“I’m the lucky guy who was standing at the plate, but I’m glad that I came through,” Bautista said at his induction to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame this summer. “I’ll never forget that moment.”
But of course, no one moment can happen without a whole bunch of smaller moments that go into making it happen.
As we approach the 10th anniversary of “The Bat Flip,” which falls on Oct. 14, the Star spoke to the players involved and the people around them so we could tell the story using their words.
Pull Quote
“It had to be him. Controversial figure, the face of the franchise through some lean years. It wouldn’t have been the same if somebody else had hit it.”
Started from the bottom
The team had been mired in mediocrity for over two decades. Things were looking up when general manager Alex Anthopoulos made two huge and transformative trades that landed stars including defending National League Cy Young award winner R.A. Dickey and borderline Hall of Famer Mark Buehrle before the 2013 season. The moves led to Las Vegas declaring the Jays the off-season favourites to win the World Series but they stumbled out of the gate and finished last. The next year, they were in first place on Canada Day but fell out of the race after doing nothing at the trade deadline.
In November of 2014, Anthopoulos again made sweeping changes, trading star players Adam Lind and Brett Lawrie, among others, and bringing in catcher Russell Martin and third baseman Josh Donaldson.
The entire identity of the team had changed in less than a month. But with big names came some big personalities, and there were already some big personalities left over.
John Gibbons, manager: “It was a confident bunch. It was a high-maintenance bunch — we had some wingnuts, there’s no doubt about it, and some guys who wore their hearts on their sleeves, emotional guys — but I think that’s what made us good.”
Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin, left, and third baseman Josh Donaldson remember how exciting it was in the clubhouse at the 2015 trade deadline.
Todd Korol/Toronto Star
Alex Anthopoulos, general manager: “To me, strong personality doesn’t mean challenging or difficult. It means real belief in their convictions and their work ethic and demanding of excellence. You take Russell Martin. He demands work ethic and respect. (Troy Tulowitzki, who arrived in July 2015) the same way. You’re not going to not pull your end of the rope around those guys because they will not be afraid to say something to you, which is great.”
Ryan Goins, infielder: “(People say) it had to be miserable to be in the clubhouse with so many superstars with egos and this and that, where it probably was the best clubhouse I was ever in, with the best players that I ever played with, a lot of them multi-time all-stars, and they just came together all for one common goal and that was to win a game that day.”
Slow start
As welcome as the changes were, the team got off to another slow start and was just 23-29 at the end of May, though only 3½ games out of first place.
Anthopoulos: “When Josh Donaldson said ‘it’s not the try league, it’s the get-it-done league,’ he’s talking to all the players, but I view it as ‘hey, I’m part of this too, I’ve got to do my end, I’ve got to get my part done.’ All I hear about is ‘Russell Martin, he’s been in the post-season every single year.’ I’m not going to be the GM who brings him in and we don’t make the playoffs.”
Bautista: “We had a great team that was maybe underachieving, if you want to use that word, because with the quality of players you would think that we’d be better than a .500 team.”
Goins: “We were a frustrating team. We had all the names, we had all the accolades, we had it all, we just never put it together consistently. We’d have a good week and then a really bad week. You see the guys we have, you can look around the room and be like, why are we not whupping everybody’s ass?”
Kevin Pillar, outfielder: “I remember very nonchalantly, casually, asking Russ (Martin) on a bus ride, like, are we going to be OK? And he looked at me dead in the face. He said, ‘I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve never missed the playoffs. We’re going to be fine.’ And I was like, holy sh—. OK.”
Everything changed in the week leading up to the July 31 trade deadline.
Not long after Toronto Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos announces his blockbuster deadline trades, the Jays shop was filled with their new players’ jerseys.
Steve Russell / Toronto Star file photo
Wild week
In the wee hours of July 28, Anthopoulos traded for all-star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki and reliever LaTroy Hawkins from the Colorado Rockies. Two days later, he picked up ace left-hander David Price from the Detroit Tigers. On deadline day, outfielder and leadoff hitter Ben Revere and reliever Mark Lowe were acquired.
Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson and shortstop Troy Tulowitzki (left) celebrate Donaldson’s walk-off homer on July 31, 2015.
Cole Burston / Toronto Star file photo
Russell Martin, catcher: “It was just super exciting. I don’t remember being on a team where we added that many big pieces. It was like, oh my gosh, we just got a PlayStation and an Xbox, you know? Nowadays it would be like a brand new set of clubs. It’s just like the best Christmas ever, right? You got everything that you wanted, that was on your Christmas list. We got another big bat. Hall of Fame calibre shortstop. One of the best pitchers in the game, in Price. Solidified our bullpen. Catalyst at the top.”
