Baseball: Trots

His Trots? Oh, they dictated that shit....

"My trots dictated that something like that might happen." 
 -Jeffrey the Hack Man Leonard


Oh man, everyone is talking 'bout trots these days. Left and right. Trots this and Trots that. Oh my goodness.

What are "trots"? That's just when a homerun is hit and the player proceeds to make a big deal about enjoying that homerun. He gets to go around all the bases, and then touch home plate ... and he has all the time in the world to do so. Some guys savor it up and take their time trotting around the bases (as such).

Everybody in the news talking about trots now. Goose Gossage, Mike Schmidt, et al..... My goodness. The old school guard is up in literal arms over this Trots situation.

Trots have always been of a National Importance and of a News Inducing caliber ... yet in the wake of Jose Bautista's "bat flip" in the last ALCS and some other incidents (including the press surrounding Korean players who love bat flippin' and trottin' down in their league).

Look, Trots are serious, okay man? As the Hackman has stated.... Trots can dictate that things might happen. If you're not familiar with the 1987 NLCS series, Mr. Leonard caught himself on human fire, went on an offensive tear, and topped it off by celebrating a homerun with something called the "One Flap Down Trot" .... as seen in this highlight reel:

"The Flap Down meant that pitch .... was Nothing."

If he had that flap down as he circled the bases after a homerun .... it meant the pitch that was thrown to him just then was literally Nothing. Like his number Double-Zero on his back ... Nothing At All.

Trots are nothing new ... but if you read the news stories these days you'd think Jose Bautista and some Korean guy invented homerun celebrations/taunts.


Two news stories are of interest as of late in regards to this article:

1. NERDS ARE RUINING BASEBALL!!!!!! According to Goose Gossage.

2. Mike Schmidt sounds off on trots...

Two old-schoolers/microphone-rulers are sounding off about the young players these days and their effronterous behavior when it comes to Trots.



Nerds are Ruining Baseball 

In a flagrantly f-word fueled rant the other week, Hall of Famer Goose Gossage took the utmost of umbrage to two aspects of the current situation of baseball in this most current of eras.

In the Hall of Famer pitcher's wild tirade he stated that "Nerds" are ruining baseball by trying to turn the great game into some sort of robotic statistical simulation. He cursed these terrible nerds for attempting to ruin baseball with their sweaty and stinky analytics and calculators.

Whether or not stinky/smelly Idiotic Nerds are ruining Baseball is not the current topic of this article so let's not go into that any further. That argument possibly has some important merit to it but we're talking 'bout trots now, ok?

Goose Gossage, the relief pitching legend, claimed in the salty-tirade that Jose Bautista's homerun celebration in the ALDS was a disgraceful act. Bautista's "bat-flip" and long look at his homerun against the Texas Rangers was interpreted by Mr. Gossage as being of the utmostly outrageous in terms of personal demeanor.

He went on to claim that "all those guys in Toronto" are like that... they're all a bunch of idiotic nerds!

Bat Flip. na-na-na-na-na-na, Bat flip! bat flip! bat flip!!

Is he right? Is he wrong? I don't know, maybe he is. Alls I know is .... Goose Gossage talking mad smack about Toronto...

....made me very envious of Toronto.

I'm Canadian but grew up and live in Montreal, and we lost our team more than a decade ago. For Toronto and the Blue Jays to have this much heat over some trots... it just makes me wish we had a team again in Montreal even badder. It makes me deep in my heart wish we had a team here again WAY more badder. It doesn't bother me that Goose Gossage is angry at Toronto and the Blue Jays .... because deep down I wish Goose Gossage was angry at the Expos. I wish we still had some of that.....

We want trot heat. We miss trot heat. Why can't Montreal have any of that good flagrant trot heat? We want trot heat too, you know....



Mike Schmidt versus Ellis Valentine

A week or so after Goose Gossage's angry swear-filled assault on Toronto and on Nerds, the great Home Run King and Legend, Mr. Mike Schmidt penned an article for the Associated Press in which he echoes Goose's statements about the antics of the New Generation.

Vintage Trot Heat. Legend versus Legend.

So here I am, in the baseball-less wasteland of Montreal wishing we still had Major League Baseball over here ... and I'm jealous as filthy sin that the stupid Blue Jays of Toronto have Trot Heat out of the wazoo ... just wishing that even a simple slither or a small smidgen of Trot Heat could still somehow find its way to my beautiful home-city and Baseball-Less town of Montreal....


