People are still buying Jose Bautista meals over his bat flip

Jose Bautista has reached a godlike status in Toronto after his bat flip, so much so that he gets every meal for free.

Arguably the most memorable moment of the 2015 MLB Playoffs was when Jose Bautista launched a three-run home run into the upper deck to win Game 5 of the ALDS for the Toronto Blue Jays. While the home run sent the crowd into a frenzy, it was the bat flip that Bautista did after he hit the dinger that had people talking for weeks afterwards. Bautista admits that, according to NBC Sports, he hasn’t had to pay for a meal in Toronto ever since he did that.

And of course, that’s not all they did to celebrate it. They also made an ugly Christmas sweater out of the bat flip as well as a Topps baseball card:

You would think that getting to play in front of fans that adore him that much, and give him perks like that, that he would want to put pen to paper on a long-term extension immediately. But the Blue Jays face a tough decision in keeping either him or Edwin Encarnacion. They are both valuable, and set to earn an enormous pay day, but the team probably can’t keep both of them around.

You would have to think that, of the two, the management is leaning towards Jose. Bautista is arguably the face of the franchise and seeing him go would leave Jays fans devastated. He’s even connected with non-baseball fans when he coached alongside Drake at the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game. It’s decisions like this that make being a general manager one of the toughest jobs out there.