Alfredo Despaigne's Latest Home Run Trot Is Magnificent

For all the bad ideas in baseball, none is worse—or, anyway, more of a bummer—than the idea that a player who has just hit a home run is supposed to circle the bases dispassionately and quickly. Hitting a home run is an awesome thing to do, and a difficult one, and yet a player who has just done this awesome thing is supposed to respond not at all. People who do not perform this ritual properly get baseballs thrown at them. This is all very dumb, and the last part is dangerous, but also it is no fun, and another place in which grimly cop-scented vibes intrude on the game. Alfredo Despaigne, the legendary Cuban slugger seen above hitting a home run for Granma in Cuba's Serie Nacional, does not have time for any of that shit.

Which is not to say that he is in a hurry, at all. Despaigne takes an astonishing 41.7 seconds to make his way around the bases—a figure that appears to have scandalized even the experts at the Tater Tot Tracker—which, if anything, seems somehow too fast.

By comparison, here is another legendary Despaigne home run trot in which Despaigne spends nearly five seconds effectively immobile at home plate, admiring his blast and kind of vaguely shuffling forward with all the urgency of someone waiting to go through a TSA checkpoint.

Anyone can agree that this is a slow-as-shit home run trot, and yet it is, at 34.45 seconds, more than seven seconds faster than Despaigne's latest. Despaigne does at least appear to be moving continuously in his most recent masterpiece, although again its duration suggests that it's not outside the realm of possibility that he stopped briefly along the way to re-tie both shoes, enjoy a light lunch and a small and extremely strong coffee at second base (Cuban baseball is different), and watch most of an episode of "Bar Rescue" on his third base coach's phone.

Despaigne has spent most of his decade-long career in Cuba, although he did enjoy a brief and productive stint in Japan in 2014. He is still just 28 years old, and we should all sincerely hope that he plays in the Major Leagues someday. It will cause Brian McCann's head to explode, which would probably be unpleasant for Brian McCann in some ways, but that seems a small price to pay in exchange for finally, finally getting the baseball we deserve.