Dodgers: Trevor Bauer gives ideal answer on Fernando Tatis Jr. troll job

Hand up. We wrongly assumed Dodgers starter Trevor Bauer would be on the wrong side of history when it came to Fernando Tatis Jr.’s one-eyed home run trot Saturday night.

After all, Bauer has previously been atop the mountain of players who can proverbially dish it out, but cannot take it being returned to them with fervor.

Perhaps the sting of Tatis Jr.’s celebration was muted a bit because Bauer’s Dodgers were able to escape Saturday night with a tightly-contested 5-4 win, the first of this four-game series at Dodger Stadium. Perhaps Bauer really is in favor of letting all the kids play, and not just himself.

Regardless of why and how it happened, it turns out that the man who played an entire spring training inning with one eye closed isn’t exactly worried about the type of revenge that move may have inspired.

The “sanctity of the game” is not, in fact, at risk every time an MLB star celebrates.

Bauer gets that, and explained succinctly Saturday why he thinks it’s good for baseball when people throw his own actions back at him in celebration.

Dodgers starter Trevor Bauer loved Fernando Tatis Jr.’s celebration.

Say what you will about Bauer, but he had no issue with exuberance being shown on the other side of the ball, and he had zero inclination to throw at Tatis Jr. the next time he faced him (of course, he later gave up another dinger to the kid on a curve in the opposite batter’s box, but we won’t talk about that).

We are not Bauer fans. Most of his personality is built on caustic interactions with his critics and dark-ages opinions about bullying and female fandom. This take, though, is muted and accurate.

Somehow, Bauer has not been the aggressor in this rivalry yet this season. That honor goes to Blake Snell, who’s now faced Bauer twice and complained about a significant toe hole on the mound after their first matchup, leaving Bauer to shovel the dirt back into it afterwards.

The full Bauer quote further illuminates his take on the situation — and, in many ways, serves as a response to everything that’s happened since the one-eyed game. Mariners manager Scott Servais, take note.

“We can have fun and we can celebrate it while we’re still competing at the highest level.”

That should be baseball in a nutshell in 2021.

Now, no one get mad the next time Bauer does something slightly wacky, alright? You can’t celebrate the one-eyed troll and bemoan the one-eyed inning that began this whole sequence. Not how this works.

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