His momentum called for a slide to avoid a serious collision. He went straight over the middle of the bag.
Bautista admitted after the game that he wanted to send a message about getting drilled on the first
pitch from Bush---and added he wanted only to send a message, not injure Odor. I just watched a slo-mo
video of the slide. Bautista dropped into it a little late, when he was about four feet from the pad, but he
went down deep into the slide and was obviously not trying to injure Odor, just take him out hard from
the double play. If Bautista had slid out of the proper basepath it would have been quite a different
story on the slide itself. (Was it me, or did Odor look like he was actually trying to hit Bautista with
the relay throw? You're taught to throw low on the double play relay when a runner comes sliding
in toward you, but it looked to a lot of people like Odor was hoping for a moment that the ball might
catch Bautista in the chops.)
The same video also shows
Odor shoving Bautista first after Bautista got back up from the ground
from the slide. Only
then did Bautista extend a left arm to defend himself, and
then Odor threw the punch apparently heard and seen around the world.
I actually LOVED Bautista's bat flip last October. Didn't give the Rangers a thought. Could've been anybody.
What's not to love? It's like I said before: It happened in front of the home folks who hadn't seen
live postseason baseball since the first Clinton Administration. It meant a trip to the American
League Championship Series for the Jays. Even
Hank Aaron would have flipped his bat
hitting one out like that in that circumstance with that on the line.
So the Rangers were P.O.ed over it? Then send Bautista the message the first time you face
him this season, not the last.
(Almost forgotten: When the Rangers and the Jays met in Toronto for the first time this season,
a week and a half ago, guess who Bautista got to bat against? Sam Dyson---the pitcher who
served up the ball he sent to the Aleutians last October. And Dyson, who'd done a little gum beating
of his own over the bat flip last fall,
never threw anything close to a duster to Bautista this time.)