The Houston Astros Are Taking Home Run Celebrations To The Next Level

This is gonna be a thing now, and I am here for it. I’m not saying that stuff like this is what’s going to bring a younger audience to baseball, but that Jose Bautista bat-flip against the Rangers in the 2015 postseason was the first shot that started the war against the unwritten rules of baseball. For it is those very unwritten rules that has made this game so unappealing to the younger generation. Hit a home run, drop the bat, run the bases, head down, don’t smile. Fuck that.

It’s going to take more than one bat-flip to change an entire generation of baseball, but that’s where it started. You can see the changes year-by-year. I think I can see it most within this trend of hiring younger managers. The old school mentality of baseball being instilled by old school managers is quickly becoming a thing of the past, as front offices around the league are noticing the disconnect between hardass managers and today’s young stars. They just don’t click anymore.

I mean, look no further than the most recent World Baseball Classic. That was the best WBC ever played, in my opinion. Not just because of the competition, but because you could see some of the best baseball players in the world let their hair down a little bit and express themselves the way that they actually want to when they don’t have the “unwritten rules of baseball” breathing down their neck. It was refreshing as hell to watch.

Dugout celebrations after home runs aren’t going to be the thing that changes the whole era just like bat-flips alone aren’t going to be either. But each of them are a set of hands pulling the rope in the right direction to making baseball more fun for the viewing audience. A younger audience. The audience that Major League Baseball so desperately needs, yet the league still can’t figure out how to reach them.