Baseball’s ongoing debate concerning the propriety of exuberant behavior exhibited by players in the throes of celebration has been settled. The final verdict was rendered to thunderous applause by a post-homerun bat flip executed by Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista in the final game of the American League Divisional Series.

Of somewhat lesser note, that seventh inning three-run homerun also cemented his team’s lead and the ultimate series victory over the Texas Rangers.

Deadspin declared that “Jose Bautista’s Righteous Bat Flip Is the Only Thing That Matters.” While The New York Times observed that “Baseball has reached a flipping point.”

The Internet’s consensus view of those who would cast a raised eyebrow toward Bautista’s flip is that they are enemies of fun and – in the same breath – should be scorned for wanting to see baseball played “the right way.”

But while the bat flip fans are wrong – bat flipping is no more a part of the actual game of baseball in North America than gratuitous celebration is a part of any sport, with the possible exception of professional wrestling – what’s made the public discourse surrounding bat flipping – an otherwise innocuous sporting absurdity – so heated is the way that it has been used by some as an analogy to a larger policy debate about racial politics and immigration.

In the broadest possible terms, bat-flip fans endeavoring to soak a sports debate in politics – for instance, the Huffington Posts of the world – seek to support not only the self-expression of the players who flip bats, but also the “passion” and “intensity” of the culture that has engendered their propensity to do so. They dismiss the mores of the existing baseball culture as stand-ins for invidious discrimination and believe that to suggest a player should “play the right way” is a racial dog-whistle.

This reading, an example of critical theory in action, adds controversy and acrimony at the expense of clarity by opting to apply a cultural lens to an action that is no more Latin American than hamburgers are American.

The era of bat-flipping in Major League Baseball was ushered in, according to Vice, by African-American shortstop Jimmy Rollins in 2001 (though, here’s an instance of Tom Lawless flipping off in 1987). Supposing Vice‘s exhaustive scientific research is correct, and in light of the fact that the percentage of Latin American players in the league that year was 26 percent, or only 1 percent lower than it was a decade later in the solidly bat-flip era of 2012, it becomes apparent that bat-flipping is a scourge correlated with no race.

Regardless of the way they supposedly play the game, when in the United States, Latin-American players have exhibited no predisposition to bat flip. Instead, it is a practice that has gained momentum by preying on a decidedly mutable characteristic – personality.

Nonetheless, the racial politics that have been foisted upon bat-flipping has cooled opposition to it for the simple reason that opposing it has become synonymous with prejudice. Hence, the debate over bat-flipping is over. Flipped bats are our future.

Yet, the foiled argument’s coda bears consideration. As unwritten rules and “playing the right way” are ushered out of sports, they will be replaced by formal proscriptive sportsmanship guidelines. Those measures, and not a quietly understood language of respect, will become the true enemies of expression in baseball.

 

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