The Yankees traded for Chapman, even though they already had a successful closer, because they understood what kind of teammate Miller was. He didn’t complain at all about changing roles, picking up nine saves during the time Chapman was suspended or otherwise unavailable, and pitching very successfully in the eighth inning when Chapman had the glory (and save opportunity) in the ninth.
The Yankees traded both Chapman and Miller that July. Chapman went to the Chicago Cubs and helped them win their first World Series championship in 108 years. Miller went to the Cleveland Indians, where manager Terry Francona took advantage of his unselfishness and turned him into one of the best postseason bullpen weapons in baseball history.
Miller had just one save in 10 appearances in that postseason, but he was so dominant he was named Most Valuable Player in the American League Championship Series and nearly got the Indians their first World Series title in 68 years.
While managers like to have set roles and many relievers like to have an idea when they’re going to be used, more than one manager has said, “Your role is to pitch when I put you in the game, and hopefully get outs.”
When pitchers don’t understand that, it can lead to trouble and sometimes it can lead to roster moves that might otherwise sound surprising.
At the July 31 trading deadline in 2018, the Washington Nationals sent reliever Brandon Kintzler to the Chicago Cubs. A day later, they designated reliever Shawn Kelley for assignment. General manager Mike Rizzo acknowledged to reporters that neither move was made because of how the guy pitched but rather because of how he acted. Kintzler and Kelley apparently weren’t happy with how they were being used by manager Dave Martinez. The Washington Post reported the Nationals also believed Kintzler was the source for stories suggesting problems inside the clubhouse.
“If you’re not in, you’re in the way,” Rizzo said, in a variation of the check-your-ego-at-the-door maxim.
The last straw with Kelley came when Martinez brought him in against the New York Mets with the Nationals leading 25–1. Kelley threw his glove while staring at Martinez after Kelley allowed a home run to Mets outfielder Austin Jackson. While Kelley insisted to reporters that he had only been frustrated with the umpires, it was clear to many in attendance that Martinez was the subject of his anger.
Rizzo saw it that way.
“I thought it was truly a day we should have been happy and celebrating—we had a big win against a division rival and felt good about ourselves,” Rizzo told reporters “And such a selfish act is not what we’re here for.”
Kelley wasn’t the first player to lose a job because he showed disrespect. Miguel Montero was a backup catcher for the Chicago Cubs, important enough that he appeared in four of the seven games in the 2016 World Series. By July of 2017, Montero was an ex-Cub, designated for assignment and traded to the Toronto Blue Jays soon after a late-June game against the Nationals.
The Nationals stole seven bases that night, but Montero wasn’t sent packing because of an inability to throw anyone out. Instead, the problem was his postgame interview, when he put the blame on pitcher Jake Arrieta.
“That’s the reason they were running left and right today,” Montero told reporters. “It really sucked because the stolen bases go on me. But when you really look at it, the pitcher doesn’t give me any time, so yeah, ‘Miggy can’t throw anyone out,’ but my pitchers don’t hold anyone on.”
By the next morning, the Cubs designated Montero for assignment.
“Caught squealing,” read the headline in the Chicago Tribune.
“[There are] too many young guys [in the clubhouse] who are impressionable,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon explained to reporters. “With this young, impressionable group, to me, and a really good group that’s going to be together for a long time, you don’t want to foster, nurture, condone [Montero’s] kind of message.”
It didn’t matter to the Cubs that Montero called Arrieta to apologize. The damage had been done and the Cubs were going to send the message that, as Mike Rizzo would say a year later, you’re either in or you’re in the way.
“When you point fingers, you’re a selfish player,” Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo said on WMVP radio.
Sometimes it doesn’t even take pointing fingers. In 2011, pitcher Rafael Soriano angered the New York Yankees not because of anything he said but because of what he didn’t say. Soriano was in his first month in New York and after a particularly bad performance (a four-run eighth inning that cost the Yankees a game), Soriano left without addressing the media.
