All in all it’s just another Wink in the Brawl (Monday GT)

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mostonmike
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All in all it’s just another Wink in the Brawl (Monday GT)

Post by mostonmike » Mon Jun 27, 2022 7:34 am

Pink Floyd reference checks out - it did make US number 1 in 79/80.

Might as well bring the aftermath into the next game thread.

As for me down to my nations capital today. Wimbledon tickets this year are number 1 court on day 2. Strawberries & cream with a glass or few of Pimms. My thread record is win one-lose one x 2 so don’t expect a long streak.

Feel free to post the lineups for me. If we have any players available to play, that is.

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D-train
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Re: All in all it’s just another Wink in the Brawl (Monday GT)

Post by D-train » Mon Jun 27, 2022 10:24 am

Great title! I remember sitting in my 7th grade math class in 1980 feeling rebellious and thinking that it would be cool if someone broke into the main office of the school and accessed the school broadcast system and played "Hey Teachers, Leave us kids alone!" at full volume throughout the school. lol
dt

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D-train
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Re: All in all it’s just another Wink in the Brawl (Monday GT)

Post by D-train » Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:06 pm

Wow, what a busy day!
How Jesse Winker’s ejection led to autographs, pizza and the tip of a lifetime


By Stephen J. Nesbitt
7h ago
30

Save Article
When Jesse Winker took a heater to the hip Sunday afternoon, turned toward the home dugout at Angel Stadium and elected to escalate the simmering tensions between his Seattle Mariners and the Los Angeles Angels into a benches-clearing brawl, he couldn’t have known how sad this would make a little girl in Section 125, Row H, just behind the emptying Mariners dugout.

Winker also couldn’t have known someone in Arkansas was ordering a small pepperoni pizza to be delivered to him in the visiting clubhouse.

Or that it would change the delivery driver’s life.

What Winker did know at that moment is he was seeing red. He was smarting and angry, and if he was about to get ejected, he wanted to get his money’s worth. So, Winker slipped an umpire’s grasp and a melee ensued.


For 7-year-old Abigail Courtney, this was déjà vu in the worst way.

One year and eight days earlier, Abigail had gone to her first major-league game to see her beloved Reds play in San Diego, only to have her favorite player, Joey Votto, ejected in the first inning for arguing a check-swing call. Abigail wept. She couldn’t comprehend why Votto had to leave. The sight of her sitting there in her Votto T-shirt was enough to break every baseball-loving heart. Votto saw it, too, and signed a baseball for her: “I am sorry I didn’t play the entire game.” The Reds invited the Courtney family back two days later, and Abigail met Votto. It morphed into a happy memory after all.

Until it happened again.


Abigail and her family — mom, Kristin, dad, Ryan, and 4-year-old brother, Parker — are rabid Reds fans who now follow their favorite former Reds on other teams. They couldn’t catch Amir Garrett and the Royals in Anaheim last week, but they got great seats to see Winker and Eugenio Suárez when the Mariners were in town this weekend. “It was a big red-letter day on our calendar,” Kristin said.

They didn’t realize the Angels and Mariners had beef. When the benches and bullpens emptied, Kristin immediately was reminded of the 2010 Reds-Cardinals brawl she saw in person. “I was like, ‘Oh, here we go again,'” Kristin said. “And then I felt terrible when I realized Abigail was really shaken up.”

Abigail gets startled by loud noises, and a major-league scuffle is a noisy affair. So, Abigail was spooked and also worried that Winker was hurt. While the umpires sorted out the scrum, Kristin consoled Abigail and thought about how to tell her lightning had just struck a second time. First, Votto. Now, Winker.

“One of the first things I said was, ‘Honey, everybody’s fighting, but they’re all going to be OK. Nobody’s going to get seriously injured. But Jesse’s not going to be playing anymore today,’” Kristin said. “So, there were more tears.

“She has a sensitive heart, and she really cares about baseball. She feels for everybody, and I know she was disappointed for herself because she’s been waiting to see Jesse. I kept telling her, ‘I don’t think Eugenio is going to get thrown out. I think he’ll be OK. You can cheer for Eugenio.’”

Winker was, indeed, told to leave the ballgame. His double-bird salute to Angels fans was an opportunity for Kristin, a psychologist, to talk to Abigail and Parker about how we all have big feelings sometimes: We can try to calm our bodies, move forward and learn something each time.

What did Winker learn? That there was a little girl out there to whom he owed an apology. Back in the clubhouse, he signed a baseball to Abigail: “Sorry I was ejected! I hope to see you at another game soon.” Mariners staffers delivered it.


The other thing Winker learned? A pizza was headed his way.

Sofie Dill, a Mariners fan living in Arkansas, is a staunch defender of Winker on Mariners Twitter. “He gets a lot of hate there.” Dill believes better days are ahead, and she liked how Winker stood up for himself and his team Sunday. Dill imagined Winker spending the rest of the game sitting alone in an empty clubhouse, and a thought occurred to her and turned into a tweet:


Dill decided it was worth paying $25 for the bit. She opened the Doordash app and ordered a small pepperoni pizza from Mountain Mike’s Pizza, nine miles north of Angel Stadium, with the drop-off note: “For the visitors clubhouse, pizza is for Jesse Winker.” Dill did not expect this to work. She pegged the odds of Winker eating a single slice of that pie at “zero percent.”

When the delivery driver, Simranjeet Singh, reached out, Dill restated the instructions. Singh seemed unshaken. Off he went to retrieve the pizza. Dill documented the entire delivery saga in a Twitter thread. As she tracked Singh’s location, the odds of the pizza reaching Winker steadily increased.

In the sixth inning, the driver and the pizza arrived at the ballpark. “I got to the stadium,” Singh said Sunday night, “and thought, ‘Oh my god, the parking is full.’” He found a temporary spot and strode to Gate 6. He asked to speak with a security guard and was steered to a guard station. Singh handed over the pizza to two guards, and, just like that, they completed the mid-game clubhouse delivery for him.

“It wasn’t until I saw him literally inside Gate 6 that I thought, ‘This might actually work. They didn’t kick him out,’” Dill said, laughing as she added, “I would have gotten a much bigger pizza if I knew this would blow up.”

Then Dill got a direct message from @jessewinker:

Sofie I got the pizza
Thank you
I appreciate it a lot!

(The Athletic independently verified that Winker received the pizza and that it was good. “Mariners fans are amazing!” Winker texted when asked about it.)

Before their delivery-app connection expired, Dill and Singh exchanged contact information, and Dill explained that a lot of Mariners fans wanted to chip in for an extra tip. “I thought she meant like five or 10 people,” Singh said. “Money is money. Everyone needs money. So, I was like, OK.” Singh quickly set up a Venmo account, and Dill shared the details on Twitter. Donations poured in. Singh sent the link to his wife, Gurmeet Kaur, who was at home with their 9-month-old son, Armaan, and that was the first she heard of it.

“All of a sudden,” Kaur said, “he was like, ‘Do you know what happened to me today?!’ He explained everything. I was like, ‘What the heck? Really?'”

Singh’s email inbox overflowed. By Sunday night, he estimated between 300 and 400 people had donated.


(Courtesy of Simranjeet Singh)
“I just got home, and I still can’t explain what happened to me the last five hours,” he said. “I’m still in my dreams right now. This is a life-changing delivery for me right now. I’m really thankful to Sofie. In the last five hours, she did so, so, so much for me. Thank you to each and every person who tipped me. I don’t even know you. But you helped me a lot, a lot, a lot.”

“It’s a wonderful act of kindness Sofie did for us,” Kaur added. “We’re so thankful. It’s just luck. He got lucky today.”

After the pizza was gone and the game had ended and Winker boarded a bus headed for the airport, little Abigail stepped onto the infield dirt at Angel Stadium and joined her brother and scores of other children in running the bases. She clutched her signed baseball and flew around the bases wearing a big smile. Then their family of four started the 45-minute drive home.

One side of Abigail’s bedroom is covered in Reds memorabilia. She has articles and photos, a towel from Garrett, signed baseballs from Votto, Suarez and Kyle Farmer. The Winker baseball from Sunday will go right beside the other one from a memorable ejection. “We’re going to order a case right when we get home,” Kristin Courtney said. “We’ll display it right on the shelf next to the Votto ball.”

On a day when tempers flared and the Mariners had their five-game winning streak snapped, it somehow seemed that everyone won something.

Abigail walked away with another signed baseball.

Dill was the talk of Mariners Twitter.

Winker got a pizza.

And the delivery driver got the biggest tip of his life.
dt


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D-train
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Re: All in all it’s just another Wink in the Brawl (Monday GT)

Post by D-train » Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:43 pm

Delusion.....A hell of a drug.
dt

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Donn Beach
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Re: All in all it’s just another Wink in the Brawl (Monday GT)

Post by Donn Beach » Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:45 pm

Maybe explain to her there is no crying in baseball
.“One of the first things I said was, ‘Honey, everybody’s fighting, but they’re all going to be OK. Nobody’s going to get seriously injured. But Jesse’s not going to be playing anymore today,’” Kristin said. “So, there were more tears

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D-train
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Re: All in all it’s just another Wink in the Brawl (Monday GT)

Post by D-train » Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:47 pm

Donn Beach wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:45 pm
Maybe explain to her there is no crying in baseball
.“One of the first things I said was, ‘Honey, everybody’s fighting, but they’re all going to be OK. Nobody’s going to get seriously injured. But Jesse’s not going to be playing anymore today,’” Kristin said. “So, there were more tears
:)
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Coeurd’Alene J
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Re: All in all it’s just another Wink in the Brawl (Monday GT)

Post by Coeurd’Alene J » Mon Jun 27, 2022 1:05 pm

D-train wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:43 pm
Delusion.....A hell of a drug.
The O’s are in a strong division obviously in last place but share a win loss record. Good luck

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D-train
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Re: All in all it’s just another Wink in the Brawl (Monday GT)

Post by D-train » Mon Jun 27, 2022 1:25 pm

Coeurd’Alene J wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 1:05 pm
D-train wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:43 pm
Delusion.....A hell of a drug.
The O’s are in a strong division obviously in last place but share a win loss record. Good luck
Yeah and likely have less than 5 key guys missing from their lineup.
dt

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Bil522
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Re: All in all it’s just another Wink in the Brawl (Monday GT)

Post by Bil522 » Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:35 pm

D-train wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 1:25 pm
Coeurd’Alene J wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 1:05 pm
D-train wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:43 pm
Delusion.....A hell of a drug.
The O’s are in a strong division obviously in last place but share a win loss record. Good luck
Yeah and likely have less than 5 key guys missing from their lineup.
Nah, they will stagger the suspensions so it doesn't crush the club in any one game. Problem with that is it takes longer to get a full lineup back.

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