Phillies 3, Twins 1: In binary it’s 11-1

The COTG is also the “lede.” (We journos call the first paragraph the “lede” because of weird 1920s newspaper printer terminology.) From nagurskiinnortheast: “Nice little rebound from Joe here unfortunately Nola is doing his best Gibson impression”

(At first I wondered “do you mean Kyle?” But he meant Bob. Anyhoo, onto the crappy recap.)

A write a little bit for this baseball blog, and another one with a post about Emile Zola. Z-O-L-A, Zola.

For the intro here, for the gamethread, you see, the pitcher’s name was listed TBD, but it’s Nola. N-O-L-A Nola.

Now I have written some bad recaps before

And intros that made some people snore

But Nola’s on, and I just can’t reisist

Although Matt Monitto would sure say “I insist.”

So, OK, enough of that.

Sad thing: Aaron Nola is from Baton Rouge, LA. Nothing wrong with Baton Rouge; I’ve never been there, but I’m sure it’s a perfectly decent place full of 60% good people, 30% boring people, and 10% a**holes, like most places.

But — if only Aaron Nola was from New Orleans. Which is commonly abbreviated as NOLA.

Alas, his parents did not take advantage of this opportunity to have their son born in the perfect place. Their loss, and a loss for us all.

Radio’s Kris Atteberry at one point talks about a giant spider feature in the outfield, and says it’s big enough “to put a saddle on it.”

I have no clue what this means. I think it means Kris Atteberry lives in a kind of alternate mental universe, where reality and fantasy are inextricably intertwined, and in this universe, there’s a saddle on a spider. I’m all for living an an alternate mental universe; I’d prefer one to the reality that exists in my head. But my alternative fantasy mental universe wouldn’t involve saddling spiders. (There’s a whole “metal universe” thing, which is a different thing, go learn about it!) My fantasy mental universe would probably be a lot of naked gorgeous people or something along those lines.

I typed “naked lady riding spider with saddle” into my search engine and this is the best it came up with:

OK. that’s pretty good. I almost want to make this the header image but I don’t think the site boss would approve. The horse seems to be doing fairly well despite missing a leg, or the fourth one being REALLY messed-up.

Atteberry says, of Kyle Schwarber: “do you think he presses? I don’t think he presses. He just impresses.”

Look, Kris, I wanna love ya, man. You’re a nerd. I love nerds. I wanna think of ya as the guy who actually still keeps score at ballgames, and has opinions on which is the best Twilight Zone episode. (I couldn’t pick one, but I’m partial to the one where a T.V. writer uses an occult spell to summon Shakespeare from the dead, and the idiot studio execs hate Shakespeare’s script. A bit too on the nose, Rod Serling, but you’re ALWAYS a bit too on the nose, and that’s why we love ya… plus, you’re never gonna get me mad suggesting that Hollywood studio executives are a bunch of tasteless dingbats.)

Not somebody who “presses.” I mean, that’s like Kamail Nanjani from The Big Sick roiding up for a Marvel movie. (You haven’t seen The Big Sick yet? See it! Your library has it! It’s also on Bald Facebook Supervillain channel, but nah, use your library. If you can.)

Probably the key game moment is Edmundo Sosa banging a dinger. (No relation to Sammy Sosa, S-O-S-A corked bat.) Joe Ryan absolutely fooled him on a breaking pitch, and Sosa was strong enough to mistime his swing and park it, anyways. Sometimes that just happens. You make a good pitch and fool the guy, and he happens to luck out and make contact in just the perfect way to get the maximum bat/ball bounce action.

Christian Rafael Vázquez hit a single in the ninth to make this slightly less dull, and other radio guy Dan Gladden thinks it was closer Jhoan “Dances on the Sand” Duran serving up a cookie, as a thank-you to his former teammate. I mean, I dunno? I generally think every MLB player wants to beat every other MLB player at everything, including who can finish crossword puzzles faster or scarf a pizza in record time. But, as much as I kid Gladden, when he talks about what he thinks he’s seeing on the field, he’s right more often than he’s wrong. So maybe he’s right here.

Second COTG goes to sandwiches for “James, I have your recap for you:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”

Sure to get this post adored on Apple News.

Studs: all of you readers who’ve tolerated my bullcrap for 11 years. Duds: me for this crummy recap. I will have better stuff for you folks soon! I’m just a bit beat down at the moment. There’s always gonna be more bizarre baseball players and stupid Manfred decisions to write about. Plus, you know, John Fisher exists.

Tomorrow’s game is at 5:05, and features one Ranger Suárez pitching against one Mick Abel, and 30 seconds ago I had no idea a person named Mick Abel played for the Twins. Sorry I’m not professional enough to know about Abel, except that Lorenzo Cain would have absolutely crushed him.

Enjoy your weekend if you got one!