Soriano wasn’t the first or last player to leave without talking, but the Yankees quickly let him know that on their team, this was unacceptable. And their concern wasn’t so much the reporters, but rather Soriano’s teammates, who were put in the position of having to answer the questions that would properly have been directed at him. Reporters were left asking David Robertson, who followed Soriano into the game, and catcher Russell Martin about Soriano’s poor performance.
The Yankees considered it a serious enough issue that both team president Randy Levine and general manager Brian Cashman phoned Scott Boras, the agent who represented Soriano. Boras then let Soriano know he had to be more accountable.
“He told me that whatever happened, that I’ve got to talk to you guys,” Soriano told reporters the following day. “It doesn’t have to be for a long time, but you guys have to hear from me.”
It’s part of being a good teammate, as Trammell and Hoffman both were when they played. It helped get them to the Hall of Fame.
5. As Adrian Beltre Proves, You Can Still Have Fun
SO MANY OF THE UNWRITTEN RULES COVER things you can’t do as a major-league player, or things that might get you in trouble with your teammates or your opponents. But the game is still supposed to be fun, and guys who make it fun can still find themselves on the way to join Trammell and Hoffman in Cooperstown.
Adrian Beltre proves that, although if you watch a tape of his first major-league hit, you’d never know it. Beltre was a 19-year-old kid back then, in 1998, and he smacked a Chuck Finley pitch into left field for a run-scoring double that night at Dodger Stadium. On the tape, you hear Vin Scully talking about the great numbers Beltre put together at Double-A San Antonio (.321, 13 home runs, in 64 games), about how Beltre was “a very aggressive hitter,” and how “it didn’t take long for him to collect his first base hit and RBI.”
One other thing about that tape: as the camera shows Beltre standing at second base, the kid doesn’t even crack a smile.
Smiling wasn’t against baseball’s rules, even then. Not the written rules, obviously, but not even the unwritten ones. But young players were still being schooled to avoid showing too much emotion. It’s a long season. Don’t get too high or too low. Never forget the game will humble you.
It still will, but thankfully it’s now more than okay to show you’re enjoying it when things are going well. And even sometimes when they’re not. It took Beltre the better part of four seasons to feel comfortable showing emotion and being himself on the field, but he and the game have adjusted over a playing career that ended with his retirement announcement after the 2018 season.
“I don’t think he’s ever had a bad day at the ballpark,” said Doug Brocail, a former major-league pitcher who was on the Texas Rangers’ coaching staff in the latter years of Beltre’s career. “He’s ultra-fun. It’s playful and fun, and it keeps guys from insanity.”
Beltre provides proof that players today can win respect for “playing the game the right way” while also having fun doing it. As he neared the end of his career, it’s possible no one was more respected, and also possible that no one had more fun.
Beltre almost danced in the batters box, asked umpires to check for help when he was sure he had checked his swing, and sometimes ran into the outfield or far onto the infield grass when he was caught in a rundown he knew he couldn’t get out of. With the
Rangers, he also collaborated with shortstop Elvis Andrus on a pantomime routine where both would set up at the same time to catch a pop fly.
“It’s like the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball,” said Dave Raymond, who chronicled it all as the Texas Rangers’ television voice. “Half the time, I want our [producers] to roll out with ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ going into the break. Adrian is Meadowlark Lemon, and Elvis is Curly Neal.”
It was the Harlem Globetrotters and it wasn’t, because as Beltre said, the Globetrotters’ entire goal was to put on a show. He and Andrus were invested in winning games, but they were proving that you could do that and have fun at the same time.
“We have fun, and that’s when we do the best,” Andrus said. “We really have a passion for the game, and that’s what attracted me to baseball in the first place: to be able to do something for hours and hours and still have fun with it. That’s what I love about this game.”
