Elly De La Cruz is loud, but baseball could use some more noise

Change can come suddenly, rocking three gold chains and blasting 455-foot homers. Wearing hair in dreadlocks extensions, mirrored shades that obscure a pair of boyish, cocoa eyes, and a hat turned backward because … well, just because.

Change can stand as tall as an NBA wing, move like a sprinter in Lane 4, rocket a ball like a first-string quarterback and do all this in a sport the best young athletes have shunned for years. Though change has slowly been creeping into the national pastime, which is way past its time to evolve, a catalyst such as 21-year-old rookie Elly De La Cruz still can shake us up.

We have come to expect bat flips and swaggy home run trots, respect rooted in the game and ferocity branched from self-expression. Flamboyance that oozes from the pores of mostly brown-skinned players, despite demands of compliance from the “play the right way!” crowd.

None of this is new. We have felt electricity from Bryce Harper, Tim Anderson, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ronald Acuña Jr., to name just a handful. And yet here comes De La Cruz, a dose of lighter fluid tossed on the Cincinnati Reds’ 2023 season and, possibly, all of baseball. The game could use a few more wildfires such as this.

De La Cruz, with a special combination of power and personality, cockiness and comparisons to Mickey Mantle, can be the ideal star for the game’s shift toward speed and action. His team has won 20 of its past 24 to lead the NL Central. And the Reds are having fun doing it; once home run hitters return to the dugout, they’re honored with a fur cape and a Viking helmet. Leading the way is De La Cruz, who is going viral in every ballpark he enters. But does baseball, a game steeped in nostalgia while existing in American culture for more than a century, need more Ellys to grow?

“I mean, in reality, yes, because it’s players that people love to enjoy to see,” De La Cruz told me through Reds interpreter Jorge Merlos. “I mean, it’s guys that get people fired up, fans fired up with what they’re going to see out on the field.”

The thing about baseball, it’s like an ant that crawls across scorched earth. Whenever you think the game has been nuked – by betting scandals, cocaine in the clubhouse, juiced-up hitters – it somehow prevails. Though baseball doesn’t attract the constant attention of the NFL or NBA, leagues that have done a better job marketing their stars, it endures. The sport has survived worse things than boring ballplayers.

Such as Aaron Judge, the square-jawed Yankee who serves up moonshots and possesses the personality of an accountant. Back in May, the Toronto Blue Jays television crew speculated that Judge, the reigning American League MVP, might have been cheating at the plate. Oh my, Judge was hot about that insinuation. So angry in fact that he told reporters: “I’ve got some choice words about that.”

We’re still waiting to hear them.

Even Shohei Ohtani, the unicorn we may not fully appreciate, should be appointment viewing, but the casual fan still knows very little about him. He does things in baseball we may never seen again – dominate as a pitcher and a hitter, and apparently he’s a bit of a prankster, too – yet Ohtani wasn’t even in the top 10 of the most Googled athletes last year.

The language barrier may be the reason, but that doesn’t explain how De La Cruz can express his passion to a universal crowd. He exudes confidence in most everything except speaking a new language to reporters (he told me his English is just “a-ight”). Yet his demeanor during Wednesday’s postgame interview did not require translation: “Just to tell everybody that the knob is not the reason I am doing a good job. It’s because of all the work I’m putting out there,” De La Cruz said in defending himself against the suggestion of impropriety with his bat.

This season, the lanky, 6-foot-5 De La Cruz has recorded the fastest infield throw in Class AAA or the major leagues at 99.2 mph. Since his early June call-up, he has hit for the cycle, the youngest player to do so in 50 years, and became the first player 21 or younger to have a pair of four-hit games within his first 25 major league games since 2000-01.

He confidently calls himself the “fastest man in the world.” And if you watch him run through his third base coach’s stop signal – while a good two or three strides away from third base! – and still beat the throw to home, you might not think he’s being brash at all, just honest.

And this week when the Elly De La Cruz Show hit Washington, it hit hard. On Wednesday, before his first plate appearance, Nationals Manager Dave Martinez asked the home plate umpire to check the white knob attached to the rookie’s bat. The inspection and resulting conference between the managers and crew ticked away precious minutes when De La Cruz could have been performing, and a smattering of boos carried through the stadium. Though De La Cruz would strike out, he would get his revenge in the fifth. When the ball finally landed 455 feet away, De La Cruz pointed to the end of his bat, mocking the Nats that maybe they should check it again.

That night Martinez, ever the old-school preservationist, derided the rookie’s “antics.” By Thursday, however, he gave De La Cruz props, consenting the game needs players such as him.

“Yeah, look, and I said this last night: I love watching him play. He’s an exciting player. He’s very talented,” Martinez said. “He plays with a lot of excitement. You can tell he has fun. … I’ve seen the way he does some things that are really, really good. Yesterday he hit a groundball and he went from home to second faster than I’ve ever seen anybody.”

And when was the last time any of us have heard a 10-year veteran such as Reds catcher Curt Casali say out loud: “I’m very, very happy to be on his team.” Meaning, De La Cruz. A rookie. His team.

“He’s must-watch TV,” Casali said. “I’ve never seen somebody who can do the things that he can do. I think he’s just scratching the surface of his true ability. Coming in, people might call him ‘raw.’ And he is. He’s 21 years old. He’s brand new to big league baseball, and he’s coming and he’s doing things that nobody else has ever done. Nobody can really believe [it] until you see him.”

Which is why people keep clicking to watch him. Merlos, the interpreter as well as the Reds’ social media manager on the road, told me the team’s tweet with the most engagement this season on is the graphic welcoming De La Cruz to the majors. The reel featuring De La Cruz sliding into first base to beat a tag for an infield hit is the only video on the team’s Instagram to surpass 1 million views this season. As 21-year-old Liam Holland, the co-founder of the Bat Boys Baseball channel, attempts to grow the cool factor of baseball, he knows De La Cruz content gets more hits than most other posts.

“With Elly and a bunch of other players – people call it ‘showboating,’ people call it ‘unprofessional.’ But what we do, we’re trying to match that energy and show it off as well,” Holland said. “Yeah, there’s been that stigma, but the world in general is shifting away from that stigma. It’s becoming more accepting of everyone being who they are, and I think that’s reflective in players like Elly.”

De La Cruz has the present-tense game to liberate baseball from the confines of its past. The new-age skills and showmanship, but in a package that must feel palatable for even the purists. Some may brand his behavior “antics,” but a changing society – one the game needs to embrace – might view it, rightfully, as entertainment. And those casual fans are more likely to keep returning to this kind of show. De La Cruz has arrived, and so has change. Baseball better be ready.