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| His Trots? Oh, they dictated that shit.... |
-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!
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| Bat Flip. na-na-na-na-na-na, Bat flip! bat flip! bat flip!! |
....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.
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| 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....
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.
