José Bautista’s oh-so-epic bat flip after smashing a homer in Game 5 of the American League Division Series on Wednesday night earned the slugger a spot on every baseball highlight reel from now until the end of time. It also earned a hallowed place in our lexicon. If you’ve been looking for a term to signify totally crushing it, well, that’s one more thing to thank Bautista for. Nailed your sales presentation? Bat flip. Got the kids to school without tears? Bat flip. Any time you rise to an occasion with total fearlessness and singular confidence – bat flip. Don’t confuse this with the nonchalance of a mic drop, its gestural and linguistic cousin. One is chill, the other is fist-pump-in-the-air-totally-crushing-it-nothing-can-stand-in-my-way-because-that’s-right-look-what-I-just-did, bat flip.
Whatever your bat-flip moment, however, one thing is essential above all others – swagger.
Which of course raises the question, can you learn swagger? Or is it something you’re born with, like the genes that created one of the most heroic beards ever to grace a baseball diamond?
Giving up on ever having swagger because you believe you’re born with it or you’re not is definitely not a swagger move.
Justin Bieber wanted swagger bad enough to hire a “swagger coach.” Mere mortals fret about their lack of swagger.
What, you ask, is swagger? Much like cool itself, it’s hard to define in words.
Urban Dictionary has arguably the best definition. “Swagger is to move with confidence, sophistication and to be cool. Swagger is to conduct yourself in a way that would automatically earn respect.”
Much like the famous definition of pornography, however, no matter how hard it might be to say exactly what swagger is, you know it when you see it.
Denzel Washington is swagger. Ronda Rousey is swagger. Mick Jagger is swagger (Jagger Swagger?). Muhammad Ali is probably the swaggerest of swagger, ruling atop Mt. Swagmore.
These people are all hugely successful, but success in your field is no guarantee of swagger. For example, Tom Brady is the most successful quarterback of his generation, but he is not swagger. He’s too guarded and self-conscious. Whatever else it requires, part of swagger is being completely comfortable in your own skin.
But if we really want to understand how to climb Mt. Swagmore, we don’t need to look any further than Bautista’s bat flip – all the hours of work that preceded it, the steely-eyed determination, the complete focus, the will to make his goal reality and damn all else, the unwavering confidence, the utter master-of-your-own-destiny owning it of it all, because Bautista wasn’t flipping that bat at the other team, he was flipping it at the universe itself and every force there is that says you can’t succeed on your own when the game looks as if it’s going against you.
Swagger experts will be studying that bat flip for years to come. The rest of us will be revelling in it, wishing for our own bat-flip moment, whatever it might be. When it comes, remember to embrace your inner Bautista.