© Orlando Ramirez | 2019 Dec 10
Gabe Kapler is his own man. When it comes to his opinions on the national pastime, the Giants manager refuses to be put in a box.
This was revealed in his answers to two questions asked when he joined the Tolbert, Krueger & Brooks Show on Monday. First, came an inquiry on Kapler’s opinion of bat flips, which are back in the national conversation with the Korean Baseball League’s resumption on Monday.
Unsurprisingly, Kapler is all for them.
“I think emotion is great for the game of baseball,” Kapler said. “I think when we try to tone it down too much, it loses its appeal especially with a younger audience. When I think about my son Chase who’s 20 years old and his younger brother Dane who’s 18, they don’t want to sit through a baseball game without some celebration, without some emotion, without even some chest beating and some strutting. So I’m good with it.
“In the best interest of both of us is the game being more interesting, more exciting, more fans, more things for you to talk about on KNBR and more things for us to tweet and post about. And that boils down to celebration, emotion, and things that attract young fans and I think right now we need a lot of that.”
Yet when it comes to the designated hitter, Kapler is a traditionalist, believing that if you bring a bat to the ballpark, you should bring a glove as well.
“What I will say is I’m a baseball traditionalist in the sense that I like the strategy that comes along from having to pinch hit for the pitcher. When that high leverage moment is in the game when everything is at stake early on, but your pitcher is running a low pitch count and you need him to eat up innings. I think there is something really raw and traditional about that.”
Listen to the interview below.