Josh Donaldson, third baseman: “When Alex made all those trades … I just remember walking into the clubhouse that day and I was just like ‘I can’t believe this is our team. This is unbelievable.’ We have all-stars and future all-stars all throughout the room.”
Bautista: “It was a resilient group that was a little bit frustrated up to that point. It was a group of guys that was really determined to win no matter what, even though we weren’t playing well, and when the team gets reinforced like that, it just puts you on a superbooster.”
The deadline lit a massive spark, and the Blue Jays rolled through the rest of the season, going 42-14 until they clinched their first division title since 1993 with a 15-2 win in Baltimore on Sept. 30.
Donaldson: “I don’t remember losing in the second half.”
Bautista: “It was the most fun baseball I’ve ever played in my career.”
Blue Jays pitcher David Price celebrates with teammates after Toronto clinched the AL East on Sept. 30 against the Orioles.
Patrick Semansky / AP file photo
The Jays were in the playoffs for the first time in 22 years and immediately took it on the chin from the American League West champion Texas Rangers, losing the first two games of their best-of-five division series at home. But they rebounded to take both games in Texas and came home for a winner-take-all Game 5.
Tension was high immediately as the Rangers scored a run in the first inning and Shin Soo-Choo doubled the lead with a third-inning solo home run, while the Jays had trouble getting anything going against Texas ace Cole Hamels.
Bautista got one run back with a two-out RBI double in the bottom of the third, but Hamels retired the next eight hitters in a row before Edwin Encarnación crushed a dramatic game-tying home run in the bottom of the sixth.
In the top of the seventh, Aarón Sánchez took over from Marcus Stroman and gave up a leadoff single to Rougned Odor. A bunt got Odor to second, a ground ball moved him to third and, with two out, all hell broke loose.
Wildest inning in MLB history
Jeff Banister, Texas Rangers manager: “Odor’s at third base and one of my all-time favourite players in baseball (who) I had in Pittsburgh, Russell Martin, caught a pitch, goes to throw it back, hits the knob of the bat. Odor heads up, scores, the umpires send him back.”
Martin: “It was kind of like that Bill Buckner moment, almost, for me where I could have been remembered as the guy who messed up the season for the Blue Jays.”
Though the umpires did immediately send Odor back to third base, that wasn’t the right call and they knew it.
Dale Scott, home plate umpire and crew chief: “I short-circuited in that situation because I wasn’t — I certainly wasn’t expecting it, but that rule came up (he had had a situation the year before where a batter inadvertently kicked a ball in the dirt after striking out) and I go ‘no, no, no, that’s dead, nobody advances.’ As I’m walking out with my hands up, and my mind’s going a thousand miles an hour, all of a sudden I was thinking ‘wait a minute, wait a minute, that’s not dead. I have my hands up, I’m not sure why, but that’s not dead.’ So immediately I was pretty confident that I had killed a live ball.”
Blue Jays manager John Gibbons disputes a controversial call during the wild seventh inning in Game 5 of the 2015 ALDS.
Steve Russell/Toronto Star file photo
Geddy Lee, Rush front man and Jays superfan: “None of us knew what had happened, sitting behind the plate, because we didn’t have the privilege of the play-by-play announcer, so we were trying to figure out what happened. The ball just scooted out and the run came home and all of a sudden the crowd got real angry.”
Scott: “I told the (other umpires), I said ‘listen, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to score this run, and then I’ll take care of John (Gibbons).’ Because I had a feeling he might be upset, but I knew even though I had called time, it didn’t affect the play. If I had never called time, the exact same thing was going to happen.”
Scott pointed to the plate, sending Odor across with the go-ahead run, and Rogers Centre exploded.
Scott: “We got the play right and I was like horse manure getting there.”
Banister: “What ensued after that, the cans, the cups, everything that could be thrown on the field was thrown on the field. I understand the passion. I tell players all the time, ‘there’s only two things that a fan can invest in their team, that’s their money and their passion,’ and I love passionate fans.”
Dan Shulman, play-by-play broadcaster: “I texted my parents and my sons (who were in the stands) and said ‘listen guys, if they lose this game, there could be a riot.’ That was a very angry crowd, and I think what was on the mind of a lot of people was ‘they’re screwing us.’ I said ‘if they lose the game, stay in your seats. They might riot outside the ballpark.’ I’d never seen anything like this in Toronto. I said ‘stay in your seats, I’ll come get you. We’ll go home together.’”
Lee: “It got wild, man. People started pelting beers. Where I was sitting, beer cans were starting to land all around us and I feared for my friend, who was 20 years older than me. I’ve never seen a Toronto audience act like that.”
