Comrade McQuade, otherwise sequestered with the other Defector provocateurs in an undisclosed wiki-up, was sufficiently aware of the outside world to notice that Phillies pitcher Aaron Nola had taken a perfect game into the seventh inning of Monday's game against the Houston Astros, and weighed in with this message from the butter churn behind the grange hall:
Dan 9:58 PM: Aaron Nola retired the first 18 batters and now the Astros have pulled their starters…
10:00 PM: "his last 7 or 8 games he's 8-0"—ruben amaro
Moments later, Yordan Alvarez smoked a single to right field and our sad Irish yob pitched this from his moonshine-fueled sylvan melancholy:
Dan 10:14 PM: he got the first 20! he did not get the 21st batter.
10:14 PM: now the phillies can put in some reliever to choke
And then he found the sweet spot: Philadelphia fans, and their ability to complain in all situations, including lottery wins, mutually satisfying coitus, and the Mets losing:
Dan 10:16 PM:
Everyone is mad at NBC Sports for the “perfect game alert” banner for jinxing it, but Aaron Nola wouldn’t agree with you. He would place the blame squarely on his arch-nemesis: Dr. Anthony Fauci
— Your pal, CJ! (@yourpalCJ) October 4, 2022
10:23 PM: people are so angry at this!
10:23 PM: at the perfect game alert banner, not that tweet from my pal CJ
And so ended Dan's evening. Despite his certitude about Philadelphia's bullpen, the Phillies did not lose the game, and achieved the thing they all wanted: the postseason. These slack-jawed cheese sandwiches actually hated being informed about potential history involving one of the teams they love and hate for the same reasons because they somehow thought that Michael Barkann is capable of thought control. What kind of 13th century Carpathian horseshit is this?
Listen, you boobs, I'm speaking here because Comrade McQuade is playing the country squire in the pastoral squalor of America's heartland and can't be arsed to do so himself. There is no such thing as a jinx. Never has been, never will be. There have been fixed games and there always will be as long as gambling is legal and people get upside down on their house payments, but jinxes? What are you, 8 years old?
Moreover, and we cannot stress this enough, IT'S THEIR JOB TO TELL YOU THE NEWS, YOU HUMAN GALOSHES! They provide information you desire in exchange for your cable fees, and if they don't tell you that, you are being cheated. Is this what you want? A business that refuses to give you the thing you are specifically paying for? What are you, stupid? Yes. Yes you are. Some of you, anyway.
A cursory check of the postgame interviews showed that neither Nola or manager Rob Thomson cited NBC as the reason Alvarez shoved a fastball up in the zone the other way. They were telling you Monty Python caricature-peasants that nobody in the studio in Philadelphia had a single thing to do with an event happening 1,500 miles away. They recognized that perfect games are not a function of witchcraft, the occult, Ouija, or Arnold Rothstein, and they actually weren't close enough to blame anyone for anything. Nola wasn't even three quarters of the way there when the hit happened.
Now, you could still curse Comrade McQuade for libeling either or both Jose Alvarado and Zach Eflin as a function of the Philadelphia fan's ritual tire-chain flagellation over whichever of its sports teams just murdered hope, puppies, and orphanage funding. Neither one ruined either Nola's win or the Phillies closing on a playoff spot they haven't earned in 11 years, so shut up about what you didn't get that you didn't deserve anyway, you repellent barflies. Grow up, for Christ's sake. You ruined Comrade McQuade's first night in the joys of rural wherever the fuck he is. They're in, finally, and get to play the St. Louis Cardinals, and you can go ahead and have your social seizures while hitting each other with full beer bottles at your sisters' wedding receptions during Game 2 of the wild card series. And if they lose, you can blame Joe Girardi, or Ben Simmons, or Mike Keenan, or Wali Jones's free throw form, or getting rid of Wilt Chamberlain TWICE, or Chuck Bednarik, or the ghost of Billy Penn. Do whatever historical entrail-reading you want.
Just leave those poor TV bastards alone. They are ashamed enough as it is working in TV, because they couldn't make it as narcotics informers or insurance swindlers. If they could fix games with their minds, do you honestly think they'd be wasting their time talking to poisonous toads like you rather than raking it in with all eight tentacles in Atlantic City? Come on. You're better than that.
Or maybe you're not. We've met Comrade McQuade.
