Home Run Wars: MLB's Stars Tell You How to Properly Hype a World Series Dinger

LOS ANGELES — Astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon in 1969.

Astros shortstop Carlos Correa became the first man to nearly bat-flip to the moon during a World Series game in 2017.

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind's…bat!

It came during Game 2 of this crank-up-the-fun Dodgers-Astros World Series, an epic match now racing toward Game 6 Tuesday night in Dodger Stadium with the pure, unbridled joy of youthful innocence. Conspicuously absent is any trace of old-school venom from the grumps who would disapprove of anything close to celebratory.

"All of the emotions are running when you're playing at the biggest stage of baseball and you hit your first homer," Correa tells B/R. "It was so much fun."

The rest of this thing is, too.

Through five games of this 113th World Series, never has the formerly staid Fall Classic seen so much flipping, flapping, dancing, grinning and what once was considered baseball sinning.

The 22 home runs through Game 5 set a World Series record, surpassing the old mark of 21 set in 2002 by the San Francisco Giants and the then-Anaheim Angels.

Of those 22, 14 either have tied the game or put a team in the lead.

That means almost every home run has led to party time.

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"Everybody is doing their best, trying to play and have fun and have a good effort," the King of the Bat Flips himself, Yasiel Puig, tells B/R. "Especially in [Game 5], there were a lot of runners and a lot of hits for both teams."

Game 5, Game 2, Game 4…take your pick. Swag is in attendance nightly.

During Sunday's rock 'em, sock 'em heavyweight battle which the Astros won, 13-12, in 10 innings to move Houston to within one win of a world championship, Dodgers rookie Cody Bellinger slugged a three-run homer that launched Los Angeles to a 7-4 lead in the fifth inning. Upon crossing the plate, Bellinger punctuated his return trip to the Dodgers' dugout by putting his index finger to his lips. No, you didn't need a DVR and a crisp replay to see the dude was shushing Houston's fans.

This after teammate Joc Pederson went all Kirk Cousins one night earlier, screaming "You like that?! You like that?!" after drilling a three-run homer during the Dodgers' five-run ninth inning in a 6-2 Game 4 win. Cousins, the Washington Redskins' quarterback, shouted that spontaneously two years ago into a television camera he was passing while leaving the field following a big comeback win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Pederson later claimed he was so hyped, he had no idea what he was saying in the moment.

As this series swings back and forth and emotions fly higher than all the bats, what's notable is that aside from Yuli Gurriel's racial slur, the Astros haven't angered the Dodgers and the Dodgers haven't teed off the Astros.

"That's the way it should be," Correa says. "It's the World Series. It's the biggest stage in baseball. You're supposed to go out and have fun.

"At the end of the day, we're really young, and we want to go out there and feel like [children] playing the game. I think the fans get more involved. The fans love it, they talk about it, they tweet about it, so it brings everybody closer together and makes everyone love baseball even more."

Through Game 5, this World Series has included eight home runs hit by players age 25 or younger. That already ties it with the 1953 World Series between the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers for the second-most homers by players in that age bracket, according to MLB. Only the 1957 World Series between the Milwaukee Braves and New York Yankees had more, with nine.

Correa, 23, nearly sent his bat into the clouds after smashing the first World Series homer of his career. The All-Star shortstop admits it was his most flamboyant flip yet. The fact that it also extended Houston's lead to 5-3 in the 10th inning of Game 2, after the Astros had dropped Game 1, amped up the emotion.

"We were inside, we had all of our lucky spots and man, he crushed that ball," Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. says. "I think it's fun. It draws fans in. I know how guys react, and if it's acceptable or not [can be controversial], but I think the way the game's moving, it brings the fans in. Man, they love it. It gives them something to talk about.

"And I think they enjoy people showing emotion on the field when they get big outs or big strikeouts. It was pretty awesome for our dugout. It was pretty sweet."

It was on that same Dodger Stadium field a mere four years ago when the 2013 National League Championship Series between the Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals broke out into a literal battle of new school vs. old school. St. Louis pitcher Adam Wainwright was offended when Adrian Gonzalez was demonstrative at second base following a double, and Puig's emotional reaction following a triple further angered the Cardinals.

Wainwright called it "Mickey Mouse stuff." Carlos Beltran, who is now with the Astros but has yet to play in this World Series, said Puig doesn't know how to act.

During the Blue Jays-Rangers American League Division Series two years ago, Jose Bautista sent purists into a rage when he flipped his bat after a monstrous three-run homer that helped the Jays advance.   

