foreign populations within new US territories, “more than merely entertainment,” as writer and historian Roberto José Andrade Franco put it, rather, a method to impose “a certain set of values” laid down by the United States’ prevailing WASP culture. This was doubly true back at home, where baseball was used to assimilate new immigrants to the US into the same standards.

In either case, baseball was intended to teach a set of values designated by the dominant American culture at the time. From the very beginning, the idea of ‘the right way to play the game’ was constructed as a tool of assimilation, an explicit way to push a narrow view of social order as defined by a 19th-century power structure.

Through the history of Major League Baseball, this idea persisted, through integration and unionization, through Reggie Jackson’s mustache and Ken Griffey Jr.’s backwards cap; even as the United States itself changed around the game, with shifting demographics and news ways of thinking increasingly challenging arbitrary traditions, baseball remained resolutely tied to an ever more distant past.

October 14, 2015

It was with this backdrop that José Bautista stepped to the plate in the 7th inning of a winner-take-all game on October 14, 2015. Everyone reading this knows what happened next – a monumental home run, and the greatest bat flip in MLB history.

Immediately, the bat flip became the most prominent topic in North America, not just in the sports world, but across media and culture more broadly.

Time called it “a work of raging joy,” while Vice proclaimed it “an epic spectacle that baseball fans will remember forever,” and The Washington Post asserted it was “the one to which all future bat flips will bow.”

More interesting, and more important, was the almost universal acceptance the bat flip received. USA Today said it was a sign that “Major League Baseball itself is turning the corner,” arguing “it’s high time we embraced the bat flip,” while The New York Times opined that the bat flip discussion was “staking out new turf in what was considered acceptable.” Even the traditionally stodgy Boston Globe ran a headline announcing, “Bautista’s bat flip gets stamp of approval.”

When Cole Hamels, who had started the game for Texas, came out afterwards and embarrassingly declared, “It’s hard to be politically correct,” or when, months later, former MLB player Goose Gossage called Bautista “a [expletive] disgrace to the game,” they appeared not as defenders of tradition, but as out-of-touch, at odds with the conclusions the rest of the continent had reached.

The stamp was put on the discussion by Bautista himself in his seminal Players’ Tribune article, where he conclusively wrote,

“Baseball is a metaphor for America. It’s a giant melting pot made up of people from all over the world and all walks of life. How can you expect everybody to be exactly the same? Act exactly the same? More importantly, why would you want them to?

In my opinion, true respect is about embracing the differences in people’s cultures. That’s what the melting pot of America is all about.”

Baseball in 2023

It is almost funny to look at Major League Baseball now, nearly ten years removed from Bautista’s legendary bat flip.

Today, the game is filled with flash and celebration, with players unafraid to bring whatever level of passion they want to the field. Think about Vladdy, Acuña Jr., Tatís Jr., Wander Franco – all teenagers when Bautista flipped his bat, today, some of the most popular and, not coincidentally, most exuberant players in the game. At the same time, stars like Trout, Ohtani, and Judge have reached mythical status behind a sort of stoic greatness. It’s not about one way being better than the other; it’s about there being room for everyone.

But it’s more than that. While in 2015, MLB’s fan base was aging, today, baseball has exploded in popularity amongst younger audiences. Consider, those who interact with MLB content on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are significantly younger on average than the average user on those platforms. Further, MLB now has more attendees of games in person between 12-17 years old than any other major sports league, and the long decline of youth participation has reversed, with more kids 6-12 now playing baseball and softball in the US than any other sport.

Oh, and by the way, MLB achieved record revenues in 2022. Simply, where baseball was dying, it is now thriving, no longer “doomed to irrelevance,” but in many ways, leading.

A few months from now, a debate is going to start over whether José Bautista should be in the Hall of Fame, as he becomes eligible for induction for the first time. To many, the case may seem open and shut. While his peak was incredible, Bautista’s career numbers – 349 HR, 975 RBI, 1022 runs, 124 OPS+, 35.3 career WAR – don’t exactly scream Hall of Famer.

Yet, perhaps numbers are not the reason Bautista should be in the Hall of Fame. Perhaps he should be headed to Cooperstown for what he did one October night in 2015, when he changed the game forever, and maybe even saved it.

Where were you when Joey Bats went deep? Was it the greatest bat flip in MLB history, and more importantly, was it ‘the right way to play the game?’ Let me know on the platform formerly known as Twitter – @WriteFieldDeep.