“The one-one from Dyson, BAUTISTA WITH A DRIVE, DEEP LEFT FIELD, NO DOUBT ABOUT IT! *Rogers center home run horn*”

This was the call from Fox’s Kenny Albert in that fateful Game 5 against the Texas Rangers where Toronto would end up winning the game on this home run. 

Here was the situation five years ago today: the game was tied at 3, going into the bottom of the seventh inning. There were runners at the corners, first base and third base. The count was one ball, one strike. The pitcher was Sam Dyson. Jose Bautista was 1 for 3 going into that at bat. Dyson delivered a 97 mph pitch to Bautista, and the rest was history. Bautista looked up, tossed the bat aside and trotted the bases, which is the moment that went down in history. 

That home run went 442 feet into the second deck of Rogers Center, and as mentioned earlier, that won Toronto the game.

CBS4 Boston’s Matt Dolloff compiled a list of tweets after that infamous bat flip. One of them was from the Wall Street Journal’s Matt Costa. 

“That is a Hall of Fame bat flip,” Costa said. “First ballot. Unanimous vote.”

Others, like famous Twitter personality Kent Murphy, were critical of Bautista’s actions. 

“Bautista disgraced the entire world’s family with that bat flip,” he said.

Bautista still vividly remembers that moment, as said in an interview with Canada’s Sportsnet during a rewatch of the game in April. Sportsnet wrote on Twitter that it still gives him chills. 

Their next series in 2015 was against the Kansas City Royals, and after all that excitement in the divisional series, Toronto lost the series in six games. Jose Bautista would go on to be with Toronto for another two years after that, before getting opportunities elsewhere in 2018. As of this article being written, he is a free agent. 

Despite this, this moment will go down in history for Jose Bautista as one of the more iconic moments of his entire career.