The Phillies frustratingly lost two out of three over the weekend to the Washington Nationals, a last place team. Even worse, Sunday night’s loss was in front of a stadium full of children at the Little League Classic in Williamsport.
To think, all those kids watching the Phils flail at the plate against a pitcher who entered with an ERA of 5.20 while ace Zack Wheeler got blitzed for four first inning runs in a 4-3 loss. WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN???
Saturday was the Phillies’ only victory in the series. They won 12-3 and you’d think with that kind of score, the game was a complete and total party. But for the first 6 ⅔ innings, the Phils were being held scoreless, down 3-0. Having watched them blow a 6-1 lead the night before, and lose 3 of 4 before that, I was not in a good mood.
And so I did what every unhappy and frustrated Phillies fan does when their team is frustrating them.
I tweeted about the situation.
It was a mistake.
Trailing in the top of the 6th, the offense finally got something going. With runners on 1st and 2nd and no one out, Trea Turner came to the plate.
Make no mistake, Turner has been better since the fans showered him with thunderous ovations during the previous homestand but, over the previous three games he had gone 2-for-14 and, after striking out for the first out of the inning, was 0-for-3 in that game.
That’s when I sent this tweet, with Turner mired in a 2-for-17 slump.
It held up relatively well for about 20 minutes or so — right up until Nick Castellanos hit a 3-run homer in the 7th to tie the game at 3-3 and Trea Turner led off the 8th with a go-ahead rocket to left field to put the Phils in front 4-3. The Phillies would go on to bat around in the inning, piling up a 10-3 lead before Turner’s turn came to hit once again.
He then proceeded to hit his second home run of the inning, something only done twice before in franchise history.
Needless to say, Twitter roasted me, and deservedly so.
Here are a couple of my favorites.
In all, I got over 415 replies to the tweet and another 125 re-posts. I’ll spare you the clicks, they were mostly not encouraging or designed to make me feel good about myself.
But this is the risk you run when you tweet reactions during a live sporting event, especially a team that’s as psychotic as this season’s Phillies.
Does this mean I’m going to learn a lesson from all this? That a baseball game, much like a season, needs to be played out to its conclusion before judgments can be rendered? That reacting too quickly can come back to bite me? Will I learn to simply let the game play out before I hop on my phone and unleash my venom on the boys?
No, I probably won’t.
But hey, if the worst thing that happens is Twitter pals rip me to shreds but Trea Turner hits two home runs in an inning, I’ll take it.
Yeah, I was only reverse-jinxing him. You’re welcome.
