The Braves left no leftovers scaling, boning, and fileting the Marlins 29-9 Wednesday night.By Yours Truly
https://throneberryfields.com/2020/09/09/fish-fouled/
The second inning in Atlanta. We're only half kidding.Not even Joe West’s umpiring crew working the game could prevent it. For all anybody knows, maybe even Country Joe himself took pity on the Miami Marlins and called the Hague–or, at least, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources—himself, to file on their behalf against the abuses they suffered in Atlanta Wednesday night.
Or, at least Marlins manager Don Mattingly might have slipped a note to Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker, asking only partially puckishly, “Brian, could we have the bottom of the second back? Pretty please? With tartar sauce on it?â€
Call it the Fish Fricasee. But call the Braves’s 29-9 cleaning, scaling, and fileting the arguable nastiest combined attack of ground troops, close-cover strafing, aerial assault, and strategic bombing ever committed by them, their 29 runs setting a new franchise record.
Sure, the Milwaukee Brewers de-clawed the Detroit Tigers 19-0 in Comerica Park earlier in the day. Only they did it in gradual clips and snaps, a couple of runs here, a few there, a few more yonder. Who the hell needed that nonsense from rude guests when you had the hosts in Truist Park treating their oceanic guests like a shipment of cat food?
What started as a 2-0 Marlins lead got vaporised by fourteen Braves batters including four repeaters before Ender Inciarte showed the Fish mercy and cast his line for an inning-ending ground out to first base. The carnage only began with Dansby Swanson singling his way aboard against Marlins starter Pablo Lopez.
Lopez’s next two mistakes were back-to-back walks to Austin Riley and Adam Duvall. And then it began:
* Ozzie Albies returning from a month on the injured list pushed Swanson home with a ground out to first.
* Inciarte sent a sacrifice fly to the deeper region of left center field, tying the game at two.
* Duvall took third on the play and the Marlins called for a review to see whether third baseman Brian Anderson got the tag on the sliding Duvall’s leg before or after a) Duvall’s foot hit the pillow and b) Riley crossed the plate. The review said no, sir, umpire Hunter Wendelstedt making the emphatic safe sign.
* After Lopez walked Ronald Acuna, Jr., Freddie Freeman hit a line drive to right that diving Marlins right fielder Monte Harrison couldn’t grab, the ball bouncing under his blue glove, scoring Duvall and sending Acuna to third.
* Marcell Ozuna floated a pop to shallow left near the line that hit the grass before Miami left fielder Lewis Brinson could reach it, sending Acuna home. “And the Braves are first-and-thirding the Marlins to death,†crowed Braves broadcaster Chip Caray after the fourth run rang in.
* Travis d’Arnaud, the former Met, checked in with first and third yet again. He hit the first-pitch hanging changeup into the first empty row of the left field seats. The blast ended Lopez’s evening and it’s not impossible that the only thing the Marlins righthander could say when Mattingly came forth to end his misery was, “What took so long, Skip?â€
Exit Lopez, enter Jordan Yamamoto for the Fish. Swanson greeted him with a base hit to left, then Riley shot one right between shortstop and third basemen trying to converge to send Swanson home. Then Duvall hit yet another first pitch into the right center field bullpen.
Yamamoto finally said too much was enough about the Braves’ first-pitch hitting and wrestled Albies to an eighth pitch. Unfortunately, it was finally ball three and a full count, forcing Yamamoto to throw a ninth pitch. And Albies drove it four rows up the empty center field seats.
A smooth-looking righthander otherwise, Yamamoto shares a surname with World War II’s Japanese Combined Fleet commander. What the U.S. Navy did to Admiral Yamamoto’s forces at Midway and beyond, the Braves did to the Marlins in the bottom of the second. They one-upped the ten-spot second under which they might have buried the Philadelphia Phillies two Sundays ago—but for the Phillies crawling back to make the Braves sweat out a 12-10 final.
About the only thing the Braves didn’t do to the Marlins Wednesday night was drop the atomic bomb. Oops. Take that back. After a one-out single, a hit batsman, and a shallow base hit against another Marlins reliever, Josh A. Smith, Duvall—who also hit a three-run homer in the fifth—dropped the big one, slicing salami on an 0-1 meatball in the bottom of the seventh, for what proved the final four Atlanta runs.
Whoever files the report with the Hague, or with the Georgia department’s fisheries management, they’re going to have to include that. It might be the only time in history that a late atomic bomb did less damage and was less lethal than what happened earlier in the war.
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