Nationals fans wear oven mitts in honor of Bryce Harper, Ryan Zimmerman (Photos)

Fans wearing oven mitts to Nationals games is becoming a thing. It all started thanks to Bryce Harper and Ryan Zimmerman, who began wearing padded black gloves to protect their injured thumbs. Some noted that the protective devices resembled oven mitts.

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And that’s all it takes for a fad to be launched. Now that fad is…maybe not in the stratosphere yet, but it’s getting there.

Harper himself got in on the oven mitt fun, quipping after a game that he and Zimmerman were now going to “go bake.”

Bryce Harper baking? Now that’s something I’d pay to see. Maybe. Not really.

I can already see how this fad will evolve. The Nationals will start winning games now, and other players will begin donning the oven mitts even though their thumbs don’t need protecting.

The Nationals will begin marketing official oven mitts and people will buy them even though they cost four times more than a regular oven mitt you can purchase at any Walmart.

The Nats will get into the playoffs and there will be endless feature stories on the oven mitt fad, the greatest thing to hit baseball since the Rally Monkey.

And that’s when oven mitt backlash will set in. People will begin gathering up oven mitts and setting them on fire. Oven mitt conflagrations will burn out of control all over the greater DC area.

At that moment, oven mitt Armageddon will be upon us.

Something like that.

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