I’d be lying if I said the last few weeks haven’t been hard. The NIT ended, I don’t get to watch the NIT anymore, and the next NIT isn’t happening for months. To say I was lost would be an understatement.
Just when things looked the bleakest (I may or may not have been looking for clips of St. John’s 2003 NIT Championship run on YouTube), I opened Twitter Wednesday night.
Enter Joe Kelly.
Enter, Joe Kelly did, taking the field to a remix of the Wal-Mart yodeling kid while the Red Sox’ official Twitter account tweeted “Real recognizes real.”
Side note: Sorry we never embed tweets or videos or anything like that. We’d like to. We just don’t know how to do it. But if you know and want to share, hit up those DM’s.
Kelly’s performance did not stop there, as you likely know if you clicked on this post (but in the event you’re just a loyal NIT fan, and you don’t even like baseball, but you cared enough about me to click on this—thank you).
You see, earlier in the game, Yankees designated hitter Tyler Austin slid into second base with his spikes up, catching Red Sox shortstop Brock Holt on the calf. Holt took umbrage. Benches cleared. Order was restored with no punches thrown.
I’m not here to say whether it was a dirty slide or not. I’m just an NIT blogger, not some expert in baseball morality. What I am here to say is that I love a good brawl (unpopular opinion: the Ron Artest incident in Detroit was kind of awesome); I love a good rivalry where teams actually don’t like each other, as opposed to one that only exists in ESPN promo’s; and the slide was, at the very least, borderline enough that I found it justified to encourage this sort of behavior.
I suppose it’s kind of similar to Franz Ferdinand’s assassination: Was Gavrilo Princip trying to go in with his spikes up? Or was it just an instinctive play? No one knows for sure, but it was just what was needed for a bunch of countries who didn’t like each other to clear the benches and throw some punches while the U.S.A. came running in from the bullpen.
Not that I support full-scale warfare or anything. Quite the contrary. Just trying to make an analogy here.
Anyway, in Austin’s second trip to the plate following the contentious slide, he had to face Joe Kelly, which I assume is already kind of scary, because Joe Kelly has terrible control and throws the ball real hard. Facing Joe Kelly when you think he might be mad at you must be horrifying. Kelly looks like the kind of guy you see standing alone in the corner of a bar, drinking a tallboy when the bar doesn’t serve tallboys. You don’t know what he’s going to do. Break dance? Turn and run away? Take slices of ham out of his pants and frisbee them at your head? And the cornered-animal look in his eyes is only amplified by those glasses. Joe Kelly is the closest thing the universe has produced to a real-life Rick Vaughn.
Kelly started him with a slider, at which Austin swung and missed, presumably trying to hit a weak grounder and defuse the situation.
Kelly, sensing Austin was trying to get away (I assume), threw a fastball very far inside.
It missed Austin.
Another slider followed, this time ending up below the zone (a “waste pitch,” you could say).
And then Kelly drilled Austin in the ribs.
Austin took a few steps towards the mound, jawing at Kelly, but Joe Kelly wasn’t there to yell at Austin from forty feet away until someone separated them. He was there to throw the f*** down.
Kelly invited Austin to join him in front of the mound. Austin obliged. Both teams joined! Kelly and Austin ended up on the ground; Kelly landed a few punches on Austin; a chaotic melee erupted; and Austin punched Red Sox’ third base coach Carlos Febles in the side of the head while Febles was breaking things up. Aaron Judge played the role of gentle giant in the fight, declining to snap Kelly’s neck while holding him in a headlock.
Kelly emerged from the fracas having transformed into, well, this tweet says it best.
Reactions varied after the game. There were the usual cries of “throwing hard objects 100 miles per hour at human beings is dangerous” (uhh…that’s the point), Pedro Martinez loved it (obviously), and both teams defended their guy, as is supposed to happen.
It was beautiful and violent (but not too violent—remember, war is bad!) and I closed Twitter an hour later feeling excited for the first time since I left Madison Square Garden two weeks ago. When things were darkest, Joe Kelly showed me the stars.
It’s unclear where things will go from here. It’s possible this will be the start of a summer filled with retaliation in Boston and the Bronx. It’s possible Joe Kelly will lose his control entirely and end up Designated for Assignment. It’s possible All Things NIT will convert into a Joe Kelly fan blog during the non-college basketball months.
What is certain is that Joe Kelly got me off my couch and back on the blog train (which also happens from my couch but while sitting up). Look out, Internet. NIT Stu is back in the saddle.
I’ll leave you with this beauty of an explanation from Joe Kelly:
“It’s a pitch that got away on a cold night…I walk a batter per inning. It’s not like I have Greg Maddux command.”
God bless Joe Kelly.
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