Scott: “With all the chaos that was going on, and (Gibbons) arguing and everything, I noticed that Russell Martin never said a word. He just was standing there. I’ve had history with Russell — we haven’t seen eye to eye on pitches and certain things — Russell is not afraid to voice his opinion. He never said a word. And in my mind, as all this was going on, I was thinking ‘whoa, if he had thought that I had grossly misinterpreted anything, it’s not like him not to say anything.’ Didn’t say a word. And in the back of my mind, I’m going ‘if nothing else, it’s not tangible, I can’t bring this up, but that’s proof right there I got this thing right’ because trust me, he would have said something.”
Martin: “I knew it was a live ball. And I knew how big of an unintentional mistake it was. So I was in shock. But I know what’s going to happen. This run is going to end up scoring, then they’re going to have the lead. How unlucky am I right now? And then obviously the crowd goes crazy, nobody’s happy because the initial call was no run and then they bring the runner in and that was the right call. And he’s right. If it wasn’t the right call, I would have lost it right away.”
A beer can falls near Russell Martin as fans got upset by the umpire’s ruling that allowed the Rangers to score.
Steve Russell / Toronto Star file photo
There was a long delay as the umpires discussed the situation with their supervisors in New York, spoke to both managers multiple times and waited as the stadium crew cleaned up the garbage on the field.
Martin: “I remember this empty feeling and being, I felt like I was alone. At that moment, it felt like I was there by myself in the stadium with nobody else there. That’s how much I felt distant from the actual game. I felt like I’m on an island by myself for a little while there.”
The Jays were livid, but after Sánchez struck out Choo to end the inning, they went back to their dugout with resolve.
Goins: “We were only down one and every guy was like, we’re getting it back right here. This isn’t how we’re going to f—king lose, we’re not losing this way.’ People were saying that. You just felt the energy. It wasn’t like we came in (saying) that’s f—ked up, they don’t want us to win, the league … you know how it can get. This isn’t how we’re going out. Not with what we’ve come from, what we did in the second half, this isn’t it.”
Then, the bottom of the seventh happened.
Martin: “When they talk about the baseball gods, it was like we didn’t deserve to lose this game on that. It’s a non-baseball play, right? And it’s like the baseball gods got involved somehow, right. And oh man, that was incredible.”
Martin led off with a routine ground ball to shortstop that Elvis Andrus booted. Pillar was next.
Pillar: “Aside from obviously being furious about what happened, I was honestly more concerned about that frigging guy (Hamels) that I had to face who had struck me out two times before. I felt like I had really no chance against him. I’m a little shocked in that moment (that) I wasn’t asked to bunt. They don’t ask me to bunt, and there was not even an ounce of heroic thoughts. It was like, ‘I will not strike out. I will do whatever it takes to put the ball in play.’”
Pillar hit a ground ball to first. Mitch Moreland fielded it and turned to throw to second to get Martin, but he bounced it and Andrus couldn’t come up with the ball.
Rangers infielder Elvis Andrus fails to cleanly scoop a grounder in the seventh inning in Game 5 of the ALDS.
Tom Szczerbowski / Getty Images file photo
Pillar: “I just remember hearing the roar of the crowd. Getting down the line, kind of looking to my left, and Russ was like, fired up at second base so I knew something had happened.”
Goins was sent up to bunt the runners over.
Goins: “It’s insanely loud, I’ve got Cole Hamels throwing 96 mile per hour sinkers and I’m like ‘how the f—k am I going to get this ball down?’ Like it’s a chainsaw. His stuff is nasty. I foul the first one off, and I’m like ‘you have to. You’re getting this bunt down, you cannot miss it.’”
He got the bunt down, right to third baseman Adrian Beltré, who made a perfect throw to third base, where Andrus was covering to get pinch-runner Dalton Pompey, but Andrus dropped the ball. The bases were loaded with nobody out.
Gibbons: “They had such a great defensive team, but the pressure, the noise in that place — they had three gold glovers on the infield, but they’re booting balls, throwing it away, whatever.”
Banister: “I never felt so bad for a player as I did for Elvis (Andrus). Tremendous human being and what happened, and how the spotlight got shined on him.”
Ben Revere was next, and the Rangers finally made a play. A ground ball to first was thrown home by Moreland to force Pompey at the plate, leaving the bases loaded with one out for Donaldson.
Bautista: “Ultimately, they kind of gave us the game with their three errors back to back to back and then, for whatever reason, they played the infield in on Donaldson and he got a little blooper that could have been an easy out (but) ended up scoring a run. That’s what it takes sometimes.”