The key is to know how not to cross the line between enjoying yourself and becoming a clown, and it’s possible no one has ever understood that line better than Beltre. A perfect example came in August 2018, in a game where Beltre and the Rangers faced the Seattle Mariners and Felix Hernandez, Beltre’s former teammate and close friend.
In the second inning that night in Arlington, Texas, Hernandez struck out Beltre, who took an awkward swing for the third strike. Hernandez laughed as Beltre went to the dugout, and Beltre laughed right along with him.
Four innings later, Beltre hit Hernandez’s first pitch for a home run to center field. But there were no laughs or other shows of emotion. Beltre put his head down and quietly circled the bases.
The reason was simple: Beltre’s home run made the score 11–4 in the Rangers’ favor. Hernandez had given up all 11 of those runs, in one of the worst starts of his career. Hernandez certainly would have understood if Beltre had celebrated—“Why didn’t you do anything?” he texted Beltre after the game—but Beltre understood a celebration at that point could easily be taken the wrong way.
“Next time, if it’s close, I will [do something],” Beltre said.
After 21 years in the major leagues, Beltre understood when a laugh could be helpful and also when it could be seen as showing someone up. The line can be a fine one at times, which is why Rangers general manager Jon Daniels jokingly says Beltre can be both the best and worst example for his younger players. While he’s happy to have them joking around at the right time, they need to learn the line that Beltre never seems to cross.
“I always draw a line,” Beltre said.
Andrus, in particular, had to learn. He eventually became the perfect foil for Beltre, not just when the two were going through their pop fly routine, but also when Andrus was going after Beltre during a celebration, trying to touch his head. Of all Beltre’s quirks, one of the best known is that he never wants anyone touching his head.
“We’re two grown men with a kid’s soul,” Andrus said.
He smiled when he said it. Beltre smiled plenty in the latter years of his career, although he sometimes first made a point of pretending to be angry with Andrus over something he claimed to find annoying. It was all part of what they did, enjoyable for them and entertaining for others.
It looked real, to the point friends asked Andrus why Beltre was mad at him and bloggers sometimes wrote that there was true anger. There wasn’t.
“[Beltre] is never actually really mad at anyone,” Rangers outfielder Joey Gallo said. “He’s fake-mad a lot.”
And nothing he did broke any of baseball’s unwritten rules. That may not have been true two decades ago, back when Beltre broke into the game, but it’s certainly true now.
Do it the right way, and it’s absolutely alright to have fun playing the game.
6. When a Bat Flip Can Lead to a Bloody Lip
THE PROBLEMS BEGIN WHEN A TEAM THINKS someone is having fun at their expense, or if what one team or player thinks of as a legitimate celebration offends the group on the other side. It can start with something as seemingly inoffensive as a bat flip.
Bat flips have been part of baseball for a while. With the help of GIFs on Twitter and YouTube videos, they’re more acceptable than ever and more celebrated than ever. Many fans love them. Many players do, too.
And many pitchers have come to accept them.
So why did Jose Bautista end up getting punched in the face?
It’s a legit question. Bautista’s bat flip in the 2015 playoffs was epic, but it came after a huge home run. Bautista’s Toronto Blue Jays were tied 3–3 with the Texas Rangers in the winner-take-all Game 5 of their American League Division Series. Bautista’s three-run home run off Sam Dyson changed the game and the series.
“I think that was a pretty big moment for the team and the franchise,” Bautista said in 2018. “I’m not trying to justify anything, but if we want to talk about the moment, it’s certainly an important one.”
Bautista has never believed he did anything wrong that day, and I’m not sure he did. He definitely stood and watched the ball, which was clearly going out of the park. He dramatically flung the bat in the air. He may have turned his head a bit, but he didn’t stare into the Rangers dugout, as some have charged.
Even so, the Rangers didn’t like it. They didn’t like losing, and they didn’t like having to watch Bautista celebrate in a way they saw as shoving it in their face.
We know that because of what they said in the aftermath—“Jose needs to calm that down, just kind of respect the game a little more,” Dyson told reporters after the game—but also because of what happened seven months later in Arlington, Texas.
