What Do You People Think 'Bat Flips' Are?

Now, 99 percent of the time when someone feels the need to state upfront that they are not mad, they are, in fact, quite mad. This is the exception. I am not mad. I'm just a bit confused about an admittedly small thing that shouldn't bother a sane person.

Consider the below tweets, which represent dozens along the same line after Tampa Bay's Avisail Garcia blasted a mammoth two-run homer in last night's American League Wild Card Game.

Longtime readers of this site may remember that the propensity of almost all national coverage of the sport to be filtered through the lens of old school vs. new school or an unwritten rules content generator is particularly frustrating to me personally.

Learning to accept what you cannot change is a sign of maturity and, as any healthy person would do, I've come to terms with that. But allow me ask what may be a stupid question here.

What is a bat flip?

Because if what Garcia did there qualifies, I've been approaching the topic completely wrong for years. It was always my belief that a bat flip was an exaggerated act of showmanship. Setting aside whether the act has a place in the game, I thought we were all working from the same accepted definition.

What Jose Bautista did is a bat flip. Anything above the waist is a bat flip, with the shoulders serving as the screw-you line of demarcation. Garcia gave it a little english as he set off for first base, but if this end-over-end rotation qualifies as a flip, we're seeing scores per game.

This is a pretty basic, non-showy motion. Even the CLASSIEST guys on the diamond do similar after a walk in the interest of returning the bat closer to the dugout. Like, guys with motorcycles, jeans, and a list of loved ones on their Twitter bios are okay with that.

So, are we, as a society, getting more liberal in our definition of a bat flip? Or -- and this is quite possibly the case -- have I been a big dummy this whole time?