Now? You might say the page has flipped right along with the bat.

Where Puig's ears once routinely burned every time he dared do anything flamboyant, all Correa heard was crickets where the critics were concerned. Nobody from the Dodgers even looked at him sideways.

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

"I didn't get a tweet about it or anything," Correa says. "It was all good.

"I think people are starting to embrace the bat flip and make it a part of baseball already."

Now even some old-timers wish the game was different when they played.

"I wish I had more fun when I was playing," admits Tony Clark, whose 15-year MLB career eventually led him to oversee all of these current goofballs as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. "The kids need to see our guys having fun. Our game is fun. Our game's a lot of work, and it takes a particular skill set and requires that you hone it, improve it and dial it in. Being strong helps, being fast helps, being athletic helps, being able to hit that little round ball as they throw it at you is a remarkable skill to have. And when you can do it when you can do it at the rate our guys do and have fun doing it…"

Clark says that when he was a kid, he admired Dave Winfield's wiggle in the batter's box, Rickey Henderson's "pickin' and poppin'" when he was running the bases and Pete Rose diving into second. He says that watching this spring's World Baseball Classic and some of the enthusiasm and emotion on display then "was as much fun as I've had in a long time watching our game. It was an absolute blast."

Begrudgingly or not, even the pitchers these days are more tolerant. Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen took no offense to Correa's bat flip.

"If they hit a home run off of me, they deserve it," says Astros starter Dallas Keuchel, who only gave up 15 all season. "I don't give up many.

"Fans like it, and when you're in the moment, that's fine. I think it gets iffy when you get bat flips when you're down.

"If you're not in the lead, there's no reason for it."

And if it puts you in the lead?

"Then go ahead and throw your bat in the stands."

Dodgers backup infielder Charlie Culberson didn't flip, but he practically moonwalked around the bases after slugging a solo Game 2 homer in the bottom of the 11th to pull the Dodgers to within 7-6.

As he alternately spread his arms as if imitating the wings of an airplane and pointed toward the stands, many people were confused. Did he think he had hit a game-tying homer?

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Are you kidding? Not this product of the Calhoun, Georgia, school system.

"No, I'm good at math," Culberson quips, pointing out that he not only knew the score was 7-5, but that he also knew nobody was on base, an equation which did not equal a tie game.

"It was an adrenaline rush," he says. "There was a lot going on, my family was there. I pointed to my parents and my wife in the stands. We're just playing ball and having fun."

The perfect bat flip, Puig explains, is neither rehearsed nor planned.

"It needs to come from your heart," he says. "There's no preparing for a bat flip. Nothing. It's coming in the moment."

That's the key element as to why, as the game gets younger, knee-jerk reaction is fading away.

"Carlos is a very poised young player, he understands moments of games very well, and I think in that moment, he knew what that extra run meant for our team and he wanted to celebrate it," McCullers says. "The greatest thing about it was he flipped the bat and looked straight to the dugout, and we were celebrating along with him.

"I think it's really cool to see that aspect, where players are starting to engage their teammates in the celebrations rather than making it a solo act, a look-at-me type thing. It's more a team celebration."

Even from across the field, Puig couldn't help but admire it, to the point that when he homered in the bottom of the inning, he went oppo. Instead of tossing his bat, he simply reached down and placed it on the ground as though it was made of crystal.

"You expect a bat flip from him, right?" McCullers says. "So he set it down on the floor, just kind of lays it there. It's all bringing some character to the game. If you're a fanbase of one team and your guys are doing it, you love it. If you're a fanbase of the other team and you have it done to you, you hate it.

"I think it's great. I think it brings the teams and the fans closer together."

Says Correa: "It's the kind of baseball people want to watch. They want us to put on a show for them. I think that's the way to do it."

The World Series is something every one of these players has dreamed of since he was a little boy, says Alonzo Powell, Houston's highly respected assistant hitting coach. And like McCullers, he loves that these celebrations within the game have become more about the team and less about the individual.

Like hitters looking into the dugout in the immediate aftermath of a homer or bat flip, Powell notes that the game has moved to the point where "pitchers holler into the dugout when they get a big strikeout, too. As long as you're not pointing a finger at the other dugout…the playoffs, the All-Star Game, the World Series, have fun. We're showcasing baseball to the world."

Who knows? At this rate, maybe Powell and his fellow hitting coaches across the game will need to spend five minutes or so a day next spring teaching sessions on the finer points of the bat flip.

"I'll let them do that on their own," Powell says, chuckling. "I'll stick to working with them on their mechanics."

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.