Some Safe, Wholesome Alternatives To Bat Flips, For The Good Of Baseball

The scene: a baseball pitcher throws a trash-ass pitch to a slugger: a hanging curve, a down the middle fastball that isn't especially fast—a meatball, in short, and a saucy one. The slugger reads the pitch, lets loose a powerful swing, and sends it saaaaaaiiiilling into the grandstand.

The pitcher feels himself pitted, gutted, embarrassed. His art and craft, a young lifetime of hard work, has been mashed out of the ballpark for all to see. He feels vulnerable and sad, in a macho setting where those kinds of feelings are looked down upon.

The batter, on the other hand, is thick with erective feelings. Points for his team, a dinger for his records, carved in internet stone forever: there was not a better outcome possible for this occasion at the plate. He is excited, pumped. So, maybe, he throws his bat in a way to indicate this feeling.

After the game, the pitcher and his teammates, who lost because of this home run and are looking for a way to deflect their shame, talk to reporters. "That bat flip exhibited a lack of respect for the game." "He needs to understand that kids are watching, and that sets a bad example." Sometimes, the next day, a crummy relief pitcher will hit the offending batter or one of his teammates with a fastball.

"Unwritten rules," which would be called "Notions About Manners" in an endeavor less aligned with masculinity than baseball, are weird and unnecessary and contain faint notes of racism. Their very existence functions only to allow a loser to save face: "I might have thrown a trash pitch, but THAT guy reacted to it wrong!" This does the game no favors, and conspires to make the game seem—to young people and to fans who enjoy good feelings and celebration without abashment or embarrassment—fuddy and dully, the sort of old world American ritual that could best be left in the past.

But, on the other hand, who am I to tell another clan what their standards should be? If baseball players desire certain Manners for their small society, why should I tell them to get bent? But is this system, in particular, the cycle of flip, complain, bean, really doing anyone any good? I think it would be great to see baseball abandon the flip/complain/bean cycle and abandon "Respect the Game" forever. But if they can't, or won't, perhaps they can pursue a new standard for respect. I have concocted several solutions for Baseball Society to consider.

ONE: After you hit a home run, instead of flipping your bat and trotting around the bases, immediately adopt a pose of embarrassment. You didn't mean to show this good pitcher up. Gesture "I'm sorry" to your honorable opponent, and turn to the umpire.

"Sir, I am afraid that I must insist that you disallow that home run. I did not mean to hit it that hard. I sought only a nice, gentlemanly double, and as such if you could just award me two bases, that would be ideal. I am of course willing to take an out if it means that good man over there will not be hung out to dry on the clothesline of my achievement."

Of course, the Umpire will not honor your request, and, to be honest, you don't REALLY want him to. That home run was good for your team and for you. You nailed it! But it's IMPORTANT, for the sake of manners, to enact a brief ritual where you feign embarrassment over your accomplishment. You need to engage for at least a minute to let the pitcher and his team know that you are TRULY fake-ashamed of your tater mash.

After this minute elapses, trot around the bases, and every time you touch a base mouth a little "I'm sorry" to the pitcher to let him know, once again, that you didn't mean the home run. When you sit in the dugout, in full view of the cameras, turn to your teammates, extend your arms, palms up and mouth "I don't know, I didn't mean…"

This exercise may seem insincere, and even condescending, but a cursory examination of nearly any set of manners will reveal a deep insincerity at their core. It may be illogical on its face, but these sorts of rituals are what keep societies together.

TWO: We have talked a lot of disrespect to pitchers, but what about the bat? A home run is not achieved by the swinger alone. Somewhere along the line, a master craftsman turned a slab of wood into a machine that, in the right hands, smacked that donger nice and right good. To disdainfully cast aside the tool like a used condom is a very succinct way of telling that good craftsman to "Go to hell." A new paradigm of respect for the tool is needed.

The new world will operate as such: in every dugout, the MLB will provide their players with branded ceremonial robes; they will also be available for $159 on MLBSHOP.com. After hitting a homerun, the batter will retreat from the box, and walk back into the dugout, with his bat in hand, lifted far above the ground—a tool that honorable does not deserve the indignity of dirt.

Inside the clubhouse, a shrine with a space for the bat will be constructed. The player will place the bat on the shrine and cover it with an official MLB BatShrine Cloth ($50). He will kneel before the bat on two knees and fold his hands as in prayer, allow himself a moment of contemplation, and speak aloud a few words in whatever language he prefers—though, I believe it works best POETICALLY in the original English:

TO THE BAT AND ITS MAKER

WITHOUT YOU, I COULD NOT MASH THAT TATER.

He will rise, hang the robe up in the dugout, walk back onto the field and perform his homerun trot. Behind the scenes, two staffers known as BatPriests, draped in ornate, gilded, MLB Branded robes ($15,000) will clean the bat with MLB Brand Ceremonial HolyBatWax ($45)

THREE: Ty Cobb thought home runs were evil, and so should you. If you observe the curve of the baseball in flight out of the park, you see a form clearly sexual in nature, derived from the flesh of the Earth.

Babe Ruth, the first major slugger in baseball history, was a man of base desires—for food, for sex, for alcohol. I am certain that, had it been available to him, he would have worshiped at the most obscene of altars: that of the marijuana water pipe. He brought baseball into its most sinful age, the age of the Salami, lined with fat and avarice and sin. The honorable pitcher, in his quest to stop them, reacts in rage merely because that is the stance of any decent man.

Rob Manfred and his wealthy cronies will never outlaw these lascivious moonshots, for they have grown wealthy and powerful during the reign of the dong. We can talk and talk, but the only way to get our game back is for baseball players to stop hitting these homers altogether. And if you do, you must break the bat over your knee, right there, and release the home run demon inside.

Someday, baseball will be what it was truly meant to be: a celebration only of straight lines—curve balls are outside the purview of this article, but they are also deceitful; only the fastball is honorable—basepaths and liners, with none of the sinful, sandy curves that make up its unstable foundation as currently built.

FOUR: "Act like you've been there before." It's the common rebuke to the celebrator. "Whatever, you hit a homer. Who cares? Every day is like the same day, you're gonna die, get some perspective, dickhead." Maybe a little rude, but I think there's some truth there. We can apply the logic of the statement to the new baseball manners.

Let's say, for instance, you are Jose Bautista, and you just went yard in the ALDS.

Instead of tossing your bat, like a king tossing a turkey leg bone in the dirt after conquering the Riverlands, you would, in that moment, recalibrate your mental state. "I have been here before," you think. "This has happened. Everything has happened." Live from now on like a man in the grips of never ending deja vu. Smell a flower: it's already been smelled. Take a cupcake and eat: you'll find it's been eaten, once before. Make love like you did the last time, and the time before and all the times you will forever.

It's the only proper way to act. There are kids watching. God forbid they think a moment is special.