With all due respect to Bryce Harper, the Bruh of Bat Etiquette, if baseball is going to appoint a Fun Czar, perhaps Adrian Beltre is a little more qualified. He likes to have fun, too, you know. He's got a bit more in the way of experience, too.
And when it comes to the flap over Jose Bautista's bat flip in last year's playoffs, Beltre doesn't quite see the fun.
"I can see the situation of the game that he got excited," Beltre said. "But it's not something that I would do."
Perhaps you remember the moment like it was yesterday.
Even if you choose not to watch countless YouTube clips of the flip, you're certainly guaranteed to see more of it soon as the Rangers head to Toronto for a four-game series Monday. It was the most iconic moment for any team in last year's playoffs.
Bautista blasts a 97-mph fastball from Sam Dyson deep into the left-field seats at Rogers Centre to break a 3-3 tie in the seventh inning of the deciding game of the Division Series. He stands at home plate and looks out at Dyson, then toward the Rangers' dugout and hurls his bat high and far. The Guinness Book people are still trying to verify if it was a record-setting toss.
It is the kind of gesture that drives the home fans crazy and leaves the opponent wondering about his intent. Dyson sent a pointed message through Buatista's teammate Edwin Encarnacion.
"Tell him to never do that again," Dyson said.
Then he said it again.
That was enough of a message. Nothing more needs to be said or done this week. Sure, the Rangers could hit him as retaliation, but what good is that going to do? Bautista flips bats after homers. It's his thing. He's faced retribution before. It hasn't stopped him. It's not going to stop him now.
All that's likely to come of it is a potential ejection, suspension and fine for a Rangers pitcher, not to mention the risk of injury from the bench-clearing scrum that will most certainly follow. Oh, and there will probably be retaliation on the Jays' side, too.
Or the Rangers could opt to do nothing in the first at-bat and hope to get in Bautista's head about when the retaliatory pitch might come. That's not going to do anything either. Bautista thrives on playing the game emotionally. Just watch him step into the batter's box and bull snort while getting set.
Jeff Banister knows all this about Bautista. He worked with him when Bautista was in the Pittsburgh organization a decade ago.
"He's driven; he wants to win as much as any of our guys want to win," Banister said. "I know he's proud. I know emotion drives him. Guys do things in those moments that are purely out of raw emotion.
"I've seen T-shirts and commercials that glorified the bat flip, but the bat flip didn't lose us the game. Do I think it's the grandest moment in baseball history? Absolutely not. But would we feel any better if he laid the bat down and just run the bases?"
The answer, of course, is no.
And, yet, they will still see film clips dozens of times leading up and through the series. There will be Bautista, his bat hurtling through the air like a satellite knocked off its course, standing haughtily at the plate.
Here, they are once again best-served to listen to their captain, Beltre.
"That happened and it's in the past," he said. "Did the other team beat us in the playoffs last year? Yes. Besides that, I'm not going to start looking too deep into it. That's stuff that happened last year; I've got too much positive stuff to focus on now."
The Rangers used the playoff loss as fuel to prepare for this season. Now, it's time to chart their own course for this season.
Returning to the bat flip would be nothing more than veering off course.