If this year’s World Baseball Classic taught us anything it’s that the MLB could use a healthy injection of fun. Players wore their hearts on their sleeves, competing with passion and emotion for their countries. Entire rosters spilled out of dugouts to greet teammates who just hit crucial home runs. Bats were flipped; fists were pumped; professional athletes reacted like actual human beings might when presented with the joy of victory or the pain or defeat.
You don’t see enough of that in the major leagues, where a player who celebrates too excitedly can expect to eat a fastball in the ribs during his next plate appearance. Or a player who gets too upset with an unfavourable result can be labelled selfish or a malcontent person.
That likely won’t change. The killjoys are winning their fight to homogenize the MLB product. But there are still some players who refuse to bend to the norms and aren’t afraid to flash their personalities on the field. In no particular order, here are five of the most fun athletes in the MLB.
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Adrian Beltre
No one — and we mean no one — has more fun on a baseball diamond than this future hall-of-famer. The next time you attend a game Beltre’s playing in, put your own ISO-cam on the third baseman when he’s on the field. He regularly talks to himself between pitches, interacts with fans, and carries on a years-long argument with his shortstop Elvis Andrus about territorial borders.
On the basepaths you might catch him trying to deke out infielders on routine groundballs or running into left field to avoid a tag. And at the plate it’s not out of the ordinary to see his helmet go flying after a wild swing or watch him drop to a knee as he goes after a particularly tough pitch.
And then there’s the team-wide contest to see who can get away with touching Beltre’s head — he really, really doesn’t like to have his head touched — when he returns to the dugout after a big hit, and the 37-year-old’s attempts to escape such indignity. No matter what Beltre does, on the field or off, it’s always entertaining.
Javier Baez
One of the WBC’s most extraordinary moments was provided by this World Series champion, who began celebrating a caught-stealing tag at second base before the ball was even in his glove. Baez was pointing and fist pumping at his catcher, Yadier Molina, while the ball was still in flight, never averting his eyes from Molina at any point, even as he caught the ball and applied the tag.
To do something like that takes unbelievable talent and a healthy dose of flare, two things Baez is not short on. He’ll wear excessive amounts of eye black, he’ll pimp home runs, he’ll aggressively pursue extra bases when most players would be happy with their single or double, and he’ll look to build this year on an impressive 2016 when he emerged as one of the best young middle infielders in the game.
Marcus Stroman
Stroman is perhaps the most multi-talented man in Major League Baseball, spending his off-season working on a clothing line while recording music with old friend Mike Stud. But from February through October, those extracurriculars take a backseat to his work on the mound, where Stroman is coming off the first 200-plus innings season of his career.
The young right-hander lives for big moments, like the American League wild card game he started for the Toronto Blue Jays last season, holding the Baltimore Orioles to two runs on four hits over six innings. Or the masterful WBC final he pitched for his country earlier this month, carrying a no-hitter into the seventh inning against an explosive Puerto Rican offence.
He has fun with it, too. The 25-year-old certainly knows how good he is, and he doesn’t shy away from demonstrating that on the field. There have been more than a few chirping matches between Stroman and opposition dugouts, and it’s not uncommon to see him go for a strut or nod his head aggressively after a crucial strikeout.
And don’t sleep on this underrated fun aspect of Stroman’s game: his hesitation delivery. No two pitches look the same from Stroman as he varies his wind-up and rhythm throughout his starts, sometimes pausing for a few seconds at the height of his motion and sometimes not stopping at all as he drives towards the plate. Not many pitchers can pull that technique off as effectively as Stroman.
Jose Altuve
Listed at just 5-foot-6 and 165 lbs, Altuve is one of baseball’s smallest players. But he’s also one of its most productive, with league-leading hit totals of 225, 200 and 216 over the last three seasons.
He’s an extremely entertaining athlete, as well. His small frame contains an awful lot of energy and it’s rare that you’ll see him cruise into second or third base after a hit with his batting helmet still on his head.
Watch closely and you might also catch Altuve stuffing the ball in his back pocket and attempting the hidden ball trick on a runner at second. Or untucking a first baseman’s jersey when he takes his lead. Or literally jumping to try to make contact with a high pitch on a hit-and-run.
Bartolo Colon
This list would not be complete without an appearance from “Big Sexy,” the 43-year-old Dominican who’s about to begin his 20th major league season. They simply don’t make pitchers anymore quite like Colon, a nearly 300-pound right-hander who throws a fastball 90 per cent of the time.
Relying on precision, deception, and a little bit of guile, Colon is defying father time and still getting it done on the mound, throwing at least 190 innings each of the last four seasons and posting a 3.59 ERA over that span. He’s clearly enjoying it, too, with a perpetual grin on his face and plenty of ribbing in his own dugout after he makes athletic defensive plays.
But no moment was more fun than when Colon belted his first career home run last season, taking James Shields deep at Petco Park for his first round-tripper since making his MLB debut in 1997. The Mets dugout exploded in excitement (and maybe just a little bit of disbelief) and mobbed the starter when he returned from a home run trot you know he was sure to savour.