Eating Crow, and an Apology to Dodgers' Austin Barnes

There are a surprising number of recipes for crow on the internet. There’s BBQ black crow from Betty Crocker (no joke), there’s crow dandelion soup Native American, a crow cocktail and a specialty website called Crow Busters.

So, who you gonna call? Crow Busters!

Which I must do for hitting Austin Barnes in this space 12 days ago. In my defense he was hitting .100/.182/.100 at the time and sported a combined sub-.200 average since 2018. And I'd been perturbed by his .158/.235/.224 with 25 strikeouts in 76 postseason at bats. But he’s been hitting of late, and I'm salting up my crow as we speak.

Barnes has his batting line up to .304/.347/.391, he contributed two hits and scored both Dodgers runs in their 2-1 victory over Seattle Tuesday night. Importantly, Barnes swiped a keg bag to put him in position to score the game winner on Corey Seager’s single in the eighth.

And this was unfair: "Look, I don't want to kick a man when he's down, but Barnes has been down for three years without a break, and it's not a slump, OK? The man can't hit...Barnes' statistics? You sure you want to see this? The numbers are horrifying, so please safeguard the children."

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I don’t think the current Dodgers' starting catcher will hit .300 for the year, and I’m not sure about .280 or .260, necessarily. But on this team a .240 average, with his fair share of walks (which he’s drawing again), and an on base percentage in the neighborhood of what it is today (.347), that’ll probably do the trick.

So props to Barnes for putting in the work with his coaches, and with Mookie Betts as it turns out. I’m sorry I doubted you, sir.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna try one of these crow meatballs my wife, the Main Squeeze, whipped up for me. Mmm good. It tastes like chicken.

Howard Cole has been writing about baseball on the internet since Y2K. Follow him on Twitter.