They’re going to find the bat somewhere on East 4th Street in downtown Cleveland.
Petey Halpin took the biggest swing of his life, and then he let his baseball bat go with a launch angle greater than the magnificent parabola of the baseball soaring beyond the right field fence for a 3-2 Guardians lead over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 3 of the ALCS.
That swing held up. The Guardians won 3-2 on Thursday afternoon. They’ve taken a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series, putting themselves two wins away from a spot in the World Series, with the next two games still to be played in Cleveland.
Halpin, the speedy centerfielder with the ballplayer nickname — put a ‘-y’ on the end of anything and it sounds made for a baseball diamond — had hit a clutch home run late in the regular season against the Chicago White Sox. Up until Thursday, it was safe to say that was the biggest swing of his life.
Nothing has matched this, though. With a runner on and the Guardians down a run, Halpin leaned back, unloaded and watched the ball, and his bat, fly.
Bat Flip Beauty
When you’re growing up playing baseball, you get yelled at for throwing the bat.
There’s a relatively understandable tendency to let the bat go on your follow-through a bit too early and a bit too violently. It can turn into a projectile in reverse.
So for most of the lives of ballplayers, they hold onto the bat. They hold their follow-through, or they just make sure to drop the bat nicely as they head on their path toward first base.
But in recent years, to the chagrin of some old-school fans but to the joy of many, bat flips have taken over the sport.
Some feel silly, like when a guy actually just hit a routine fly ball but flipped his bat dramatically anyway.
Others feel made for the moment, like Halpin’s.
This isn’t a power hitter, although he runs into more no-doubters than you’d think. This is just a guy who plays like a dude named Petey, with a swagger and self-belief that has allowed him to succeed in the playoffs as a rookie, who knows how to flip his bat.
Even the staunchest anti-bat-flippers in the Cleveland crowd on Thursday afternoon wouldn’t have begrudged Halpin for this one. Let the bat take a celebratory flight, too.
Legacies in October
Halpin had already delivered big in these playoffs. He doubled twice against the Chicago White Sox in Game 5 of the ALDS, the last Cleveland home game before Thursday.
On the first double, he was thrown out going for a triple. On the second, the entire Cleveland dugout held a hand up to make sure Halpin stopped at second.
But still, it was clear Halpin was comfortable on this October stage.
Some players whither under these bright lights, with the whole baseball world watching. Others, like Halpin, rise to the occasion.
If the Guardians do this — if they end the waiting of a baseball city that extends all the way back to 1948, 78 years — Halpin’s swing will be in the montage. So too, probably, will be the hilarious image of those teammates holding him up on that second double in ALDS Game 5.
Halpin probably figured, what the heck — if he doesn’t want his teammates to hold him up, he better just hit it over the fence so he can’t get thrown out.
And so there it was on a sunny Thursday afternoon at the midpoint of October, not far from the shores of Lake Erie — a beautifully crafted piece of wood, having delivered the purest contact of its existence, floating through the air, flipping end over end as thousands upon thousands of Guardians fans lost their flippin’ minds — that bat belonging to a man named Petey, who had just reminded everyone of the beauty that can blossom in October on a ballfield.
Guardians’ Latest Unlikely Hero: Petey Halpin and a Bat Flip Heard Across Cleveland