Why Do So Many Baseball Fans Hate Fun
Saw a dumb take on Twitter and since I didn’t have any better ideas I felt like this is as good a time as any to do some easy dunks.
https://twitter.com/AstrosRants/status/1398813903925219333
This much salt could cause a slug genocide. Also, love the irony of an Astros fan complaining about following unwritten rules when the Astros can’t follow the written ones.
I don’t watch a lot of Baseball anymore but every time I think about starting again I see arguments like this one and I remember why I bailed. Well, besides the fact that Baseball is boring and slow and one of the most exciting teams of the past decade ended up being a bunch of cheaters oh wow look at that I ended up bringing up the Astros again. Anyway, fuck this dumb attitude towards fun. Dingers are cool, celebrations and showboating are fine. Good, even!
The NFL waged a war on fun for a long time. It got worse and worse to the point they were flagging even the mildest of celebrations and everything snapped. The old huffy attitude that ruled the fanbase finally got ignored in favor of the younger demographics who actually like emotion and fun. Now teams and players celebrate all the time and the angry old codgers just grumble silently to themselves. We won that one. I don’t know if we’ll win the Baseball fight. Baseball has been around a lot longer and is more steeped in tradition. The stupid “unwritten rules” that define so many aspects of the sport aren’t going to come free without a lot of pushback. This is honestly a shame because if they did, Baseball could become interesting and fun again. No major sport needs to evolve more than “America’s Game”. Just like America Baseball is stuck in the past.
It can start improving by not get mad about bat flips. Fucking bat flips. Have you ever seen a bat flip? So for context with the angry Houston Astros fan above is this play:
Fernando Tatis Jr. is so cool.
(via @MLB)pic.twitter.com/F4ZSoFuiVH
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) May 30, 2021
Fernando Tatis, one of the best current players and a genuine joy to watch, smashed a 3-run homer in the 9th to tie the game, which the Padres would then go on to win. To celebrate his monster dinger to the upper deck, he stood still and admired it for a second, flipped a bat, and did a little dance at third base. That’s it? That’s the kind of showboating that turns people off? A bat flip is less showboat-y than spiking a football. You take the big whack stick and toss it to the side with some style. That’s it? When I first heard of bat flips causing people to be mad, I was expecting them to be these big grand gestures that fling the bat at other players and cause harm. Nope! It’s just a gentle toss with style. This is not worth getting mad at whatsoever. Bat flips are practically innocent. Bat flips rule. Everyone should flip bats when they sock a dinger. Flip more bats. If you got mad because a guy flipped a bat to the point where you want that player to be purposefully injured with a fastball something is wrong with you.
Which kind of comes back to those unwritten rules. Something is very very wrong with a sport that hates expressions of joy and accepts retaliatory strikes in the manor of a pitch hit. One harms nothing but the pride of an opponent. The other causes actual physical damage…because the pitcher is mad at the guy at the plate achieving something and being happy about it. Unwritten rules are unwritten rules because actually putting them in writing exposed how fucking bonkers they are. You might say “well if you don’t showboat you won’t get hit” but to that, I say this: If you don’t want to have a guy showboat…don’t give them a reason to celebrate. Strike them out. Catch the fly ball. Don’t throw a petty tantrum because you failed, they celebrated, and you are a pissy ego boy. You can’t get styled on if you don’t let them style on you. Can’t be disrespected if you don’t give them a chance to disrespect you.
