A Quick Jays-Rangers Timeline Before We Watch Rougned Odor Embarrass Himself
7 years ago
If it weren’t the single, undisputed, greatest moment in Blue Jays post-1993 history, I’d probably roll my eyes at the fact that people are still getting worked up today about a bat flip that happened seventeen months ago. And yet the horseshit Texas Rangers kinda made it so we have no choice.
Here’s a timeline to consider:
- October 2015: José Bautista eats Sam Dyson’s children, putting the Jays up for good with a mammoth blast in the series-clinching fifth game of an ALDS the Rangers had once led 2-0. He celebrates exuberantly and entirely appropriately given the gravity of the moment — an opinion held by everyone but scared old dudes refusing to acknowledge the ever-quickening hopeless irrelevance of “the way it was,” and thus their own mortality. The sadass Rangers get sadass about it.
- May 2nd-5th, 2016: The Rangers come to Rogers Centre for the first time since their spiritual de-pantsing. They rather familiarly win the first game of the series then lose three straight. Not a whole lot happens.
- May 13th-14th, 2016: The Blue Jays visit the Rangers in Texas to play the final three scheduled games between the two teams for the season. They split the first two games of a three game series. Not a whole lot happens.
- May 15th, 2016, first inning through seventh inning: The Blue Jays and the Rangers play baseball. Not a whole lot happens.
- May 15th, 2016, eighth inning, 0 outs: The chickenshit Rangers embarrass themselves, the state of Texas, and the game of baseball. They do this not only by being such fragile pissasses that they felt they needed to retaliate for a months-old bat flip (a bat flip, I might add, that they could have easily avoided by not literally throwing and bunglefucking the seventh inning of Game Five away). They do this not only by choosing the route of violence, throwing a pitch at a guy because bloo bloo he bat fwipped our feewingses. They do this also by waiting until Bautista’s last scheduled at-bat of the 2016 season against them to retaliate. If you’re going to be so utterly pathetic as to feel that a bat flip — a bat flip! — warrants a potentially-injurious fastball to the ribs, don’t be fucking cowards and wait until the last at-bat of a player’s season against you, Rangers. Jeezus.
- May 15th, 2016, eighth inning, 1 out: Matt Bush, who hit Bautista, and wasn’t even on the Rangers the previous October, exits the game to a standing ovation from dumbfuck sadass Rangers fans.
- May 15th, 2016, eighth inning, 1 out: With Bautista on first base, Justin Smoak hits a double play ball off new pitcher Jake Diekman. Bautista slides hard in anger at Rougned Odor at second base. Or… OK, he slides through second base. He doesn’t go wide of the bag to take him out, because Odor is on the bag. José slides late and way past the bag. It was a shitty slide. He should have just let the Rangers look like the utter chickenshit punks that they are, frankly. And as much as Jays fans probably don’t like me saying so, if I don’t give an honest assessment of this part, then my honest assessment of the garbage the Rangers pulled isn’t worth very much.
- May 15th, 2016, eighth innings, 3 outs: Bautista and Odor immediately assume fighting posture. Odor shoves Bautista hard. José winds up to throw a punch (let’s be honest), but Odor clocks him first with a weak-ass punch that doesn’t even knock him down. (OK, it was perhaps a slightly better shot than that makes it sound). Adrián Beltré rushes in and pulls Bautista away, sparing further punishment to… um… let’s say Odor. At the very least he spared one of the two combatants!
- May-October 2016: Dipshit Rangers fans act like their club’s shameless cowardice was actually some kind of act of karmic justice to be proud of. “Don’t Mess With Texas” shirts and “Bat Flips Get Fat Lips” become a thing.
- October 2016: The Rangers get embarrassed in the playoffs by the Blue Jays again.
- November 2016: Media-illiterate Rangers fans vote in huge numbers for Donald Trump… probably.
- March 13th, 2017: In a World Baseball Classic game for Venezuela, Rougned Odor, sainted ass-clown of the flip-hating Rangers tribe, pimps the ever-loving shit out of a goddamn single. To wit:
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE, ROUGIE YOU FUCK!!!!
Awesome bat flip, tho (I’d have maaaaybe saved it for a home run). But… uh… aren’t those supposed to be super uncool and disrespectful? Quite frankly, Rangers, I liked you guys better when you were just cowards, not hypocritical cowards. Work on that.
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