http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-bat-flips-20150611-story.html
I don’t follow baseball closely, but I’m having a hard time imagining how bat flips could be seen as offensive. Is this the equivalent of excessive endzone celebrations in football?
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-bat-flips-20150611-story.html
I don’t follow baseball closely, but I’m having a hard time imagining how bat flips could be seen as offensive. Is this the equivalent of excessive endzone celebrations in football?
Historically, pitchers don’t like being shown up. Once upon a time, if you did that to Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson, or even Steve Carlton (to name but a few), you could be sure that your next time up you’d be ducking pitches the whole time if they didn’t just plunk you in the ribs. Hitting a ball hard and celebrating by flipping the bat like you’re the man and throwing your hands into the air definitely shows the pitcher up.
Now we have the kinder, gentler days where batters can crowd the plate and act however they want to because they know that the pitchers can’t brush them back without being warned or ejected, so they don’t even bother to show them any respect. For a purist like myself I think it’s asinine and we should bring back the bad old days when pitchers could go inside without worrying about being tossed. Only one player has ever been killed by a pitch, almost 100 years ago (Ray Chapman, 1920), and Tony Conigliaro/Dickie Thon-type incidents are memorable precisely because they are rare.
I’m not saying that the pitchers should dominate the game, but there should be some give and take. I think the bat flip is indicative of how much the balance has swung to the batters, and I’m not fond of it at all.
I think that if pitchers don’t like bat-flips, slow-trots, batters staring in admiration of their majestic home runs, and what-have-you, they have a sure-fire way for them to prevent such activities: get the batters out.
Seriously, these guys aren’t in little league any longer; they should be able to deal with their opponents’ celebrations…or else they should make sure their opponents have nothing to celebrate.
Bingo.
I’d like to see a return to the old days. I’m tired of these guys being handled with kid gloves. The whole point of going out to the ball park to bake to death on an afternoon in July was to see someone get beaned by a 90mph fastball. Now they wear helmets and pads and the pitchers get ejected because the batters can’t get out of the way of the ball. Why not just carry them around the bases too so they don’t hurt their feet. You can’t sharpen your spikes anymore, and God forbid the second baseman clotheslines the guy running from first. I blame the Yankees.
I agree with this. The idea that pitchers are owed “respect” in the form of not celebrating good hits or in the form of avoiding a perfectly legal batting stance because the pitcher “owns that part of the plate” is nonsense. Deliberately throwing at a batter should be an automatic suspension and a fine. Play the damn game and get the batter out. Fuck “respect.”
I’d be okay with them throwing at the Harold Reynoldses who promote it.
All in-game celebrations in team sports are look-at-me jerk off sessions. Just play the damn game. Celebrate if you actually win.
I agree with Suburban Plankton, but I’d also add that I think there’s a big difference between people flipping bats out of excitement, and people (I’m looking at you, David Ortiz) who flip their bats as a measured response, as if to say, “Look at what a bad-ass I am.” I would not mind if someone decided to plunk Ortiz or Jose Fernandez, for that matter.
But seriously, a bat-flip is about the last thing a pitcher on the mound should be worrying about. There are better ways to get revenge.
I love cocky sports players and if I don’t like them I like when they get come-uppance. You can’t tell who’s cocky if nobody is flipping a bat.
Bat flip? Pfft. Call me when baseball players start acting like soccer players. Taking their jersey off while running the bases, doing one of those kneeling-slidey things into every base after a home run, and most of all, falling down and writhing in pain after every strike thrown on the inside corner that the batter didn’t swing at. Then we have reasons for pitchers to take some revenge.
Nothing is more humiliating in baseball than giving up a home run.
Theres an old saying: act like you’ve been there before. If the fielding team is red-assed, and you hit a homer and rub it in their face, you or one of your teammates might have to play sweet chin music.
So being a jerk justifies attempted murder.
Bad example with the jersey, that’s an automatic yellow card.
pro baseball players are such whiny crybabies
I’d be OK with pitchers being able to hit batters with the ball as long as batters are able to hit pitchers with the bat, but, in total, it seems to make more sense to just play the game.
Are we talking Major League Baseball, or beer-league softball? Because the first case guys have at least a few hundred thousand (and maybe a few million) reasons to suck it up and deal with it.
On the other hand, if a beer league softball guy ostentatiously flips his bat, without irony or fun, particularly in a lopsided game, then I fully support him getting beaned next time up. Or even immediately while he’s standing there.
Only recently, IIRC (like 10 years ago). And that was only because some players wore undershirts with political messages (some which were… let’s say offensive) or religious messages.
I’m fine with bat flips. No big deal, IMO.
OK, now we’ve gone off the deep end. It is NOT attempted murder, any more than bodychecking is in hockey or tackling is in football, even though both of them can cause severe injury or death. It’s part of the game. For more than a century pitchers have brushed hitters back and/or hit them in retaliation for showboating. But now, NOW, it’s attempted murder. Give me a break. :rolleyes:
Considering there has only been one death from being hit by a pitch in more than 140 years of major league baseball and millions of fastballs thrown, it would seem to be a rather ineffective method of homicide.