Major League Baseball
The celebration adds more flash than dash

By Larry Stone
Seattle Times staff reporter

AP Season home-run king Barry Bonds shows some celebration of his own.

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The home run is the hard work. It's what happens afterward that separates the boys of summer from the showmen.

In the good old days, before ESPN put the highlight at the forefront of the athlete's mind — and when pitchers like Sal Maglie and Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale enforced a strict code of behavior — batters would trot briskly around the bases, heads down, as if they didn't want the hurler to notice their achievement.

Cubs manager Phil Caveretta once said of Ernie Banks, "After he hits a homer, he comes back to the bench looking like he did something wrong."

"In my generation," confirmed Banks, "you didn't look where the ball was going. You just started running, and you went around the bases in a fast trot."

Oh, Babe Ruth, with his distinctive prancing gait, was a bit of a showman — "Babe never hit a home run against us that he didn't wink at me as he was rounding third," a third baseman of the era once said — but he was allowed to be an exception, because he was Babe Ruth.

That attitude, however, began to inflict the masses in the flashy 1960s. Many have pinpointed the source of the post-homer affectation as none other than Minnesota slugger Harmon Killebrew. A quiet, non-demonstrative man by nature, Killer nonetheless took to standing and staring at his most majestic home runs.

At the recent All-Star Game, where all the living members of the 500-homer club gathered, a video montage was shown that clearly outed Killebrew as a chronic wallop-watcher.

	ELLEN M. BANNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Even in his Mariners days, Ken Griffey Jr. was known for watching his blasts fly.

His contemporaries saw what Killebrew was doing and ran with it. Or didn't run, as the case might have been. Reggie Jackson was the next slugger to be a famous admirer of his handiwork. Nowadays, Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. often stare in wonderment at their blasts, then walk the first several yards down the line before commencing their trots.

Noted author David Halberstam called Bonds "The Great Narcissist," and wrote of his home-run machinations, "The pause at this moment, as we have all come to learn, is very long, plenty of time for the invisible but zen-like moment of appreciation when Barry Bonds psychically high-fives Barry Bonds and reassures him once again that there's no one quite like him in baseball."

In a day and age when football players pull out Sharpies and cellphones after touchdowns, it's not surprising that the home-run celebration has evolved into an ostentatious melodrama.

You can thank pioneers like Dave Parker, who went so wide down the first-base line it seemed he was headed for the dugout — shooting imaginary guns with his fingers on the way.

You can thank Jeffrey Leonard, who made his "one flap down" trot a major plot point of the 1987 National League Championship Series. You can thank Jimmy Piersall, who went around the bases backward to commemorate his 100th career homer; and Keith Moreland, who did a cartwheel after he crossed home plate on a slump-breaking homer; and Deion Sanders, who after his first major-league homer bent down at home plate to tie his shoelace, pointing his rear end at pitcher Bryan Clutterbuck.

And you can thank Rickey Henderson, who had everything but a spotlight and stage for his self-congratulatory antics as he toured the bases, oh so slowly.

Certainly, a special debt of gratitude must be paid to Sammy Sosa, who has moved post-homer performance art to new levels with his full catalogue of heart tugs and skyward gestures. Now a whole slew of players feel obligated to punctuate blasts with a choreographed succession of pointing, kissing and saluting.

Naturally, the aggrieved pitcher doesn't always take kindly to these shows of celebration. In spring training 1987, pitcher Al Nipper drilled Darryl Strawberry — belated retribution for Strawberry's flamboyant trot on a home run in Game 7 of the 1986 World Series. Cardinals pitcher Steve Kline once practically followed Jimmy Rollins around the bases, cursing him for what he perceived to be an impudent bat flip.

In the mid-1990s, Mickey Mantle — noted for his no-fuss trots — asked Houston's Jeff Bagwell why modern players primped and strutted after home runs.

"Is it the first time they've ever hit a home run?" Mantle asked, bringing to mind the football coach who told his excessively celebrating running back, "Act like you've been there before."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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