It wasn’t so much that Jose Bautista unleashed the pure-attitude king-hell mother of all bat flips during Game 5 Wednesday, it was that the Rangers took notice and Ken Rosenthal still saw fit to ask him about it afterward.
Wherever we’re going, I guess we’re not there yet.
The Baseball Codes 
I don’t understand any of the objections to this bat flip. Were they even watching the game?
I’m of the general feeling that bat flips should be ‘earned’, and if ever there was an earned bat flip, it was that. It had all the necessary components:
– batter known for hitting home runs
– absolute no-doubter
– significant home run
– critical game
– already high emotions/revenge (optional, but it doesn’t hurt to push this one into epic territory)
It’s more disrespectful when it’s a guy who hit two homers all season or it’s a wallscraper or the team is already up by a bunch of runs or the game is inconsequential. This bat flip was definitely appropriate.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Although the way things are going I’ll probably try.
The Astros took notice?
I haven’t been able to keep my Texas teams straight since Earl Campbell retired.
I did a blog post about how the pic of the bat flip was worth a thousand words:https://thinkoutsidethebooth.wordpress.com/2015/10/15/a-pictures-worth-a-thousand-words/
True that.
I have no real problem with the bat flip itself (heck, I was riding the emotional letdown of the top of the inning and the craziness that lead to the tie score), and he’s made some interesting bat flips before, but I took notice of how long he stood there before flipping it. If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn that he homered off Darren O’Day (at least he didn’t take his time with the home run trot!). While most of the Toronto media were fine with it, there’s something about his immediate reaction before tossing the bat that didn’t quite sit right with me.
He’s an emotional guy, and he was annoyed with Jeff Banister, but other than that, I do believe that he wasn’t trying to show up the Rangers. Unfortunately, they felt slighted, and I can see why they felt slighted, so we can probably see a plunking in the near future.
That may be the litmus. If Texas lets this one go — if we see no response when the teams meet again next year — it’ll serve as at least partial proof of the merit of Bautista’s actions. (There’ll still be room for debate, of course, just like there’ll be room for debate if Texas ends up drilling him come April.)