Which kind of comes down to the real root of it: petty salt. While plenty of these idiotic pearl-clutching opinions exist in their dumbest, truest form, you mostly see it used as a pathetically transparent defense mechanism by a fan of a team that just got owned. In the take I used above, the guy is an Astros fan. The team that just happened to be on the receiving end of Tatis’ heroic game-tying dinger and who eventually lost. Instead of just admitting he’s fucking mad the team lost a good chance to win the game, he’s coating his salt in the “sanctity” of the sport with this bullshit “well this is just disrespectful behavior” nonsense to cover it up. Instead of being sad that his team blew it, he’s decided to pretend the honor of the sport was damaged because the guy did a cool little dance on third. Fuck that. Admit you’re pissed the team lost and shut the fuck up. Really, is there a more understandable time to celebrate than hitting a game-changing home run with 2 outs in the 9th? I’d have been moonwalking the bases if I pulled off the kind of clutch hit Tatis had. I don’t think there was a more fitting moment to flip that bat.
When it comes to showboating, I understand why people on the losing team get so angry and use the defense they do. It hurts. It hurts to see someone beat you, and be happy about it. It stings. The line between a taunt and a celebration can be exceptionally blurry and nobody feels good when they’ve been kicked in the gut. But that’s how it works. You take the L and you get ’em next time. Not with unsportsmanlike bullshit like purposeful injury, but kicking their ass at the game. Fairly. Something the Astros are admittedly bad at doing but you know.
By the way, taunting is cool and good, and as long as no physical attacks are part of the taunt then let it happen. Let batters flip bats. Let pitchers fist pump and wave goodbye to batters they struck out. Let catchers twerk. Most players probably still won’t do much, which is what I think these idiots fear will happen if this is “allowed”. No. There will always be the Calvin Johnsons and Tim Duncans to balance out the Terrell Owens…es and Russell Westbrooks. The Mike Trouts to the Fernando Tatises. As long as the displays aren’t vulgar or obscene or cause physical harm or delay the game, let it happen. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Professional sports are highly charged competitive challenges, let the players blow off that tension in the moment when they’ve earned it.
Although I will say there is one point where I agree you shouldn’t showboat. When you are losing hopelessly with no chance of victory, you probably shouldn’t celebrate too much. Then it’s just cringe.
Yeah I don’t understand when it became “disrespectful” to watch where the ball is going after crushing it. The NFL has oodles of celebrations and dances, so why can’t a baseball players high step to home plate?
Not to mention pitchers will strike someone out, spin around and scream “LETS GOOO” and everyone is fine with that
Bat flips date back to *at least* the great Mickey Mantle, and it would be difficult to find an individual more respected in– and respectful of– the game. This pearl-clutching, manufactured outrage is the opposite of respect or manliness, and I eagerly await its eventual demise. The bat flip is a classic, elegant, seamless celebration. Don’t dance around the bases (unless you’re a pitcher dinging your first homer in a World Series game after a 10+ year career — then I expect something epic).
I don’t necessarily want a flip after every homer, but if it’s a go-ahead? Flip it. If it’s a game-winner? Flip it and stomp the last half-dozen steps. Celebrate when there’s something to celebrate. Yeah, it’s an arbitrary line, but… if your team’s still losing, ain’t nothin’ to celebrate yet (again– first HR ever by a long-term vet can be an exception, but, typically….).
Also if yr an Astros fan you should probably just shut the fuck up in general for the next few years.
Yeah, It’s hard to complain about the unwritten rules when you don’t follow the actually written rules
It sometimes feels like there are far more “unwritten” rules than the ones actually in the official rulebook. Manager Tony LaRussa, who’s an old crank anyway, actually agreed with HIS OWN BATTER getting thrown at simply because said batter dared swing at a pitch (and hit a homer) in a blowout game.
One of the hard parts about marketing baseball is that is such a slower, more leisurely pace than other sports. So it needs more joyful energy, not less.
The White Sox put together one of the most fun teams in baseball and then hired Tony Goddamn LaRussa to basically put the brakes on fun.
Also, they traded Tatis for James Shields five years ago. Every day the trade gets worse and worse, and I had a meltdown WHEN IT HAPPENED
Baseball is fun, and one way it’s more fun is when you can tell the players are having fun playing it. I wish I could enjoy my job the way Fernando Tatis loves his.
