What started as an inside joke has now turned into a rallying cry that’s catching on with the entire Giants team.
The gesture is simple: tap your stomach and then point up. Break it out after an extra-base hit or another big moment. Don’t try it at home, kids.
Joc Pederson, unsurprisingly, is the pioneer of the thus-far-unnamed gesture. Logan Webb has taken responsibility for popularizing the celebration. Brandon Crawford was also in on the ground floor, Austin Slater thinks.
“Fun little thing, can kind of boost the energy and confidence,” Webb said.
Does it have any meaning, any secret significance?
“Nope,” Pederson said. “None. Just funny. And Webby was like ‘we need to do that when we get a hit.’”
The fad’s sweeping through the Giants. It’s a lighthearted way to raise the energy, which can be a necessity during the dog days of a 162-game marathon. And it’s caught on more and more as the Giants cruise into the All-Star break playing their best ball in months.
Webb isn’t sure exactly when the trend began, but thinks it was around the Atlanta series. The club needed a shot of life then more than ever; it was the beginning of a stretch in which SF got walked off three times and lost 14 of 18 games.
On July 3, in the doldrums of that horrid stretch, manager Gabe Kapler called out his team’s energy. Many players agreed with his assessment.
It’s not a stretch to say the new celebration is part of an effort to improve morale.
Webb is the Tap-And-Point’s biggest ambassador. When Brandon Belt laid down a two-strike bunt single on Thursday against the Brewers, the broadcast panned to the ace in the dugout, who egged on Belt. The Captain didn’t comply.
That doesn’t mean Belt’s not into it. The first baseman even made the rare admission that, in this case, he’s a follower — not a leader.
“I don’t know why I do that, I just saw other people doing it, and I started copying them,” Belt said.
And for the most part, all the cool kids are doing it. Even Yermín Mercedes, the new guy.
“He loves it,” Webb said of Mercedes. “Longo loves it. Pretty much everyone does it. There’s a couple guys that are serious so they forget to do it. But we’re sitting in the dugout waiting for them, going like this. It’s fun.”
There’s room to get even more creative.
On July 1 against the White Sox, infielder Donovan Walton ripped a double down the right field line. He’d waited weeks for this moment, as he was mired in a 1-for-22 slump. So after he slid head-first into second, he made it count with a double tummy-slap and finger pistols to San Francisco’s dugout.
“Just like, maybe it gets the guys excited to try to go get a hit so they can get out there,” Webb said. “I know Donovan Walton wanted to do it, and when we started doing it he didn’t get a hit for like 15 at-bats. So then Finally, he was like ‘When I get a hit, I’m going to do both hands.’ And he did it. He got a double and did both hands.”
Celebrations aren’t unique throughout the sport. Individual players and ensemble teams have coordinated specific actions. Mookie Betts has cycled through multiple — from the Salt Bae pose to a spanking motion. The Padres have a point-and-head-shake thing going on. The Red Sox break out the home run laundry cart in the dugout. The Orioles have a Home Run Chain.
The Brewers, whom the Giants just took three of four from, wear a Marvel-inspired Infinity Gauntlet after home runs.
And the Giants are still working out the kinks. Like a new slang on a middle school playground, the gesture is still spreading.
When LaMonte Wade Jr. socked a stand-up triple on Friday night, Webb egged him on from the dugout railing, but the outfielder ignored the plea. When the team rallied for six runs off Josh Hader in the ninth — including Mike Yastrzemski’s walk-off grand slam — everyone was too caught up in the moment to stop and do The Tap.
But Yastrzemski remembered to celebrate in front of the dugout the next day, when he scooted into third after a second-inning double. He scored the second of San Francisco’s nine runs in their series-clinching victory over Milwaukee.
After falling to one game above .500, the Giants have won seven of their last nine games heading into the All-Star break. There are hundreds of more important factors to consider, but their new rallying cry has been right there with them for the entire turnaround.
“I think whatever gets people going, I’m for,” Belt said.