TORONTO – No sport gets driven into zealous fits of self-flagellation by its antiquated and nebulous mores as often as baseball.
Surviving this game of failure is a task difficult enough on its own without needing to navigate an amorphous minefield of unwritten etiquette, a bunch of nonsense that peaked in stupidity when the Texas Rangers exacted vengeance on Jose Bautista for his bat flip in the 2015 post-season. Thankfully, celebrations of home runs and fist pumps after strikeouts have since gradually gained tolerance, if not outright acceptance as a younger generation of players has started shifting the culture.
Still, there’s always something for the self-appointed, holy keepers of the Right Way To Play The Game to pick away at, which is how the splendid Fernando Tatis Jr., one of the best things happening in baseball right now, ended up at the centre of an absurdity maelstrom.
What did he do? Well, he had the audacity to, gasp, swing at a 3-0 pitch with the bases loaded in the eighth inning of a game his San Diego Padres led 10-3 over the Rangers. Because Tatis is quickly becoming one of the sport’s best players, that swing turned into his 11th home run.
The problem is that swinging at 3-0 when your team is up big runs counter to the unwritten rules of baseball. In this case, you’re not supposed to run up the score on your opponent, and the convention is to gift a strike to a pitcher who put himself into a hole of his own making.
Afterwards, Rangers manager Chris Woodward, the well-respected former Toronto Blue Jays shortstop, fuelled a news cycle by saying the unwritten rules are constantly being challenged, but adding, “I didn’t like it personally. You’re up by seven in the eighth inning, it’s typically not a good time to swing 3-0.”
Even as he tried to walk that back Tuesday, saying perhaps he’s been “scarred from the years I’ve been in the game” and “that doesn’t mean that he was wrong to swing 3-0, maybe that’s the new norm, maybe that’s OK,” the baseball world lined up on one side or the other.
Asked where he stood, Blue Jays second baseman Cavan Biggio, like Tatis a second-generation player, talked through both sides of the debate, pointing out that, “you take a fastball, strike one, now he throws you his good secondary pitch, now you’re 3-2 and you’re battling – that seems a little unfair just because you’re up by seven runs.”
“Like, why should I have to give this guy something because he fell behind three straight pitches?” he added.
Good point.
At the same time, Biggio, pointed out, “you also have got to look at it from a standpoint of you’re up by seven, bases loaded, top of the eighth.”
Still, he eventually decided that “I’m going to take Tatis’ side of things, with the offensive game that it is nowadays. I know seven runs is a lot of runs, but in my opinion, no lead is really safe until you get really far out there.”
Proving his point is that just last week, for example, the Blue Jays erased an eight-run deficit, although they had more than two innings to do it in. Yet, piling on is bad according to an unclear and unstated set of standards that aren’t universally acknowledged or accepted?
Tatis himself said that “I know a lot of unwritten rules, but I was kind of lost on this one … probably next time, I’ll take a pitch now that I learned from it.”
Is that really the lesson here, though? That hitters, when their team is up big, are obligated to gift pitchers a strike when they can’t find the zone? That at some point, you’re supposed to let up? That you’re supposed to accept these rites of yesteryear, no matter how ridiculous they are?
“My dad instilled a lot of values in me growing up in this game of baseball and those are values that really have taken me to where I am today – respecting the game, respecting your teammates and respecting your opponents,” said Biggio. “If you stay within those boundaries, then you’re fine. That’s where you can have a little debate with yourself about is old school unwritten rules: Is this showing up yourself, your family, your teammates or even the other team? If you feel like you’re not, then I don’t really see a problem with that. On a topic like that, I don’t think (Tatis) was really showing up the other team or other pitcher, for that matter.”
Here’s the thing, though – how are you going to build consensus around something as subjective as that? In recent years, the Blue Jays have had plenty of players that walked the line. Yunel Escobar was far too flashy at shortstop. Bautista’s antics were disrespectful. Marcus Stroman always seemed to be on the wrong side of someone’s imaginary line.
Not to be lost is that the complaining typically comes from the losing squad, and pointing the finger at others is a whole lot easier than looking in the mirror (Sam Dyson, looking in your direction).
To that end, Blue Jays catcher Caleb Joseph relayed a story from his days at Lipscomb University, when he was complaining about an opponent that stole a base in the ninth inning of a romp – another no-no.
“He ended up scoring and I was hot, I was heated, I was so frustrated – that’s not how you play the game, that’s garbage, you’re already winning, blah, blah, blah,” said Joseph. “My coach came in and said, ‘Why don’t you divert some of that anger into not being in that position? Maybe instead of being mad at them, we should just focus on us and why we got into that position.’ Immediately it clicked and that’s always stayed with me.”
Or, as Blue Jays shortstop prospect Kevin Smith tweeted:
Everything in sport/business/life comes down to one sentence.
If You Don’t Like It, Play Better.
— Kevin Smith (@KJS_4) August 18, 2020
So, rather than being mad at Tatis, the Rangers should be mad at Juan Nicasio for walking two batters to load the bases and then falling behind in the count. Rather than having reliever Ian Gibaut try to throw at the next batter, Manny Machado, as retribution, they should take ownership of their own failings.
Major League Baseball reinforced that point by suspending Gibaut for three games and Woodward for one, but none of that is going to change all the unwritten nonsense. It’s on the players and coaches who perpetuate these dated practices and keep baseball from eating itself when it should be celebrating a player like Tatis.
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