Banister, who ordered the infield in to be playing in, has a different recollection.
Banister: “It was a little looping line drive that Odor broke in on and had to go back on that would have changed the dynamic of that entire inning.”
Pillar: “(Donaldson) gets absolutely fisted, so I can’t really tag up because it’s almost like an infield fly. So I’m kind of bouncing off trying to read it as he’s starting to like, kind of misplay it. I start to go back towards the base thinking if he does something stupid like dive or (catch it) over his head, maybe I’ve got a chance to tag. Then ultimately the ball drops and as I’m running home, it’s this huge sigh of relief that we tied the game.”
Revere was forced at second, so with two out in a 3-3 tie, Bautista came to the plate with runners on the corners.
Lee: “We were excited at what could happen. We had the right man there, you know. We were big José fans so we had the right man there at the right time, but nobody predicted that. But the mood was shifting to optimism, for sure.”
We will let the man himself tell the story.
Bautista: “Going into the at-bat, I felt pretty calm given all the hoopla going around.
“I had faced (reliever Sam Dyson) three or four times earlier in the season and I had grounded out to shortstop or third base every single time. The good thing for me is that I knew that he threw sinkers or fastballs 92 or 93 per cent of the time. It had late movement, some moved more than others, it was a very heavy ball. As long as you catch it out front, with good path, you don’t even have to swing that hard. If you (hit it) flush, it’s going to go very far because he’s providing all the power.
“He threw a couple that were really good and down, I was able to lay off of them because I was just trying to get a sac fly and get a guy in from third, believe it or not. Then he threw one a little higher, I hit it off of my foot, and for whatever reason I just relaxed a little more, went in and hit the next one in the bleachers.”
A no-doubt three-run homer to put the Jays on top. Rogers Centre hadn’t been so loud since Joe Carter’s home run to win the World Series in 1993, if ever.
Gibbons: “It’s funny, I didn’t see it happen. I was looking down at some (papers) — you know, “Analytics Gibbons” — but I heard the roar. So then I look up and I’m just tracking the ball, so I didn’t actually see the flip. I think the baseball gods were ready, you know? As was Canada.”
Donaldson: “That was pretty special, probably the most special part of my career, being a part of that.”
Aarón Sánchez, pitcher: “I knew right away. You can look at all the pictures of the bat flip, you look at the guy behind him and it’s me with both my hands in the air. I went from losing pitcher to winning pitcher, let’s go.”
Blue Jays pitcher Aaron Sanchez celebrates in the background with his hands in the air after Jose Bautista hits a three-run homer in Game 5 of the ALDS on Oct. 14, 2015.
Chris Young / CP file photo
Pillar: “Everyone just knew that sound, what it meant, and it was (an) immediate, you know, eruption. Then the horn goes off and then it’s like it’s this out-of-body experience where I don’t remember, like, jumping out of the dugout, throwing my hands in the air, headbutting people, it’s just like this, this out-of-body experience that you can’t explain.”
Banister: “It still hurts that he hit the home run. I think we threw him a change-up and he hit the homer. At that moment, it became the loudest stadium I’ve ever been in.”
Anthopoulos: “I remember grabbing (assistant GM) Andrew Tinnish, who was sitting in a chair in front of me, trying to grab him around his chest and trying to lift the chair and him all at once and then my arm sliding up and being blocked by his chin, so I lifted him up by his neck because I was going so crazy with excitement.”
Pull Quote
“If someone is going to thrive and relish in the post-season, it’s José. The bigger the moment, the better he’s going to play.”
Shulman: “That home run was the biggest instantaneous release of emotion that I’ve ever seen in a ballpark. It was something else.”
Martin: “I remember just looking up, kind of just looking towards the sky. The stadium wasn’t open. I knew there was something special that had to happen for the story not to be written another way. Because the other story would be like a Bill Buckner moment. I’d be sad talking about the story. Instead now, I tell the story with a big smile on my face, but the story definitely could have been written differently and I’m so grateful that in that moment, José picked up the whole country with one swing and it was incredible. Like, thank you, there’s gotta be something up there. I’m not the most religious person, but there had to be something that had our backs in that moment.”
And the bat flip. Bautista says he doesn’t remember doing it.
“It was all a blur,” José Bautista said after he hit his big three-run homer.
Toronto Star file photo
Bautista: “I felt the stadium shaking, the fans going nuts and I blacked out for a few minutes. I don’t remember anything after I hit the ball up until some point when I was back on the bench, trying to catch my breath. It was all a blur.”
He may have blacked out, but no one who has ever seen it will forget the way he fired the bat away with his left hand, brazen. Almost disdainful.
