His style provokes strong responses and the occasional punch, but that hasn’t stopped Blue Jays slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr from speaking his mind.The face of where baseball is headed is bearded, although saying Vladimir Guerrero Jr is bearded is like saying the greens of Augusta National have grass, the gated homes of the Hamptons have hedges and the Grand Théâtre Lumière in Cannes has a red carpet. The beard is both ominous and meticulous, a description that also serves well for the Blue Jays’ slugger behind it.
This is the changing face of baseball because Guerrero Jr is a flamboyant player who flips convention as extravagantly as he does bats, a serial emoji user who takes on Twitter trolls, a manager to a cadre of agents, a student of baseball economics who knows his value as an “asset” on the cusp of free agency, a college graduate, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist and anti-steroid activist, and an inveterate purveyor of blunt commentary, be it applied to umpires, opponents or mass media. In other words, Vladimir Guerrero Jr does not play by the old rules.
Like Elvis Presley and his hips, Bautista and his flips are symbolic of the threatening, discomfiting nature of change. As MLB stumbles awkwardly from status quo to a fresher beat—pace-of-game initiatives, the “Make Baseball Fun Again” campaign of Nationals star Bryce Harper, shows of emotion on the field, etc.—Bautista is smack in the middle of things.
Told last week, for instance, that his mouth and mannerisms get under the skin of some people, Bautista smiled insouciantly, narrowed his dark eyes behind his dark beard and said, “I don’t come to the yard to make friends, man
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