It was the final game of a three-game series between the Jays and Rangers, the final game the two teams would play in the regular season in 2016 (although they would again meet in the Division Series, with the Jays winning in a much less dramatic three-game sweep). Bautista came to the plate leading off the eighth inning in that May 15 game, and Rangers reliever Matt Bush threw at him.
It was a first-pitch 95.7 mph fastball, according to MLB.com’s Statcast, and it hit Bautista squarely on the left side. Bautista took his base with little delay, but the umpires quickly warned both teams that no further such pitches would be tolerated.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Far from it.
When Blue Jays first baseman Justin Smoak hit a ground ball to third with one out in the inning, Bautista did more than just break up the double play. He went in late and hard on Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor in a clear response to getting hit by the pitch from Bush. Odor responded with a fist to Bautista’s jaw, an image that was quickly shared around the baseball world.
The Rangers, it was said, finally had their revenge for the bat flip.
But why was revenge even needed? Did Bautista violate any of baseball’s unwritten rules, the way those rules are accepted in the modern game?
The Rangers obviously thought so. They weren’t alone.
“I know Odor gained a ton of respect in baseball [by punching Bautista],” said Ian Kinsler, the former Rangers second baseman, who was already gone from the team before both the flip and the fight. “He stood up for his team. In their eyes, [Bautista] was disrespectful.”
Bautista will always maintain there was no disrespect, and he bristles at the suggestion that his celebration was in anyway premeditated.
“I don’t think you plan that,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a script, and I don’t think you have time to figure out what you’re going to do. It just kind of happens, and that’s it. Would somebody apologize for making a diving play? It’s an instinctual moment.”
In contrast, the Rangers’ response did seem planned, at least the part with him getting hit by the Matt Bush pitch. They chose to wait until his final at-bat in their final regular-season meeting, with a hard-throwing reliever on the mound.
“Pretty cowardly,” Bautista told reporter
s that day. “It shows a little bit more of their colors.”
It’s not clear, though, that Bautista would have been any happier had the Rangers thrown at him in the first inning of their first 2016 meeting.
“Who cares now?” he said in 2018. “It’s in the past.”
The issue, though, is still very real today. In an era where bat flips have become more common and more accepted than ever, when are they considered okay and when are they not? And does it matter if the flip is more or less dramatic?
“In the playoffs and a late inning go ahead HR, there is nothing wrong with what @JoeyBats19 did,” former Blue Jays star Joe Carter tweeted after Bautista’s October flip. “In the regular season it’s a nae nae.”
It’s an interesting distinction, one that Houston Astros shortstop Carlos Correa has made as well.
Correa flipped his bat after hitting a big home run for Puerto Rico in the 2017 World Baseball Classic, and again after his Game 3 home run in the 2017 World Series. But he said he would never flip his bat after a regular-season home run.
Still, everyone agrees there’s no unwritten rule that says bat flips are reserved for October (or March in World Baseball Classic years) only. There is more of an understanding that it’s best to reserve them for dramatic home runs, walkoffs, or other game-winners and the like.
But even that is flexible, in an era where some guys flip their bats after singles or sometimes even after walks.
Bautista is hardly a serial flipper, but a year almost to the day after the Odor punch that resulted from his flip flap, he again flipped his bat after an eighth-inning home run. Except this one was on a May night in Atlanta, and it came after a solo home run in a game the Blue Jays trailed 8–3. There had been a benches-clearing incident an inning earlier, but it hadn’t directly involved Bautista.
Like the Rangers in 2015, the Braves didn’t like the flip. The difference this time was that Bautista agreed with them, even as he was rounding the bases. He quickly understood the emotions of the moment, in a series where the Braves were already upset about losing their star first baseman, Freddie Freeman, to a broken wrist suffered when he was unintentionally hit by a pitch from Toronto’s Aaron Loup.
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