Torii Hunter Classifies Instantly Jason Heyward’s Batted Ball

The image above of Torii Hunter (which image one can embiggen most expediently by clicking) appears merely to depict the Tigers right fielder taking advantage of a free moment to stretch his legs during the sixth inning of today’s Grapefruit League contest between Atlanta and Detroit — nor, in fact, are appearances entirely misleading in this case.

As both Sergei Eisenstein and probably also one of Sergei Eisenstein’s friends took pains to establish, however, any image must be considered with the context that it’s presented — and the context in which the above image was originally presented provides layers of meaning that would put most onions (which have many layers, is the point) to shame.

Consider, for the purposes of illustration, this illustrative GIF featuring Hunter and Jason Heyward:

When sabermetricians discuss batted balls, they generally speak of grounders, line drives, and fly balls. Perhaps, for the sake of even further granularity, they’ll invoke infield flies and also something called a “fliner.” What they generally don’t acknowledge — but what Torii Hunter will suggest by means of showing and not telling — is another sort of batted ball, one that everyone would do well to ignore, because it has been struck so high and so far, that it’s now the province of the gods.

Complete video of Heyward’s home run here: