What's behind a baseball celebration? For Chicago White Sox catcher Yasmani Grandal, his signature bat drop was born out of fear.
The veteran backstop shared the origin story during a Q&A session on MLB's Instagram story last week.
"I remember coaches in high school screaming at me to run. And I think what they didn't know was the fact that I was trying to get out of the box as fast as I could, and it just so happened I would drop the bat," Grandal explained.
"I’ve had a lot of people ask me that, ‘Is that your intent?’ And I’m like, well no, I’m just so afraid of getting thrown out at second ‘cause I know I crushed this ball, but if that ball doesn’t leave the ballpark I need to get to second base. So it’s straight panic mode for me."
This story checks out as Grandal has never been fleet of foot. The 34-year-old has the slowest sprint speed (23.9 feet/second) among qualified MLB players in the Statcast era (since 2015). He also owns the slowest home plate to first base time (4.95 seconds) over that span, and the figure has jumped to 5.20 seconds this season.
While Grandal's lack of speed has become a joke among baseball fans, it's not for a lack of effort or awareness on his part. And in activating "panic mode" with the bat drop, he has seemingly perfected one of the coolest home run celebrations in the game.
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