Concluding this unexpected curtain call series (unless everybody cheers for so long that I have no choice but to come back with another): In the comments of the last one, Finn wrote—
This all reminds me of my favourite curtain call moment: when Edwin Encarnación hit three homers for the Jays at home, and fans started to throw their hats onto the field like they do in hockey for a hat trick (when a player scores three goals in one game). Edwin didn't understand and thought the fans were mad at him, until someone in the dugout told him it was a sign of respect, and Edwin went out for his curtain call. This was 2015-16ish, and I might not have all the details right, but it's a fun little piece of Canadian baseball lore.
Some of the details are a little off. Here’s the MLB Highlight edit:
The full home and away broadcasts give more context, and an interesting sequence emerges. Starting the clock on the home run going out:
00:00: “….it’s a grand slam!”
------------ [Crowd cheers ceaselessly]
00:44: Encarnación jumps out for his curtain call.
00:54: First pitch is thrown to next batter, Justin Smoak.
00:57: Crowd cheers cease. At most a quiet residual hum remains.
------------ [Crowd silently checks phones to catch up on previous 57 seconds of phone stuff]
01:28: Dioner Navarro, sitting next to Encarnación in the dugout, is the first to spot a hat has landed afield. He points it out to Encarnación, who is first confused:
01:35: The crowd, en masse, notices. A loud cheer erupts.
01:37: Blue Jays’ broadcast: “Here they come!”
------------ [Dozens of hats come down. Stadium staff run around picking them up.]
01:56: Fan noise swells again, and fans stand up to give Encarnación and/or the situation another standing ovation.
02:15: A foam finger joins the field.
02:16: Stadium announcement asks fans to please not throw anything on the field.
02:31: And a plastic helmet.
02:33: Tigers ’cast: “They may just have to play through this.”
02:56: Fans start up a new chant. “Let’s go Blue Jays, /clapclapclapclap.”
03:45: As Tigers’ pitcher throws a grumpy re-warmup pitch, the Toronto crowd still sounds about as loud as ever. Tigers ’cast: “Very electric here in this stadium right now.”
04:00: Third pitch of at-bat finally thrown to Justin Smoak.
04:15: “So cool!” Blue Jays broadcaster Buck Martinez says.
04:30: After a second strike is thrown to Justin Smoak, the crowd zips up. Encarnación beams.
//\
\//
In one of the great Russian novels1, there’s a young nihilist who says, of people, that there’s really no point examining them closely:
“All people are like one another, in soul as in body. … the slight variations are of no importance. People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch tree.”
I don’t think I agree with that, but even the nihilist seems to grant that the forests are worth studying, that forests produce variations. A crowd is a forest. And here, in this four-minute celebration of Edwin Encarnación, we can see how a crowd can produce variations of interest and importance.
There are three significant details in this timeline, which I will go on to suggest might have had a great influence on Blue Jays history.
1. The hats didn’t fly immediately.
The hat trick might be a favourite tradition of Canadian sporters, but Edwin Encarnación rounded the bases, returned to the dugout, stepped back out of the dugout for his bow, re-returned to the dugout, and reclined in satisfaction to the gentle buzz of a quieted crowd pushing the game’s action forward, all without a single hat being thrown. It was only 30 seconds later, two pitches into the next at-bat, that one of those 46,444 fans decided to throw the first hat.
It was, in that sense, not a group action at all, but that of an exceptional individual. (A single birch tree!) And yet in a larger sense even the individual was already part of a group action. This fan was taking a chance, but also following a cultural script. The fan was doing it alone, but only because of the confidence that others would follow.
If first-hat thrower had been the only hat thrower, it would have been vandalism. Instead, it was leadership. But you had to know that the group was open to being led there.
2. The crowd dictated the meaning of the act.
When it is pointed out to the Russian nihilist that there is a difference between good-natured and ill-natured people, the nihilist says those differences are just symptoms of sickness and health. The crowd, though, has the power to define what is sick and what is healthy.
The hat-throw situation begins with some ambiguity. “At first I thought it was a couple idiots,” Jays manager John Gibbons said. There were the stadium announcements saying please stop, stadium security guards and police standing at attention and staring the crowd down, and a Tigers broadcast crew that seemed slightly annoyed at the disruptive scofflawry.
By the book, all of these hats thrown to the field were clearly in violation of social order and stadium rules. Other crowds throwing other things on the field have previous led to forfeits and moral panic and team-giveaway rules changes. That’s because a crowd is a terrifying thing, capable of quickly getting dangerously out of control. But here, the Toronto crowd—building off the work of previous Canadian crowds, who had laid the foundation for pro-social hat-throwing—was able to insist through its group happiness that its intentions were good and its behavior was healthy.
"At first I thought it was a couple idiots,” Gibbons said, “and then when everybody came down it changed my judgment.” A couple idiots are a couple idiots. A crowd of idiots though, are society.
3. Most people didn’t throw their hats.
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