Baseball at its finest. This beef features two moments so memorable and exciting they were each featured on T-shirts. I’m talking, of course, about Jose Bautista’s bat flip after his ALDS three-run home run, and Rougned Odor’s revenge punch the next season.
Bautista and Odor are both passionate men, with a strong sense of what’s right and what’s wrong on the baseball field. Those senses of right and wrong don’t necessarily line up, but they both believe in justice … which is what lead to some violent beef.
In the aftermath of the bat flip and the punch, both players scrambled to the press to define the other guy as The Bad Guy. Baseball players, coaches, legends, and fans took side and the result was that both guys had to own the role of villain a little bit. This was a reputation-defining beef, whether they wanted it to be or not.