Full Disclaimer: I am 100% a Blue Jays fan. Now that this fact is out of the way, I want to address the big brawl from Sunday in which Jose Bautista got jacked by Odor. My issue with this is less about the punch and more about the events that led to it. The unwritten rules of baseball are completely ridiculous and antiquated. I do understand why people don’t like Bautista. He acts like he disagrees with every single call that goes against him (as does Tim Duncan, but nobody hates him). So let’s keep that in mind. It is very likely several of the players on the Rangers already didn’t care for Jose’s act.
This is where I stop however. The Rangers are mad that a guy celebrated one of the most dramatic home runs in recent history. It certainly was the biggest of his career. His team had been down 2-0 in a best of five series, and came back to win it after a crazy sequence which saw the Rangers just take the lead the previous inning when Russell Martin threw the ball off of a bat. It was completely dramatic and huge, and yes, he celebrated some. I would ask you, when exactly are you allowed to celebrate? In my opinion, one of the major reasons baseball is consistently losing the younger viewers is because of this old school mentality. I for one love emotion, and especially seeing it in the heat of the moment. If a player literally stares at the pitcher and talks junk to the pitcher the entire way around the bases, I can see that crossing the line, but a guy just clinched a playoff series for his team, who at the time had the longest active playoff drought in MLB, and a dramatic one at that.
It seems most younger fans agree. Look up who sells the most merchandise, and number 1 is Bryce Harper. Tell me again how baseball fans don’t want to see any emotion in the game? Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take a look at the idiotic way in which Texas “evened” the score (side note, does hitting a guy with a pitch count the same as winning a playoff series?). These two teams have played all 8 games they will play against each other this season. The Rangers waited until game 8, during Bautista’s last at bat to drill him. Hitting him at all is stupid, but waiting until the last game and the last at bat so you don’t have to answer for it is also ridiculous.
Now onto the fight itself. It was a 1 run game, so I understand why Bautista took first without charging the mound here. He likely thought the best way to get even was to score the tying run. Once the double play ball happened, he knew he wouldn’t score so he went it with a late slide. Replay will show that Odor seemingly was trying to throw at Bautista and not to first base, but we can’t know for sure. I completely get Odor’s response to the situation. He felt Bautista was trying to injure him, but to be fair, you could say the Rangers tried to injure Bautista. I actually think both Odor’s and Bautista’s response to the satiation were justified. Both felt the other team was trying to injure them, so both took matters into their own hands to defend themselves.
The bigger issue is that this situation occurred at all. The fact that the Rangers felt that Bautista so disrespected not just the game, but them, is the problem. People love the passion of the NFL, and the NBA, but baseball, nope, can’t show any joy. This is also completely ignoring the racial undertones present here when we see that most of the guys showing emotions are latin players playing the game the way they grew up playing it. It sounds easy to tell these guys to show no emotion, but that is in their baseball DNA.
When I see old school baseball types complain about this, I feel the same way I do when I hear people complain about end-zone celebrations. The best way to stop a celebration isn’t to drill a guy, it’s to stop a guy from hitting the home run, or scoring the touchdown in the first place. The times, and the players are changing, and if baseball doesn’t stop it with this ridiculous “unwritten rules” pattern, it will continue to lose the young demographic.
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