When Lo and Behold, One Michael Jack Shmidt pens an op-ed for the Associated Press which not only claims that Toronto Blue Jays star Jose Bautista's trot was a disgrace but he goes on to state that an event which occurred in Canada over THIRTY YEARS AGO was also a huge disgrace.

Mike Schmidt states in the piece,

"The Expos had a player named Ellis Valentine in the '80s. Great talent, power, speed, maybe the best throwing arm I've ever seen. We were acquaintances from competing over the years, so I considered him someone with whom I could speak. One day early in his career, at Olympic Stadium, he hit a home run and proceeded to trot around the bases as slowly as humanly possible. The trot included a little Reggie Jackson touch, he held nothing back.

Later in the game, he was on third base and I couldn't resist saying, 'I guess you're not planning on hitting many home runs, trots like that are for guys who don't.'"

-Mike Schmidt

The Expos? Olympic Stadium? Wait.... Mike Schmidt is calling out Trots from more than thirty years ago!?

Thank you so much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart! I KNEW SOME TROT HEAT COULD STILL FIND ITS WAY HERE! I just knew it! I never gave up hope! I knew deep down we'd still have Trot Heat! I never gave up hope.

Thankfullness and gratitude aside .... Mr. Schmidt proceeds as an aside in the article to state that maybe once he himself did engage in this by doing the "running man" dance of "running in place" after a homerun but he claims he never engaged in any overly effefronterous trots.

Yet, one must ask ... was that "running man" trot as benign as Mike Schmidt claims it to be? The proof must be in the pudding, as they say.

Mr. Ellis Valentine himself took the Twitter-Sphere yesterday to make a counter-claim that not only does he not recall Mike Schmidt telling him that at Olympic Stadium on the day in question but also Mr. Valentine located an animated gif of....

.....Mike Schmidt's Running Man Trot!

Along with the hashtag of "hypocrite" Mr. Valentine provides a link to an animated GIF of One Mike Schmidt engaging in said "running man Trot" which Schmidt brushed off as quite reserved in his Associated Press article on Trots. Now let's view the GIF in question....

(if it's not animated in your browser here's the original link)

 

Oh my gooooodness. What do we have here? A simple reserved "running man trot" as described in Schmidt's essay or something much more audacious?

In slow motion we can plainly see the following:

1. A gigantic two handed clap
2. A vigorous fist pump
3. A shorter fist pump
4. A series of motions which, as described in the article, would be regarded as "running in place"

The question now at the heart of the matter is the following...

....was Philadelphia Phillies Third Baseman and Baseball Icon Mike Schmidt's trot of an overtly gregarious and brazen nature? In the slowed down GIF provided by Mr. Ellis Valentine .... the conclusive answer is and only can be ....

....Yes, it was. It was a brazen and gregarious act. Those actions told the pitcher who threw that ball to him that the pitch meant Nothing to him. Nothing at All.



Conclusion


Are Nerds ruining baseball? Maybe, we'll have to look into that another time though.

Did Jose Bautista's bat-flip offend many many people and bring scorn and disflavor to the city of Toronto? YES!

Am I Envious of Toronto's Trot Heat? Yes, I am.

Did Mike Schmidt's article warm my heart, when in a time where I wished Montreal had Trot Heat like Toronto does, he brought said Trot Heat to Montreal like a Timely Rain? Yes.

Yet is Mike Schmidt justified in Condemning the Actions of Mr. Ellis Valentine when he himself engaged in Trots as shown via twitter by Ellis Valentine? NO, Mike Schmidt is NOT justified.

Did Jeffrey "Hackman" / "Penitentiary-Face" Leonard dictate the doings of which transpired during the 1987 NLCS due to his trots? YES. Yes, he did. His trots indeed dictated the events which transpired. 

Montreal Baseball Fever is Mounting....and Will Likely Continue to Mount like Crazy

The Red Sox (one of the BIGGEST teams in baseball) is on board for what seems to be becoming a tradition of the Blue Jays hosting exhibition games on April 1st and 2nd at Montreal's Olympic Stadium...the ex-home of the Ex-Expos.

Baseball Legend, Cro, with owner and president of Red Sox

The official spokesman for the return of the Expos to Montreal, Mr. Warren Cromartie, President of the Montreal Baseball Project was in Boston a few weeks ago finalizing details to get the Red Sox to barn storm north of the boarder to the barren baseball-less city of Montreal where fans really want that baseball back. His mission seems successful as the Red Sox organization was excited at the idea of coming here to play some good ol' ball games.

We had the Mets come play here in 2014, where both teams honored the life of Gary Carter. They also invited the roster of the 1994 Expos to the pre-game ceremony and everyone collectively flipped out to see those dudes again.

