David Ortiz weighs in on bat flips and it's glorious
You don't like bat flips? You probably aren't going to like what Big Papi had to say.
By
Matt Snyder
•
2 min read
The past few weeks in off-field matters have been pretty divisive in Major League Baseball. We've had a lot of discussions about how much kids can be in the clubhouse and there was also that Hall of Famer who got a little bit curmudgeonly. I promised I'd ignore him from now on so I will.
Instead, David Ortiz can just do the talking for us regarding bat flips. Via the Boston Globe:
“Whenever somebody criticizes a power hitter for what we do after we hit a home run, I consider that person someone who is not able to hit a homer ever in his life,” Ortiz told the Globe. “Look at who criticizes the power hitters in the game and what we do. It’s either a pitcher or somebody that never played the game. Think about it. You don’t know that feeling. You don’t know what it takes to hit a homer off a guy who throws 95 miles per hour. You don’t know anything about it. And if you don’t know anything about it, [shut up]. [Shut up]. Seriously. If you don’t know anything about it, [shut up], because that is another level.”
With 503 career regular season homers, Ortiz definitely knows that feeling pretty well.
More? Yes, more:
“When a power hitter does a bat flip, you don’t hurt nobody. If I hit a homer, did a bat flip, threw it in the stands and break a couple of people’s heads, I understand. But that’s not what it is,” he added. “When you see a pitcher do a fist pump when they strike out any one of us, or jumping on the mound, I don’t see anybody talking about that. Nobody’s talking about that. Act the same way when we do a bat flip. It’s emotion. It is, ‘I got you.’ Just like a pitcher does, ‘I got you,’ when they strike [you] out. As a hitter, I don’t mind. You got myself out? Good for you. They work hard to do that [expletive]. But when I get you, good for me. Period.”
There's a lot more where that came from, too. Check out the entire Globe article for the rest. It's a beautiful response to all this backlash against "today's game," which is just revisionist history. Ortiz even mentions how much of a legendary trash talker Babe Ruth was.
On top of that, I'll reiterate a point that I've made like, I don't know, one million times: If you don't like seeing players have fun, maybe stop watching sports.
The man we know as "Big Papi" is entering his final big-league season. Here's hoping his last homer involves an epic bat flip.
