Custom handshakes between baseball players is basically an art form.
And while there won't be any handshakes if/when the 2020 season begins due to Covid-19 health and safety protocols being put in place, Dominic Smith has come up with some socially distant ways to celebrate, and it's still fun to reminisce about some of the best handshakes from last season.
On the latest edition of The Cookie Club presented by Insomnia Cookies, Smith and J.D. Davis discussed not only just how some of these hand shakes develop over time, but also how Davis completely whiffed on sharing a handshake with Smith after one of his biggest home runs of the season.
"I think it's just spur of the moment with getting the handshakes," Davis said. "It kind of just develops over time. Maybe it takes a week, two weeks, three weeks. Depends on who's your partner.
"But me and Dom, it's a funny story … So we got our handshake like within a couple days to a week, and the funny story is that when I went in to pinch-hit against, who was it, (Wander) Suero, against the Nationals? Oh man, you need to go back and watch that film because we planned on having a handshake after every time we had a home run or what not, and if you go back and you watch that pinch-hit, I think it was a three-run home run against the Nationals.
"I come in at home plate, I give a fist bump to Buff (Wilson Ramos), And then Dommo wants me to give him the handshake and I'm just blacking out. I have no idea what I'm doing. We go into the dugout, he's giving me the handshake again, and I'm sitting there like, brain freeze, I have no idea. Then finally I was like 'Oh he wants to do the handshake on TV,' and then we looked at the replay. So bad. It was so bad."
Indeed, Davis' pinch-hit, three-run shot off of Suero on May 21 gave the Mets a 4-3 lead in what was eventually a big 6-5 win over the Nats.
The moment for Davis was electric. The handshake … not so much.
"It was awful," said Smith. "That is what I love about J.D., because he gets so fired up in the moment that he just blacks out and he has no idea what going on. He has no idea where he's at. He's on like literally Mars or something, just having his own party. And I love it because he's so fired up and it just brings me energy.
"But you have to go back and watch that video. Because it was big home run, and I was so fired up trying to do the handshake. I'm trying to give him the handshake and he comes in with a big jump and like knocks me over a little bit. I'm like 'Oh man, he has no idea what's going on.'"
Check out the full episode of The Cookie Club in the video above.