Vlad, The OC, and the Mayor in 2015

We had the Reds come play two games here in 2015, Tony Perez and others came to hang before the game....but during the second game....VLAD showed up....and everyone collectively flipped again. Tim Wallach's son got to dress for that game for the Reds and got to see his dad's old stomping grounds and the fans gave a standing ovation to Chad Wallach because they remembered and liked his dad so much. It was fun, it was good, everyone had a good time at it.

In 2016, thanks to Cromartie's trip to Boston, it is 100% confirmed that the team coming to the Big O next year will surely be the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox are very popular here in Montreal...mainly I think due to their championship seasons and it probably has a lot to do with Pedro "sharing his ring" with us when he won one with the Sox.

Pedro back at Big O (circa 1999)

I remember the first time I saw the Red Sox at the Big O, it was 1999 and interleague play was still a new fangled thing-a-ma-bob. The pitcher at the game I was at for the Sox was none other than Pedro Martinez, the guy who won the only Cy Young in Expos history for Montreal two years prior in 1997. We friggin' crushed Pedro in that game (box here)...well he only gave up 4 runs over 6 innings...we crushed Mark Portugal and Mark Guthrie more than we did Pedro. I remember that game, I even remember where I was sitting and everything. It happened like over 15 years ago too.


Things are Gettin' Nuts, Yo.

I saw baseball legend Ellis Valentine tweet something today while I was at work to a sports writer. Valentine, who comes up for these games to sit with the fans in attendance and watch the ball game and reminisce and chill and everything, tweeted that he might have to sit in the "nose-bleeds" this year round. ("Nose bleeds" refers to the altitude being so high that your nose starts bleeding. It means bad seats. It's those seats Bob Uecker sits in when he drinks Miller Lites. It's those Uecker seats).


Why? Because after being on sale for ONE SINGLE DAY....both games are almost 100% SOLD OUT. Wow. If you live in Montreal or want to travel here to watch these games you better buy your tickets right now because they went like HOT CAKES, MAN. They sold like hot cakes.

I've sat in the "400s" before over the years, I sat there for the Reds games this year...I never took no elevator as Ellis Valentine states in that tweet exists. I didn't know there was one. I always walk up those winding gray cement pathways. I actually liked doing it this year too. Walking with all the other fans and seeing all the Expos hats and shirts...seeing old people with hats and jackets that looked worn in and like they bought those Expos hats in like 1985...and seeing young kids with new shiny Expos gear. I liked being with those people. Those are my people, they really are.

Every year I write an article about these exhibition games and every year I predict that 100K will come over the course of 2 games. Both years they came close with well over 90K both times...this year we hit 96K a mere four thousand off of getting One Hundred Thousand Baseball Fans over two days.

This year I am not predicting/speculating/prognosticating 100 thousand fans...I am 100% GARAUNTEE-ING that 100K will be there over the course of two days at the Big O in 2016 for Red Sox versus Blue Jays. Mark my most humble of human words on that.

I love you, Baseball. I seriously seriously do.

I got a sinking suspicion that Pedro might be honored before one of these games. I haven't heard anything official....but there are rumors abounds that Hall of Famer and all-around legend Pedro Martinez will be back at the Big O in 2016.

Ellis Valentine

Ellis Valentine was before my time, of course, but information I’ve heard on him seems to suggest he had as much talent as a Dawson, Raines, and even a Guerrero, but something happened that changed his career for the worse…

During the 1980 season, Ellis was struck in the face by a pitch and was never the same after the incident.

                                        
From visual documentation it seems not only did he (A) Grow a beard, and (B) become a football player, but also totally lost his “mojo”. The initial picture shows a muscle-bound player who would strike fear in any human being let alone opposing pitchers, yet in the second sort of looks like a bum.

The question of course must be asked, as to what sort of career Ellis Valentine would have had if that pitch never hit him in the face….

I used a SHARP 720s-2 fully-functionate calculator…yeah a calculator, they don’t make mistakes. You think I entered the data wrong? Try it yourself if you have the time. Believe me this information is FACT. If you use the patterns of existing data to produce a template of what was possible the results behoove us to go crazy.

The insaner of humans believe in “random chance” of course, whereas there is no grand scheme to life and everyday is filled with zillions forking into trillions forking into a bazillion different scenarios. I think it is referred to as the “chaos theory”, where if say a guy got up ten minutes later than he normally would and ends up meeting his dream girl and living a completely different life than if he didn’t sleep that ten extra minutes. Blah blah blah…the saner of humans, however, write that off as total nonsense…and I am, of course, one of them. Everything, as far as I know, happens for a reason.

