Jefry Yan, a minor league pitcher renowned as an oddity for his bizarre and unique manner of celebrating strikeouts finally got to perform on the major-league stage this week. In the New York Mets’ 6-5, 10-inning win over with the Cleveland Guardians this week, Yan preserved a one-run New York lead in the sixth inning, striking out two Guardians in the process and punctuating each strikeout with his characteristic, er, flair.
Not long ago, maybe a couple of decades, a rookie pitcher who acted like that during a game would be taken to the metaphorical woodshed by a coach or a veteran player and told, “Kid, that’s not how we act in the Big Leagues. Don’t do it again.” One reason would be that the team he “showed up” by celebrating would make sure their pitcher hit his team’s star player in the ribs with a fast ball as soon as the player came to bat. Before the Designated Hitter, when pitchers had to bat, a hurler who behaved like Yan would be taking his life into his hands.
Now MLB has adopted the attitude of “let the kids play” to appeal to younger fans. Being a “Get off my lawn” guy, I don’t like Yan’s antics much, and I suspect a lot of batters don’t either. But I also remember how Dick Radatz, aka “The Monster,”the huge Red Sox closer in the Sixties who for three years may have been the greatest relief pitcher ever, used to throw up both arms over his head in a victory gesture when he ended a game with a swinging strike-out, as he inevitably did. It wasn’t as outrageous as Yan’s split, but at the time it was considered audacious.
And the fans loved it.
Mets Manager Any Green isn’t worried that Yan’s antics will cause any issues with the opposition. “I worry far less (today) than 20 years ago,” Green said. “I think he has developed a reputation throughout the game that this isn’t showing up anybody else, and people have accepted, largely, that this is a good-natured human who’s enjoying being on the field playing baseball. We didn’t have many minor-league teams take issue with his enthusiasm. They end up smiling at it if they’re not the one getting punched out.”
Yan is a bit defiant. “I’m going to continue to go out there the same way, to go out there with the same emotion to have fun as if I’m playing a kids’ game, like I always have,” Yan said before his Mets debut. “I’m going to enjoy that first (strikeout), like it’s my first and last one. I’ve worked a long time for that moment.”
I would offer two points. One: his displays of joy will become less tolerable if he doesn’t have consistent value to his team. The second is that I worry about the gimmick becoming a slippery slope. At what point do such eccentricities constitute “making a travesty of the game,” an offense that remains in the rulebook? What’s next? Pitcher’s doing “the worm” after strikeouts? Trotting out a home run backwards, as emotionally-troubled baseball star Jimmy Piersall once did? Cultural norms exist for reasons. Sometimes we don’t remember those reasons until it’s too late.
Ethics Alarms 
I’d be like “I’m going to tag him out with the bat instead of the ball.”
I am torn.
At one point, the NFL earned the No Fun League by banning excessive celebrations. Reversing itself has led to increasingly juvenile and obnoxious celebrations.
and Kirby Puckett of the Twins reportedly tried to cheer up his teammates in one of their many dismal seasons by reminding them that they get paid to play a game. They should be happy to get out there and play their game, even if they lose. That was my takeaway anyway.
yan’s celebration would annoy me if it is done for EVERY strikeout. If it is just for his first each game, that might be different. Baseball players are nothing if not superstitious and if he “needs” that, fine, whatever.
or, maybe I am just racist for even criticizing him.
then, there is an NBA thing (at least for the Timberwolves) that the fans stand until the home-team (the Wolves) scores their first basket.
but this article immediately brought to mind Juan Berenguer’s reaction after striking out Wade Boggs of the Tigers (Juan’s former team) to end Game 2 of the ALCS in 1987. (I tried to post a YouTube link but was not successful.)
it was not particularly obnoxious, but impulsive.
And I remember it almost 40 years later
-Jut
“Just act as if you’ve done it before.”
yes, that works in football. It is not a good metric for baseball, or basketball.
that expression seems to be uniquely fitting to football.
you can’t say “act like you have been there before” to a golfer. They have literally “been there” 1-35 times before that day. But, if they sink a 25-foot putt, yeah, that warrants a fist pump.
and basketball? You hit a 3-pointer, it’s kind of like, “act as if you were there 3 minutes and 43 seconds ago.”
with football, it makes more sense to act like you have been there (in the end zone) before.
it is more dignified. Touchdown? No big deal. That’s what I do. Of course I scored. That is the goal.
-Jut
Fist pump for a long putt? That’s fine.
Making a big deal out of hitting a three pointer? Honestly, that’s gotten pretty darned tiresome. And putting your fingers on your vein seems too much like shooting heroin and too ghetto.
Frankly, I think signaling to the bullpen and the dugout after any hit, no matter how mundane, is over the line. Come on guys, you’re supposed to be “professional hitters.” It’s not Little League.
Self-celebration is black culture being absorbed into mainstream culture. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I remember in 1991, when Rickey Henderson broke Lou Brock’s lifetime stolen base record and they stopped the game to give Rickey the base and had an on field ceremony, he said over the microphone, “I am now the greatest of all time!” My feeling then and now is that such proclamations are for others to make about one, not to be proclaimed by the individual. Ethical values: humility, prudence, restraint, dignity.
It’s quick, it’s joyous, it’s inoffensive.
Today, Boston pitcher Peyton Tolle K’d 14 batters in 6 innings. It would get…tedious after a while. In fact, I find the now universal routine of each team having a gimmick after a player hits a home run silly and tedious.
See above. They deploy that gimmick every damned time someone gets a hit, for God’s sake. The Dodger move is the most annoying.
They have lost 7 straight. Karma. The Baseball God are angry.
Is it possible that younger generations don’t have that sense of old school propriety and dignity that you have? Perhaps ballplayers are playing to and attracting youthful fans? I don’t know the answer, but full disclosure, I am more of an American football fan …
The most unethical sport on the planet, with the most unethical organizations. An Ethics Corrupter in game form.
I so respect and even believe your assessment, but, Jack ….. football is young, strong, athletic men running about in tight pants …
You should look more closely at baseball butts. That was how I first got my late wife to follow baseball. She was especially fond of late ’70s Sox third-baseman Butch Hobson. To be fair, he had been a college football star too…