Welcome to Snyder’s Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it’s free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you’ll get smarter, though. That’s a money-back guarantee. Let’s get to it.
When a player hits a home run and celebrates, what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t?
Unfortunately, it seems like this is a question in baseball that we have to deal with far too often. There’s just so much consternation over it.
We’re been hearing for years about the so-called “unwritten” rules of baseball and players have long attempted to police decorum, both regarding teammates and opposing players. Generally speaking, it comes off as an individual decision — the eye of the beholder! — and often what’s acceptable from your favorite team all of a sudden becomes egregious when it happens against your favorite team.
Personally, I think the biggest point of discussion when it comes to Major League Baseball is that these are professional athletes. They are adults. If you don’t want a player to show you up, as a pitcher, don’t allow a home run. Likewise, from the hitter perspective, if you don’t want to see a pitcher celebrate a strikeout, don’t strike out.
That is always going to be my overarching rule of thumb.
In terms of the specific celebrations, I’ve long been a proponent of every player just being himself. Some like to go with a bat toss, some like to walk a few steps and watch the home run and others just like to run right away and make sure to not show anyone up. I’m a huge “to each his/her/their own” guy and don’t want players to feel like they have to conform to what others think they should do. That means I’m good with bat flips or walking a few steps, in general, but I don’t want to force players to do it if they aren’t comfortable.
Kris Bryant once said something along the lines of a pitcher probably feels bad enough after coughing up a bomb, so he doesn’t see the need to make him feel worse. That’s cool. You do you, Kris. But others want to style it up and I’m all for that, too.
Again, though, there are times where players might look a little foolish by doing too much. We’re smart enough to realize that, while the player was perfectly within his rights to do his celebration, we’re also perfectly within our rights to make fun of him. When do we accept and say that was a cool celebration and when do we call a violation and mock the player?
Let’s run through some scenarios.
Scenario 1: The major game-changer
The game is tied or close in the late innings and all of a sudden, BOOM, a monster shot to swing things toward his team.
If a player hits one like this, there’s very little he could do that would make me say he’s out of line. The first example that came to mind here was Jose Bautista’s playoff homer in Toronto against the Rangers. The Rangers and their fans hated him for it. There were multiple fights/near-fights stemming from this.
That was to break a tie in a playoff clincher. He didn’t even stand there that long, really, given how monumental and prodigious that bomb was. You cannot convince me that he didn’t anything wrong. It’s just sour grapes to get upset about it.
Again, if you are the pitcher and don’t like it, make a better pitch. I wouldn’t say this in Little League or even in high school, but there are adults. It’s a high-stakes world, man. You can take it like a man instead of whining.
The ruling: It’s all absolutely acceptable.
Scenario 2: The blowout, tack-on homer
Imagine that it’s 14-1 in the ninth inning and a position player is pitching for the team trailing. A hitter on the team ahead by 13 runs digs in and, SMASH, it’s a long ball.
Again, my general rule would be to side with the player deciding to be himself and celebrate the homer however he pleases, but I also think we can let a little common sense and decency seep into the situation here. Barring an extreme circumstance like it being the player’s first career home run or something, I think you probably gotta put aside the celebration and just hustle a bit around the bases with your head down. The game is already over and celebrating taking a position player deep is pretty lame and should be beneath a big-leaguer. I don’t often love going with, “you’re better than that,” but in this scenario, every MLB hitter is absolutely better than that.
We could probably discuss the score being a little closer and the home run being hit off an actual, MLB-caliber pitcher and I’d be much more lenient, but there certainly comes a point in time where it just looks a bit outrageous to overly celebrate.
The ruling: Exercise discretion, especially if the homer came against a position player.
Scenario 3: Your team is getting blown out
A player steps the plate in the ninth inning with his team trailing 14-1. THWACK (yes, I rather enjoy using onomatopoeia in describing home runs), it’s a home run. The deficit has been cut to 14-2.
Again, keeping in mind that I always want the players to simply be themselves, I think it feels like any celebration would have pretty terrible optics here. A player stylin’ and profilin’ on a home run that cuts the deficit to 12 in the ninth inning not only looks foolish, it has the appearance of “I care about myself a lot more than the team.”
The ruling: Your team is getting destroyed. Do not celebrate.
Scenario 4: Personal history
This doesn’t seem to happen nearly as much, as there’s been so much player movement from organization to organization for years and that means a good number of players who see each other on opposite sides of the diamond have been teammates and even friends before.
Still, you see it every once in a while and it’s human nature that grudges will be held in the world of sports. I mentioned the Bautista home run above and the Rangers absolutely held a grudge against him.
I think there’s room for additional lenience when it comes to personal history. Professional sports are a figurative battle and these players are also human beings. Of course they are going to show a bit extra emotion when they come out on top against a hated foe.
This one is trickier, as we often don’t have a way of knowing that there’s beef between players and also, how much lenience is too much?
There isn’t a hard-and-fast rule or anything, but I think we’re safe in going with the “you know it when you see it” corollary. So a little bit more excitement and celebration in cases where it looks like maybe there’s bad personal history is acceptable and we’ll hold off on judgement.
The ruling: We’ll be more lenient, to an extent, and err on the side of allowing more celebration.
If the players can’t contain themselves, however, I’m throwing my virtual flag. Like this hilarious mess in Atlanta in 2013.
Absolutely preposterous. No, it wasn’t just Carlos Gomez, either, as at least Brian McCann (the LVP of the highlight) and probably Freddie Freeman did not cover themselves in glory. It is funny, though, I’ll give them all that. We are here to be entertained, after all.
And that’s really the bottom line. Entertain us and don’t go crazy making a fool of yourself, or else we’ll point and laugh. It doesn’t have to be so serious.
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