Remembering Yasiel Puig’s show-stopping Game 4 home run

Yasiel Puig’s home run in the sixth inning of Game 4 against the Red Sox is one of the best in World Series history.

I didn’t do any research to back up that claim, and frankly, I don’t need to. We all saw that dinger and everything that came with it. The same way that slam dunks are more attractive for the power that comes with them, this home run was a beauty. Because as soon as you saw that laser off Puig’s bat, you knew. You felt that.

Here it is again, for good measure:

Puig flipped his bat, raised his fists in triumph, and admired the ball while Eduardo Rodriguez chucked his glove into the dirt in fury. Puig flexed and kissed his bicep running around the bases, and nearly caught up with Cody Bellinger on his way to home plate because he was just that excited.

When he got back to the dugout, he was met with mid-air body bumps, jumping jacks, jump shots, and endless high fives. The celebrations knew no limits from the moment his bat met ball, and his cleats touched the dugout floor.

The home run had every tiny detail you’d draw up in a cinematic work of art.

In 2018, a classic sports moment isn’t one unless it has a memorable GIF to go along with it. Though if you were to use this on Twitter, Major League Baseball will send federal agents to your house and send you to prison for life:

Puig’s home run was going to be the highlight, the headline, and the signature postseason moment anybody would bring up when Puig and his career are discussed for the rest of time. The series would be tied at 2-2 with one more game in LA, and the Dodgers would have a chance to take back the series that once looked like a lost cause at 2-0.

Instead, the Red Sox mounted an impressive comeback. And we’re not just talking “oh cool, they were down 4-0 and won 9-6” because it would be lazy to put it in those simple terms.

The Red Sox deserve all the credit in the world for putting together eight runs in the final three frames after an 18-inning marathon in the longest postseason game in league history. Something like that would drain the life out of a lot of teams, and the Red Sox somehow managed to overcome that, and the Puig launch to take a 3-1 series lead.

That might lead you to say that Puig’s home run doesn’t matter after all, and perhaps it doesn’t. But I’m going to disagree with that sentiment.

Puig’s home run exemplified the message Major League Baseball tried to get across in its opening ad for the postseason “rewrite the rules.” The video — still pinned on their Twitter page — was a wonderful montage of players admiring dingers, flipping bats, and celebrating at the plate:

It goes against all of the antiquated unwritten rules that old-timey baseball heads want modern players to go by. They are rules that do nothing but serve as an abnormal barrier towards expression in a moment of triumph. That’s not how human nature works, let alone how sports should work.

While Puig’s home run is going to be forgotten by many because it didn’t come in victory, it still matters because of the example it set. No matter what kind of fan may have been watching — a kid and their first World Series, a casual baseball fan, or a diehard fan that hates that kind of showmanship — everybody saw that in a World Series. The game’s stale unwritten rules didn’t matter in one of the biggest games of the year, and that’s a delicious moment.

The Red Sox didn’t retaliate, either. Sure, it was probably because they were in a four-run hole and it’s the World Series, but we got to enjoy the moment for what it was. And that was a damn good dinger and celebration.

Baseball could use more of everything that happened in those 30 some-odd seconds from when Puig hit the ball, to him getting to the dugout. It’s still going to take years to change what’s been in place for so long, but strides are being made.

It’s going to take players like Puig, Ronald Acuña Jr., Bryce Harper, and other serial bat flippers to get us there, but it will happen.

And look, bottom line, that shit was just magnificent.