Yankees: Joe Kelly is Our Best Friend Now After Astros Brawl

Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly went full-on after the Houston Astros on Tuesday, and Yankees fans like him now.

OK, Yankees fans, we get it now. Joe Kelly, a man whose career I assume just started in 2020 (Do I have that right?) is the stone-cold truth.

Kelly — who, as far as I am concerned, has no past and exists exclusively in our present timeline — became the first person in months on Tuesday night to actively take revenge on the Houston Astros.

He wasn’t even on the 2017 Dodgers team that lost the World Series at the hands of the trash can bangers. He was very much on the Boston Red Sox team that captured the ’18 World Series (I guess, I’ve blocked this out) and beat Houston and the Dodgers.

But none of that mattered when he got in the ring with Alex Bregman and Carlos Correa this week. The whole calculus of the situation changed.

Kelly, with little-to-no motivation from the outside world, went into full-on attack mode. MLB social-distancing protocols? What are those? I’d like to throw some baseballs at some heads, please.

Two years after this man took on the New York Yankees, got put in a headlock, then suddenly became the hero, I finally understand. The bespectacled Kelly is the perfect revenge vessel. He has no idea where his electric stuff is going most of the time, so he brings a built-in excuse to all shenanigans.

Last night totally worked, and you couldn’t pick a better messenger.

As for Kelly’s message? It was succinct and to the point, but not dissimilar from the great fits and spurts of poetry we’ve heard over the years. Just…a new bit of phraseology that rolls off the tongue.

Ahh, that’s the good stuff.

Nothing in months has felt more normal than this. After Bregman apologized at Spring Training by reading two sentences off a tiny piece of paper, and Correa screamed at everyone in the clubhouse to have respect for the sanctity of Jose Altuve’s bad tattoo, the whole thing went away. With very good reason. The only legitimate excuse to forget about the Astros actually transpired.

But if MLB wants baseball back because it can help “heal” us? It’s a load of nonsense at face value, sure, but that healing started in earnest last night.

Joe Kelly, consider yourself redeemed.