Anthopoulos: “What I loved about the bat flip was his facial expression. I use the word disgusted, but not in a bad way. He launched the homer and he just took the bat with that ferocious look on his face like ‘get the hell out of here.’ And he discarded it. Like, I’m going to just do my home run trot. It was so perfect and it was so José the competitor.”
Lee: “I think that defiant bat flip certainly was the period on the end of a sentence, but I think it came from all of the tension that had built up since that play.”
The game wasn’t over, though it certainly felt like it. And it felt that way to the players, too.
Pillar: “I knew we had Sánchez on the mound. I knew we had (closer Roberto) Osuna waiting in the bullpen. It was over when (Bautista) hit it. It was over, it was just a matter of time. Those guys, they weren’t scoring on those two guys.”
Goins: “I just remember seeing the ball hit and thinking ‘oh my God, we just did it.’ … you just felt like nobody can f—king beat us. Nobody.”
Ryan Goins, centre, celebrates José Bautista’s three-run home run after crossing home plate.
Toronto Star file photo
Banister: “What happened after that, when we finally got out of the inning, the human side of our game is so great that the first person who met Elvis coming off of the field was Cole Hamels. Cole said ‘bro, we got you. This is not on you. We got you.’”
They didn’t. Texas managed a single and a walk around a ground out off of Sánchez in the top of the eighth, then Osuna came in and retired all five batters he faced — striking out four — to close it out and send the Blue Jays to the American League championship series against Kansas City.
Shulman: “It was an extraordinary game. I don’t think I’ve ever been at a sporting event that was as emotionally charged as that was. And I think some of it was that 40-whatever thousand thinking ‘they’re not going to let us win this game.’ This ballpark was edgier than any other time I’ve ever seen it, even more than ’93.”
Rangers pitcher Sam Dyson takes issue with Edwin Encarnacion (left) after Jose Bautista (not pictured) homered in the seventh inning.
Steve Russell / Toronto Star file photo
Those final two innings were played, but they didn’t matter. Bautista might as well have walked it off. For all intents and purposes, he did.
The Dominican native came to the Jays in a 2008 waiver trade with Pittsburgh for catcher Robinzon Díaz, who wound up playing 44 games in the major leagues. Bautista struggled to find his footing in Toronto, but wound up a superstar, hitting a club-record 54 home runs in 2010, the first of six straight all-star seasons, four of which he finished in the top eight in MVP voting. But the team didn’t get great around him until 2015.
Even with Donaldson winning the MVP that season, it was Bautista who had the biggest moment.
Gibbons: “Had to be him. Wouldn’t have been the same with somebody else. Even though Josh was the MVP, that was Bautista’s moment. It had to be him. Controversial figure, the face of the franchise through some lean years. It wouldn’t have been the same if somebody else had hit it, I don’t think. Still would have been good, but it wouldn’t have been the same.”
Pillar: “I know the right person hit it. There’s never this moment of being envious or wishing that it was me. It was the right guy who hit it. He was put in that place in that moment to have that moment in time. You know, you think about his journey. What he meant to this country, how long he was here before the team was successful, for him to be the one to do it? I mean, you know, (pointing to Bautista’s name on the Level of Excellence) rightfully so.”
José Bautista salutes the crowd as his name is unveiled on the “Level of Excellence” at the Rogers Centre on Aug. 12, 2023.
Mark Blinch/Getty Images file photo
Anthopoulos: “If someone is going to thrive and relish in the post-season, it’s José. The bigger the moment, the better he’s going to play. You can put half a billion people in a stadium and that will only make him play better. This guy will rise to the occasion more than any other. Fearless, fearless player. It had to be him, but you know what, you could have predicted it would have been him.”
Banister: “I coached and had José Bautista in Pittsburgh as a kid. We were together all the way to the big leagues and together in the big leagues. I have great reverence for José. Love his career and who he is in the game of baseball and who he has grown up to be, and when I look up and I see his name on (the Level of Excellence), I’m proud of that.”
Bautista: “Credit where credit is due, Joe Carter has the greatest home run in Blue Jays history. I don’t want to act like it’s even a competition, but I’ll gladly take second place if that’s where it ends up. It was an amazing moment and my biggest takeaway is when people talk about it and bring it up to me and it’s always ‘I was here, I was there.’ To just be able to have that forever, as an organization it’s pretty cool because most of the time you play a very, very long career, you never get a chance to even be in a position, in a moment that big, or to be able create a moment that big.
“It was just a big moment. I was lucky enough to even be at the plate with the chance of making something special happen for the whole country and the organization, so I’m glad I did well because it could really have gone the other way quickly, but I’m glad it didn’t.”
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