The Phillies Sunday Night Baseball Bingo game

Last night’s night Phillies game on ESPN was their first on Sunday night in a long while. This caused a lot of us here to be pretty pumped about the game, as it meant that the team was getting some national recognition for how well they have performed thus far. For some, though, this would be somewhat of an issue because with the national broadcast came the national broadcasters <insert collective groan>. They as an announcing crew are extremely polarizing for a few reasons since national TV announcers tend to not know as much about our team as we do because they have to know all 30 teams in depth. They dwell in clichés and surface level analysis, barely able to name an entire bullpen by name. I, for one, am a fan of the ESPN crew since they have a good grasp of some of the advanced stats of the game, but for other, they’ve become an object of derision and scorn.

So, in the spirit of fun, I decided to create a little bingo game to see if the announcers could hit on some of the anticipated storylines.

As you can see, I wasn’t very optimistic that they as a group were going to be very positive toward the Phillies. My guess was that they would take the lazy route and talk about Gabe Kapler and his “eccentricities”, or discuss their vast amount of available money this offseason.

Then, Drew Davis came along and touched it up a bit, making it look all official like.

Once we had our board, we were ready to play. Little did I know how well this little idea would do.

We started out very well, hitting on several boxes early.

Soon, they were coming rapid fire.

If you’re keeping track, that’s four boxes checked off in 15 minutes. At that pace, I was guessing I’d have bingo by the time the third inning was over. It slowed a bit, but we were given a gift from the baseball gods: a rain delay! Once that rain delay hit, I figured we’d get a ton of help since the broadcast had to talk about something to fill the time, but alas, it wasn’t to be. They decided to be all professional and talk about the entire league, going through the day’s games and how certain teams were doing. Towards the end of the delay, though, they did try and sneak one in on us.

As the game propelled forward, we started getting close. At one point, we were convinced it was over.

This vertical column meant that we were only a Buster Olney tanking reference away from bingo. It was too easy! Olney has been dumping on the Phillies for years for not spending money. He was also the one that mentioned how the team would be going after Harper in the offseason, so my guess was that it was a natural segue into a tanking conversation. However, he never got around to it. I think Olney knew about the board and purposefully didn’t talk about it, suggesting the fix was in.

Of course, we all know how the game went. With the way the bullpen has been struggling of late, it felt somewhat inevitable, but for me, the focus was completely on the bingo board.

It wasn’t meant to be. The announcers never gave us that final mention of tanking, nor did they discuss the Phanatic nearly decapitating a woman with his hot dog gun. squashing any hope of us getting SNB Bingo. Sadly, we all went to be sorely disappointed. And very tired.

Having the Phillies on Sunday Night Baseball was a thrill, something we hope to be seeing a lot more of this season. Will we have bingo again? Probably not. But hopefully by the time they are in primetime again, we’ll be more concerned with the outcome of the game than the checking of a board.

I’d like to thank Paul Boye for keeping track of the board during the game, Cole Altmann and Wet Luzinski for the ideas for squares, and Drew Davis for touching up the board for us. It was a lot of fun!