Old Time Family Baseball

As Jose Bautista seems to endlessly improving and refining his approach, much like a supercomputer that has gained sentience, Jeff Sullivan has taken out his crystal ball and now tells tales from the future. 

Sad to say, but Bautista’s skills end up breaking baseball:

Before long, Jose Bautista was hitting a home run every single time he came to the plate. And still determined to get better, as much better as possible, it wasn’t long after that that Jose Bautista was hitting a home run on every pitch. Every first pitch of every at-bat would fly in the other direction at 120 miles per hour…

The intentional walks began on June 28. Or at least, the intentional walk efforts began on June 28. On June 28, the Pirates attempted to intentionally walk Jose Bautista all five times he came to the plate, but each time he reached over and launched the intentional balls out to right field for home runs.

The same thing happened again on June 29, and so on June 30, the Pirates threw intentional balls as wide as they possibly could. Catcher Ryan Doumit took 20 steps to his right before receiving the pitches that put Bautista on first base, and given the success, the Pirates repeated the move each time Bautista came up.

 …Every so often a team would test Bautista in a blowout, just to see if he was still doing what he had been doing. Every so often, a hotshot rookie would take the mound and try to be the first guy to get Bautista out in months. It never worked. Every attempt resulted in a first-pitch home run, and so the attempts stopped. Bautista would only get walked.”

Sullivan’s piece deserves every accolade that he can earn, from Pulitzers to Nobels to Emmys if need be. Click through for the entire piece.