Slaps Away! Ike Grabs More Than Just Victory

Pic brazenly stolen from AA. They'll never know it's gone.

Sometimes we watch a baseball game featuring an unforgivably bad team that we've given up on months ago just on the odd chance that something improbable or something we've never seen before happens. Last night, against the hated, but mostly boned Fish, we saw such things. And we liked it.  For the improbable, Luis Castillo, Luis Castillo!, rather than be a non-factor or doom his team with careless glove work or a slow turn at second, won the game in the ninth for the Mets with a hit. I enjoyed that, but will probably forget it soon.

What I won't forget is Met rookie first base man and minor cult figure Ike Davis slapping the umpire on the ass after he crossed the plate with the winning run.  Right before the Mets inexplicable treated themselves to the now standard "walk off win hogpile/pounding celebration" --a phenomenon that seems quite inappropriate when a team is battling to stay out of their division's cellar after dreadfully under performing their salary and talent level, and embarrassing themselves all season--Ike Davis subtly made his mark on the 2010 season.  Historical figures make history--they don't always know why-- they do what they did in the heat of battle.  They react, reach out, and take what is theirs.

Ike took his place in history by doing something I have never seen before in a baseball game.

He honked blue's buns.
Massaged his manly lumps.
Poked his posterior.
Smacked his saddle bag.
Walloped his woopie-cushion.
Dorked his derriere. 
Checked his cheeks. 
Fondled his fanny. 
Held his heinie.  
Caressed his keister.

I strain for the proper context in which to place this act. Is slapping an umpire's ass like patting a Supreme Court justice on the head? Or is it just like some incidental, embarrassing contact we blush at but forget, like innocently grabbing a nun's bosom to break a fall?  It is inappropriate.  But just how wrong? However history ends up remembering this, Ike and umpire Chad Fairchild are forever linked, like ass and hand. We can never go back.