There are few situations comparable to a player hitting a home run that clinches a playoff series when it comes to the drama of it.
Toronto Blue Jays fans have had anniversaries of a couple in recent weeks to think about and quite frankly one stands head and shoulders over the other.
I'm here to tell millenials and recent fans, the Jose Bautista bat flip home run in Game 5 of the 2015 American League Divisional Series is a weaker sibling to the Joe Carter one in 1993 against Philadelphia in Game 6 of the World Series.
One huge factor is that one is in the final series of the season and the other was in a round of the playoffs that didn't exist a couple of decades ago. It would have been like Carter's Jays knocking off the
Another is the length of time in modern baseball games. The Carter game, game six, was a fairly long 3 hours, 27 minutes. There were nine pitchers used by the top Carter walked up to the plate in the bottom of the ninth.
The Bautista game lasted 3:37, with only six pitchers used and fewer runs scored. Baseball games in the last ten years have become excruciatingly long. I have no idea how neutral fans are supposed to care when a divisional series game slips past the 11 p.m. hour. Have a winner by the time I go to bed or you've lost me.
Bautista's homer? It happened in the seventh inning and made the game 6-3. Happened as the Texas Rangers were imploding all over the infield. Shortstop Elvis Andrus and first baseman Mitch Moreland booted the ball all over the place and were hopeless as the game wore on. But even with all that, Texas could have come back with three runs against a Jays' set-up guy, or even Roberto Osuna in the ninth. There are so many things that could have gone wrong right after that.
Carter's home run completely extinguished the series and left no doubt.
But the thing that gets me the most even as a neutral fan was the absolute joy that Carter had circling the bases. He's looking at the fans, at the dugout, at the third base coach and looking for other people to share in his joy.
The Bautista moment was all about him. It was all about the staredown of Texas pitcher Sam Dyson just after he hit the ball, and then all about the subsequent bat flip. 鈥淭his is me hitting a home run off you鈥� is what Bautista's body language is telling me. It's the bat flip that spawned a hundred memes.
Carter is looking to share in the joy with his teammates at home plate and the furthest thing from his mind is figuring out how to show up Philadelphia pitcher Mitch Williams. 鈥淭his feeling is awesome,鈥� Carter's body language says to me.
To this day, all players involved with the Texas Rangers want to bean Bautista in the rear end. It'll likely continue as Bautista signs with another team this winter for the 2018 season. I don't think anyone from Philadelphia will begrudge anything to do with Carter. Heck, they probably wanted to sign him even with his defensive mobility liabilities later in his career.
So when the Blue Jays Bro in your life starts talking about how great the Bautista home run was and how Rogers Centre blew up like nothing else before, you know better. You saw something that will likely never be improved upon no matter how many gifs you see.
