It was a Friday night. All seemed right in the world.
San Francisco Chronicle baseball columnist John Shea took a moment to note the improvement in Coco Crisp’s fate.
Coco Crisp goes from accusing A’s of benching him to prevent $13M option from vesting to hitting key RBI single for Indians in World Series.
— John Shea (@JohnSheaHey) October 29, 2016
This benign observation somehow set off Smash Mouth, the band known for a couple worldwide hits years ago, and more recently, being excitable on Twitter about their Bay Area teams.
@JohnSheaHey The A’s are a joke, good for CC!
— Smash Mouth (@smashmouth) October 29, 2016
Everything seems par for the course so far. Whichever band member tweets from the account typically has strong opinions on sports. But here’s where it gets confusing: The Oakland A’s official account took the salvo a bit too personally and started gunning for the pop-rock band’s jugular.
(The A’s deleted all of their tweets, but that’s a GIF of Marcus Semien laughing in the dugout. Get it? It’s because Smash Mouth is a joke.)
Alas, the bickering continued.
The band continued to tweet along the same lines — that the @Athletics sounded childish and that they have great fans and need to do better — because they are typically logged on and live to post.
And the A’s had one final note before calling it a night.
Then Saturday came and cooler heads prevailed as someone in the Oakland organization realized just what the hell had happened the night before.
The team offered a make-good using a GIF of Stephen Vogt, (who with the right styling could definitely pass for a member of Smash Mouth).
Hey @smashmouth – sorry we let our competitive juices get the best of us. Tickets and a 1st pitch are on us anytime you’re in the East Bay. pic.twitter.com/wfsKcBr1NW
— Oakland Athletics (@Athletics) October 29, 2016
So to answer the question posed in the headline: Who won the Twitter beef between the last-place team in the AL West and a band who made millions of dollars singing the theme song for Shrek?
No one. Everyone lost. We’re all losers now, actually.
(Well, except for Shea — maybe.)