Astros fans have been extremely soft and defensive the past few years. I get that their only championship team is forever tainted and nobody will ever respect the title, but they have been so whiny about everyone being mad at their team over it. I also understand not wanting teams throwing at their hitters, like you’re saying causing them harm isn’t exactly the right way to go about it, but since the league did diddly squat to punish them I can get why the players and fans aren’t exactly upset about it either.
I kind of get them being upset about it, because it’s pretty clear that like half the league was cheating (the most recent example being the comments by Erik Kratz), but the media only reports it as “the astros did it no one else”.
That said I”m an orioles fan so I know my team hasn’t been cheating we suck
At this point I kinda wish the O’s would cheat so they’d be worth watching again
I’m a Rockies fan (for my sins) and my take is this: If there’s any truth in what Kratz has said, any proof of it – I want heads to roll. I want the Rox to be punished the way the Astros weren’t. However, all we have is one ex-player’s word. He’s claimed a lot of things, but has yet to back it up. The stats guy who went through a lot of Astros games and verified the cheating claims initially has already gone through a lot of footage of the teams accused of cheating this time round and found nothing. That of course doesn’t mean they’re innocent, but you still can’t crucify a team based on one guy’s word.
We have absolute proof and confessions that the Astros cheated (confessions we only got because they were promised no repercussions, which is utter horseshit), so we should absolutely crucify them at every chance.
Maybe Kratz can team up with Canseco and we can enjoy a gritty reboot of The Mitchell Report.
Yeah, so far every time there’s been a ‘They weren’t the only ones cheating’ thing, it’s been miniscule or completely unproven.
Forgive me for not believing it.
I mean all we had initially was the words of a disgruntled Astros player who signed with the team’s biggest rival. It took an investigation for everything else to come up. But somehow we’re not allowed to investigate any other team unless there is hard solid evidence BEFORE the investigation? Get out of here with that bullshit.
The other thing to keep in mind is who is saying this. Erik Kratz is one of those backup catcher guys that hung around the league forever despite being really bad at baseball, because he had such high character and leadership skills. His word carries a lot of meaning.
Other teams HAVE been investigated. Get out of here with THAT bullshit.
Shit like this is why baseball is going to (thankfully) die out soon.
Or you could just let people enjoy it? I like baseball a heck of a lot more than football personally.
No cause them clowns don’t let us enjoy fun stuff like pimping homeruns. So screw them.
The reason baseball gets all the crotchety old farts whining about stuff like this is that baseball is their last bastion. In other sports, their complaints get drowned out by younger fans who by and large prefer the celebrations and stuff, but since the younger generations just refuse to get into baseball and would prefer to see it dead (see above comment), they have free rein to unleash their garbage takes in an echo chamber and MLB panders to them because they are the ones paying the bills
You nailed it. Baseball easily has the largest contingent of old-head fans among all sports and it shows. These are the same people that bitched and moaned about arbitrary shit like the NFL and NBA “not having enough defense” among other things. The good thing is that these morons are even being weeded out in baseball, but unlike other leagues, they still have some sway since they make up a much larger portion of the overall fanbase. Give it another 5-10 years and they’ll be gone from baseball too, along with their dumbass unwritten rules.
I highly doubt baseball dies out anytime soon. The NFL and NBA both experienced these same growing pains nearly a decade ago and eventually moved away from them for the better. The MLB can and will eventually follow suit.
This MLB/baseball aging thing kinda reminds me of the state of Formula 1 a few years back. The old fart who held commercial rights (so old he’s not even a boomer, btw) wasn’t interested in promoting the sport to younger audiences, because in his mind the only fans he cared about were those with deep pockets, which happened to be mostly middle aged men. Consider the product on the track was also lacking excitement, and you get both young people completely ignoring F1, and existing fans getting disengaged, which happened to be my case.
