Mike Schmidt Chimes in on Bautista Bat Flip, Because We're Still Talking About This Apparently

On October 14, 2015, Jose Bautista uncorked an enormous home run, and followed it with an even bigger bat flip. For most of us it has been generally accepted as a thrilling, awesome moment in playoff baseball. There is a very vocal minority of well-credentialed AARP members, however, who took, and continue to take, umbrage to Bautista's celebration. Today, March 24, 2016, Phillies legend Mike Schmidt picked up where Goose Gossage left off, in an extremely grumpy essay published by the Associated Press. It's bad.

Schmidt hits all the same notes that his predecessors hit. The fundamental phrases of this sort of complaint are all there—back in my day that'd get someone hurt, lack of respect, baseball is soft now, classy, and showboat are among the hits in this parade. But Schmidtalso does a weird thing in his piece. As he laments the deterioration of character and class in baseball, a sport that he says uniquely demands these traits in its players, he also rattles off a long list of players throughout history who were showboaters.

There's a bit about Ty Cobb, whose showboating was…not really his worst personality trait. Schmidt spends time mentioning several players from his era who were "hated" for their particular bits of flair. I think Pete Rose injuring people is supposed to be a point in his favor? And then we also get this, again, another point in his favor?

The Expos had a player named Ellis Valentine in the '80s. Great talent, power, speed, maybe the best throwing arm I've ever seen. We were acquaintances from competing over the years, so I considered him someone with whom I could speak. One day early in his career, at Olympic Stadium, he hit a home run and proceeded to trot around the bases as slowly as humanly possible. The trot included a little Reggie Jackson touch, he held nothing back.

Later in the game, he was on third base and I couldn't resist saying, "I guess you're not planning on hitting many home runs, trots like that are for guys who don't."

As for me, the most emotion I ever displayed on the field was a little running in place out of the box on my 500th home run. My home run trots were over quickly and without fanfare. I hit a lot of them and couldn't afford to draw extra attention. I wasn't stupid, last thing I wanted was to disrespect any pitcher.

"I hit a lot of them," just so you know.

You know what I think is worse for the game than bat flipping? Being a passive aggressive shit-talker with a little humblebrag in him. Or maybe the entire bench and bullpen emptying during a road game because you hit a round-number home run.

Schmidt is not only ripped about the bat flipping, though. He's also real concerned about the infiltration of "Day-Glo accessories" and "crazy-colored gloves and bats" into the modern game, which…just…imagine being 66 years old and getting worked up about something called "Day-Glo."

It is a very weird thing to do, writing a whole piece criticizing modern ballplayers for being too flashy. It is also a weird choice to spend half that piece writing about all the flashy players you played against. Maybe this sort of showboatery has become more widespread, although there's no evidence for that here. That hardly matters, though. The game, and people playing it are different and "different" means "worse" for all these old guys—that's what this piece, and Goose's grousing, are about. Different = bad is an obvious fallacy, of course, but it's hard to imagine that preventing any of these complaints from being launched in the future. Anyway, that is Mike Schmidt's problem, not Jose Bautista's.

h/t HardBallTalk