...except of course the opposing team. The rest of us, oh, Yeah.
The Card That Started It All
Hey that's not a Bat Flip card! Yes, I know. I have always been fascinated by this card, anyways. That's a Bat Drop card. When the Baseball bat is captured on cardboard like this, I find the image mesmerizing. It robustly reinforces the realization that this is a captured moment in time; live action, Baseball game time. An image like this can't be posed, and can't be mistaken for anything but a picture from a live action Baseball game.
So cards like that have always tended to bubble to the top of my stacks of cards, for future reference, where they say "keep me, keep me," regardless of what set they are from or what player they depict. I have another dozen & a half hypnotic Bat Drops like that one.
The Card That Really Started It All
This is a pretty famous card, of a pretty famous Bat Flip in the 2015 playoffs. Although I purchased way too much 2016 Topps Baseball Series One, I could just never pull that dang card; if I went for set completion there it would be on a very short list of singles still needed, I expect. Late in the year I did finally receive a copy from a pack in the (inaugural?) Topps Holiday release. It was nice to have and snowflakes in Canada in mid-October are far from unknown, but for an iconic Baseball Card like this one, do you really want fake snowflakes on it? (I have this exact same problem with another equally famous card, the one called "Bat Down," which has nothing to do with a Bat Flip.)
Bautista's Bat Flip is more than just an unforgettable moment of Baseball History, it actually figures in to Baseball History as it launched a bit of discussion in the sport about loosening up the "Unwritten Rules" a little bit as the game of Baseball trails into 3rd place in American public life, solidly behind Football & Basketball.
And of course the notoriety of the incident only grew the next year, when Rougned Odor received his own 15 minutes of fame for reminding Bautista that he broke the ancient Unwritten Rule about this. Which only made the discussion spin through a few more news cycles on all the Sports Talk media everywhere. Although the Odor-Bautista bout is not memorialized on cardboard, I would imagine some collectors do hold some of their Rougned Odor cards as their own cherished memory of the whole affair.
Now Topps is not going to miss such an obvious subject for a Baseball Card, and they got right on it just a month or two after Bautista "got all of that one." A few years later they even began trying to memorialize the concept more explicitly -
This is a 2020 Heritage Insert that attempts to capitalize on such an iconic event, but it has a major problem: Nobody liked Tim Anderson. Jose Ramirez is a hero in the AL Central for finally thrashing him out on the field of play, as when I say "Nobody" liked him, that doesn't mean just the fans. Other players largely despised him. That incident with J-Ram was immortalized by Cleveland's long-time radio voice Tom Hamilton, who called the action as it unfolded: "Down goes Anderson!" That one has not just plenty of YouTube coverage, but also one of the more epic Wikipedia pages you will ever read.
So a bit of a swing & a miss there by Topps, though they could hardly have known how annoying Tim Anderson would become when they created that card. A subsequent attempt to attach Baseball Cards to Bat Flip glory that same year also fizzled completely:
These inserts appeared in 2020 Big League, which was a fine set of Baseball Cards that few could ever purchase without buying them from a pointless flipper middleman. One who had bribed a retail distributor employee, as Stimulus cash drowned the Hobby in annoyances for people stupidly just wanting to buy Baseball Cards, rather than be selling them as fast as possible at probably all-time market peaks.
Anyhow those inserts lead off with another Tim Anderson card actually, and it does depict a Tim Anderson Bat Flip adequately enough, in that there is a substantially complete bat shown on the card.
The problem with the rest of the checklist is an all too commonly repeated one on Topps cards: the cards don't bother using images matching the theme of the insert. Some of them don't even include the bat in the image at all, while one even shows a bat clearly not being flipped. Topps being Topps, again. What good is a Bat Flip card without a Bat on it? This ain't Rocket Appliances.