But in 2017 commercial rights were sold to a media group that promptly changed course, and they have been very successful at attracting new fans. A few things they did: new branding, heavy social media presence, new race presentation, partnerships like the one with Netflix (Drive To Survive). After 7 years, I finally started following it again, though the main reason was excitement towards new regulations that aim at making a more level playing field, including a cost cap. Most of them were pushed back to next year because of the pandemic, but in the meantime I was already captured by this new approach.
>Although I will say there is one point where I agree you shouldn’t showboat. When you are losing hopelessly with no chance of victory, you probably shouldn’t celebrate too much. Then it’s just cringe.
I’ll always remember back in ’14 when Lamarr Houston of Chicago tore his ACL after sacking Brady in the 4th quarter…in a 51-23 loss…
Technically, Houston sacked Garoppolo just before his injury – which kinda makes it worse, doesn’t it?
Baseball honestly needs an “overhaul”. It is just really archaic and does not appeal to nearly as many people in this country as it should. It isn’t going to happen though, not in this culture.
I’ve always said this about Cam Newton and his dancing.
Don’t like it? Don’t let him score. Actually stop him and he won’t dance.
I’m old so I feel this way about over time rules too. Don’t get the ball first? Play defense like you are supposed to and it won’t matter. Oh well.
This is why people don’t care for the MLB. Players have to follow a set of rules someone unofficially came up over 100 years ago to not hurt the pitcher’s feelings while making the sport’s most exciting moments dull and boring. Let players have their moments, it’s a lot more fun that way.
I feel like there would be a lot of overlap between the “RESPECT THE GAME” circle and the “DON’T BE A SNOWFLAKE” (21st century meaning) circle ….
Just putting this out there for people like our man Dave, but Astros Rants is a noted ironic poster in the baseball twitter community. He just plays it very straight, unfortunately, a little too straight and he ended up getting his home address, name, etc doxxed, but before anybody goes and tries to harass him, he has admitted it’s a joke account.
https://chriskirsch.medium.com/infamous-twitter-user-doxxed-by-parody-account-d9f075d6ef74
As long as you don’t hurt anyone and don’t leave anything that a janitor will have to clean up later, taunt away. Dance on the logo for all I care. The only thing funnier than a good taunt is the taunted team getting mad enough to win the game anyways and taunt back in exactly the same fashion
I thought things were getting better until La Russa got re-hired. Those ancient joyless fossils need to be gone for good.
The worst part is that this iteration of the White Sox seems to have the potential of being a fun team. When he was the Cardinals manager it wasn’t as much of a waste because that franchise already had being joyless scolds baked into their personality for decades.
I really wish the White Sox had a stronger rivalry with some other team, so fans could taunt La Russa mercilessly about his DUIs on road trips.
I don’t watch baseball, but that celebration seems entirely appropriate for a single play that literally shifted the entire course of the game. Map it out and I guarantee the “chance to win” before that swing was very low (down by 3, 2 outs in the 9th), that’s like a 5% win chance maybe. after that swing the win chance was looking a lot healthier. Seems fair to celebrate
Ah yes the MLB and it’s laundry list of unwritten rules…
Propping up the sensibilities of their perceived baseball golden age: the 1920s.
When your sport’s paragon ideals are from a goddamn century ago, maybe a few things need to change…
That “AstrosRants” guy has been making the absolute worst imaginable hot takes for years now. He’s far from the first guy to go all “rEsPeCt ThE gAmE” but he’s proved that he’s particularly not worth listening to for a long time now.
I work in an office and when I figure out an elegant solution to a thorny problem, you bet I get up and do a little victory dance. If a cube rat like me does it, Fernando Tatis should definitely be able to celebrate his wins.
Lets also not forget the legion of butthurt Celtics fans defending that guy who threw the water bottle at Kyrie Irving’s head for daring to scuff his shoe on the center court logo. The tenacity of a man to stop on a painting of a leprechaun, Boston’s most sacred symbol.
*insert Astros cheating scandal jokes*
Now wait and see how the Astro fan implodes.