I was only casually paying attention to the Dodgers-Cubs National League Championship Series, as most of the games were played too late in the evening for me to keep up with it beyond wondering if I could get it in the paper the next day.

Aside from the Dodgers actually advancing to the World Series, I don’t think I was able to get any of those games in the print edition. A day after the Dodgers punched their ticket to the Series, though, I did casually stumble upon a column by the New York Post’s Phil Mushnick about Los Angeles outfielder Yasiel Puig. 

Puig has been an interesting player to follow if you’re a fan of Major League Baseball. A Cuban immigrant, he came to the Dodgers in 2013 and immediately made a huge impression, hitting to the tune of .319/.391/.534/.925 in 104 games played. His sophomore season, 2014, saw him earn an All-Star Game berth and hit .296. Over the next two seasons, however, a decline started to happen with Puig, as his slugging percentage went down from .480 in 2014 to .416 in 2016. There was talk this past offseason of trading Puig away, as he seemed to be failing to live up to the hype he received early in his Dodgers career.

Instead, Los Angeles chose to keep Puig, and that decision paid off, as the outfielder hit 28 home runs in the regular season, the most of his young career in a single season. He’s currently having an excellent postseason, batting .455 in the National League Divisional Series and .389 in the NLCS to help his team to its first World Series appearance since 1988.

So I was curious when I saw the title to Mushnick’s column (http://bit.ly/2ywui2X): “Why baseball doesn’t need more Yasiel Puigs, it needs less.” Hmm. I doubt seriously the Dodgers wouldn’t love to have another Yasiel Puig on its roster given the production he’s given Los Angeles this season.

Reading the column, though, it was clear Mushnick’s issue with Puig wasn’t his on-field production, but rather, his antics. 

If you catch Dodgers games somehow or pull up a few clips of Puig, it’s clear he’s at least somewhat of a showman. Whether it’s raising his hands out of the box to signify getting a big hit, or calling his shot — as he appeared to do right before an RBI double in Game 1 of the NLCS — or flipping his bat, it’s little wonder Puig gets under Mushnick’s skin. There’s even this eye-opening quote by Puig when he was asked why he sometimes licks his bat: “I make love to the bat and he pays me back with hits.”

Alrighty then.

I used to be on Mushnick’s side of the argument. I didn’t like hitters who took their sweet time making their way to first base after hitting a home run and instead wanted to stare at their blast for several seconds. The overdone hand signals that often included pointing toward the sky after touching home plate seemed less of an act of praising God and more of a signature set of motions to draw attention to the player himself. I wondered why hitters couldn’t just tuck their heads, run quickly around the bases and wait to get excited in the dugout with their teammates.

Needless to say, my view on the matter has evolved tremendously.

Part of Mushnick’s argument is Puig’s antics at home plate have cost him extra-base hits because he took too much time getting down the line that what would have been a double or triple ended up just being a single. I don’t watch enough Dodgers baseball to refute this, but at the same time, there are no numbers or specific examples presented that confirm Puig does or has done this. I don’t doubt it’s happened, but is it a regular occurrence with Puig, or is it a once-every-blue-moon thing that gets blown out of proportion?

The reason I’ve come to embrace such “showmen” is because baseball is a sport in general that needs to be more open to change. One of those changes is the “gentlemanly” nature is giving way to something more akin to what you see on NFL Sundays after someone scores a touchdown. It’s not “wrong,” it’s just different. If people want to stare at their home run and do a fist pump rounding first base, it’s time to stop freaking out about it. If a player prefers the “old school” way, that’s fine, too. Let the player be himself, and stop trying to conform him to baseball’s unwritten rules, some of which are frankly outdated.

One of my most disliked phrases I hear from coaches, especially baseball coaches, is that so-and-so “plays the game the right way.” Part of this is because, as a journalist, I’m conditioning to hate clichés anyway, and part of it is that, when you actually take the time to think about it, the phrase is a truism. We have a word for playing the game the wrong way: cheating. If you’re not cheating, you are by definition “playing the game the right way.” Showmanship has nothing to do with the “right” or “wrong” way to play baseball, it’s just a personal preference — and we should allow professionals to play according to their preferences. 

Drew Kerekes is the sports editor of The Meridian Star. He can be reached at dkerekes@themeridianstar.com.