Will Coronavirus Outbreak Rebirth the Bash in Oakland?

Matt Chapman, like most of the Athletics, doesn't bash. But that may change. A Tweet from Bash Brother Jose Canseco reminds us that the bash replaced the high five. Will the bash be making a return in this time of pandemic?

Jose Canseco has done as much as he can through social media to keep his name in the public consciousness after steroid-riddled end to a once-gargantuan career.

This week, however, he posted something actually useful to the population at large.

On Twitter he posted a photo of himself and Mark McGwire doing their Bash Brothers thing with this reminder: “Remember don’t shake hands. Bash instead!!” In their late 1980s prime, it seemed like one or the other homered every other day.

From a late 1995 callup until his 1992 exit, Canseco hit 231 homers for the A’s. From his 1986 callup through 1997, McGwire clubbed 363.

In this day of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, it’s important for people to get over shaking hands and thus risk transmitting the virus, people are looking for options – at least those not in the six Bay Area counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara. Residents of those counties have been told to stay home and isolate themselves to minimize the risk of spreading the novel coronavirus.

For those not so confined there are elbow bumps, bowing and any number of ways to avoid shaking hands. You could do worse than a bashing of forearms.

A bit of history: The Bash Brothers formed informally in the spring of 1988, two years after Canseco was American League Rookie of the Year and one year after McGwire won the award. During Cactus League games that season they’d celebrate each other’s homers by creating slamming their substantial forearms together in a closed-fist X.

It caught on enough that everybody on the A’s ditched the high-five in favor of the Bash following home runs. Early in the season, McGwire and Canseco dressed in black and gold – gold being one of the A’s team colors – and posed in front of a California Highway Patrol car with oversized bats while wearing sunglasses in a riff off the Blue Brothers, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.

The bash effectively fell off the radar when Canseco was traded to Texas in 1992, although the two men would reunite in Oakland briefly in 1997 before McGwire was dealt midseason to St. Louis. Canseco went to Toronto for the 1998 season.

However, it’s made a bit of a comeback in the last few seasons in Oakland with homer providers like Khris Davis and Mark Canha occasionally simulating a bash. Matt Chapman and Matt Olson, not so much.

But when baseball is back from the pandemic, it might be time, as Canseco suggests, for a return of the bash, full time.