Fortunately, I have been able to find some plenty good Bat Flip cards in the years since Bautista broke that old unwritten rule for good. These are just, Baseball Cards, i.e. "base" cards, rather than specially titled inserts. It would surprise me not at all to see this insert theme attempted again, hopefully with better results next time. And hopefully without being the province solely of limited edition cards such as the Topps Now line, Golden Mirrors, even deeper SSPs, Throwback Tuesday, etc. Such classic Baseball imagery would be best delivered to all collectors, not just those willing to spend an Andrew Jackson or several, per card, to relive an often iconic moment. One can dream.
Let's check out some Bat Flips -
On this Bat Flip, Odubel Herrara has "caught the most air" of about any Bat Flip card you can find this side of the Bautista card. There is no doubt this is a Bat Flip.
I don't actually think that fabulous Victor Martinez card at the top of this post is a Bat Flip card, either. It might be, but it is not quite a 100% definitive example of the genre. The best such cards just scream: Bat Flip!
Also a good amount of air caught on this one; as with the Herrara card it clearly shows off another key feature: the slugger admiring the Moon Shot, too.
As near perfect as those two Bat Flip cards are, they have one key problem for my Personal Collecting system: they are just normal "vertical" Baseball Cards. The most epic Bat Flip card, the Bautista, is a horizontal card. I no longer tolerate swiveling my neck this way and that way attempting to enjoy horizontal Baseball Cards mixed with vertical ones. I hope to find more vertical Bat Flips, they can certainly work well. But for now, those two are back in their cardboard holding cell, awaiting new amigos to be found in new packs of cards.
For a good Bat Flip card, ya gotta go Horizontal, all the way:
2019 Big League
This is perhaps my most surprising Bat Flip, but also one of the most endearing, as it lets a player renowned for Defense, not Power, get in on the fun. Normally, Bat Flippers are pretty famous -
2023 Stadium Club
I'm not 100% positive on this one. But, Kirby Puckett gonna Kirby Pickett, so, probably.
2018 Big League
2019 Topps
I'll bet Topps was stoked to discover a serial Bat Flipper they could spotlight in their sets. Naturally, they forgot all about Encarnacion for the attempt at those Bat Flip inserts in 2020 Big League.
2021 Stadium Club
This card includes another excellent photo feature for this: the reaction from everyone watching.
2023 Topps
At first I thought a best Bat Flip card must show the entire Baseball bat. I softened my stance here as the crowd reaction confirms it all. It appears there is even someone taking a picture, without a phone (!), like we have gone back in time.
2023 Stadium Club
Getting the team and the fans altogether on one of these is The Way.
2008 Upper Deck
Finally on this glorious day known as, "Today," I received my very own copy of the necessary keystone here:
2016 Topps
Ironically, the 2016 Topps Holiday design might be one of the best for not intrusively adding the snowflakes, etc. — because the original base design pointlessly "smokes" out the corners anyway.
But that card there is the Real Deal. There is a strong chance that card is the single most valuable non-Rookie base Topps Baseball set card created in the 21st Century.
Card Most on the Bubble: I do look forward to assembling more pages of Bat Flip cards; I do have a few more of these that can't quite match the epic-ness of the Starting Nine I selected here, though some are close.
However if & when I can find a qualified replacement, maybe someday I will switch out the Devers card, which after all does largely omit the bat from a Bat Flip card, something I was just nagging on Topps about. I might need it for an even bettter theme, we'll see.
The Result
Sometime in the near or far-away future, I will be starting what I call my "Stadium Club Project." Instead of buying random boxes of SC, old or new, and enjoying what comes out of them essentially randomly, I will be shopping each set, visually, one card at a time. I recently discovered that a big healthy % of the cards are available on Sportlots for just 20¢ each in most cases. Though not for "Inner Circle" GOATs or famous Rookies, naturally. I expect that might turn up a few more of these.
Meanwhile, I recently pulled a card of an ultra-famous Baseball player who is not shown flipping a bat. If this guy were to do so I think the highlight reel would reach epic levels of views on Social Media, forever and ever. The card creates a new genre/theme for Baseball Cards in my bemused mind at least, one that may never yield 9 cards but is a just exactly perfect Baseball Card look:
mic drop
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