Taunting After Walkoff Homer Sparks Minor League Brawl

Apparently, it’s a bad idea to jaw with the pitcher and turn around to taunt the other team when you’ve just hit a walkoff home run.

If you want something to be really outraged about, note that the taunter in question—Rangers prospect Engel Beltre, here playing for the Bakersfield Blaze, as Wezen-Ball notes—basically incites the fight, then runs off to touch home plate. Look, Engel, your game-winning homer obviously wasn’t important enough in its own right to celebrate without admiring it from the box or prodding the other team as you rounded the bags. Why did you need to finish it, and avoid eternal infamy as the only guy to get ejected during a walkoff homer? You could have been a legend.

Wezen-Ball proprietor Larry Granillo, who clocked the trot, because that’s what he does, also brings up the issue of whether the run should count, as Beltre clearly leaves the basepath. I don’t much care about that; I’m just going to listen to the “No cowbell!” a fan fires at the field at about 1:20 over and over. In a video full of oddities, that’s my favorite.

(HTs: Wezen-Ball and Sports With Pep via Hardball Talk.)

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