That being said why did that ball come into contact with Ellis Valentine’s face and ruin what was to be the greatest career a professional athlete was ever to have? One can only speculate. Let it be said that that ball never hit him in the face and the big man went on to annihilate every single record held by a professional baseball hitter (and more than likely all pitching records as well) what would that mean in the grand scheme of things? If a player was that far above the rest of the shlop in the league wouldn’t it take the fun away? I mean all the thrilling world series bottom of the ninth victories would never had been possible if a player of this caliber was present in the league. Ellis would basically just go through the motions and win the Expos the next 15 World Serieses, most of the games would be like fifty to nothing too. The whole concept of nail-biters, and heroics would surely have been lost from the game for over a decade.

The league itself would likely disband. I’m sure the American League would refuse to play the National League in the World Series after the fifth year of being Ellised anyway. The National League teams would likely want to distance themselves from someone of this caliber as well and eventually merge with the ad-hoc American league. Legal troubles of the matter would surely ensue as the AL would want the National to adopt the DH rule. Maybe the West would have agreed, but the East was always fervently opposed to the ordinance. The NL would thusly be balkanized into two or three leagues in itself relegating it to political obscurity and finally being disbanded all together. In short, if Ellis was not hit in the face with that baseball and thusly allowed to obtain his true potential, it would have surely meant the end of Major League Baseball.

Obviously this theory holds far more weight than “random chance” yet there’s one thing that will never be explained. What force took it upon itself to hinder the career of Ellis Valentine? I think there are three possibilities…

1) The opposing pitcher…

Could a mere man foresee the future and take it upon himself to stop it for the good of baseball? Probably not, I mean he wasn’t even good or anything.

2) Some sort of Deity…

God? I’m not sure Jesus’ Dad, or Allah, or Buddah, or Shiva, or Ganesh are that big on baseball. I mean there’s lots of other stuff deities are concerned about, like finding ways to ease human suffering, or teaching dogs to walk on their hind-legs and evolve already.

3) Time Travel…

Did someone, likely very rich, and very smart, living in a distant baseball-less future take it upon themselves to go back in time and ensure Ellis Valentine’s ascent into greatness was not to take place, thusly changing the course of history? I’m not sure this is the most likely scenario. First of all, time travel most likely does not even exist in baseball. I mean if it did wouldn’t Bill Buckner have gone back and sorted out that whole mess of the ’86 World Series a long time ago? Wait, if Bill Buckner had access to a time traveling machine would not others as well? Who’s to say that Bill Buckner didn’t go back in time and right the wrong of the 1986 World Series, but couldn’t Mookie Wilson similarly have gone back shortly after and re-changed what Bill Buckner changed, covering up his tracks so well that no-one was none-the-wiser? It all makes so much sense now, I mean when’s the last time anyone has even seen Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson? Last time I saw Mookie Wilson was when he tried out as a replacement player for the Mets in 1995. 1995! That’s more than ten years ago! It is entirely possible that for the last ten years Buckner and the Mook have been perpetually traveling back-and-fourth through time changing and re-changing the events of 1986 World Series. In fact, I’d say it’s a certainty.

As previously stated above, if Ellis Valentine was not struck in the face by that fastball, the 1986 World Series between the Mets and Red Sox would never have occurred to begin with as the Expos would have either easily won fifty to zero, or Major League Baseball would have already been disbanded. Taking that into account, either Bill Buckner or Mookie Wilson (or both!?) must have altered the course of events in the career of Ellis Valentine during their respective journeys through time to ensure the event in which they are infinitely reversing occurs to begin with. It almost makes too much sense!

Ellis, I would have probably loved to live in a timeline where the Expos won 15 straight Championships, but we can’t kid ourselves, the collapse of Major League Baseball would have had incredible socio-politico-economical effects on North American society and culture. It just wasn’t meant to be…

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(As for Mr. Buckner and Mookie Wilson…I’m not sure what would have been the best outcome to that situation. I know (thanks to a 1989 O-PEE-CHEE baseball card) that Mookie Wilson used his own money to open an “educational center” in inner-city New Jersey for girls entitled “Mookie’s Roses”. Therefore if Buckner fielded that ball successfully many inner-city girls would have lost out on a wonderful education. That also is not made up like the rest of what’s written here, some piece of mind I guess, Bill Buckner may actually have done the right thing in retrospect by not making that play, the Red Sox have won a World Series since then anyway).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRokjf4J_2I