On Tuesday afternoon, New York Yankees star Cody Bellinger was a late scratch after suffering food poisoning after a plate of bad chicken wings. Despite an Instagram story to the contrary on Tuesday night, Bellinger announced on Wednesday to the New York media that he'd be swearing off chicken wings for five years.
This is an imagined one-way conversation between Bellinger and a plate of steaming hot wings exactly two years from today.
Oh, no. Oh, no no no. Don't do this to me. Don't order yourself like you own the place.
I told you. I'm clean now. Temptation? What temptation? I'm not interested in you at all. I'm three years exactly away from caring about you.
Ok, you saucy little minx, you say your part. I'll hear you out. I've been living a better life without you. I've had to miss games for the normal bumps and bruises, sure, but I've never had to argue out of a lineup at the last minute with the chicken sweats. Why should I invite you back in? Why should I be vulnerable again?
New York Yankees star Cody Bellinger talks to a plate of chicken wings in imagined conversation
That's exactly what I thought you'd say. Word for word. I can't even believe I sat here and listened to all of it.
Listen, you're incredible. It's not you. It's me. Well, it's partially you, actually. It's what you do to me. If loving wings is wrong, I certainly don't want to be right. But loving wings when they're objectively prepared wrong? That's not right. That's not right at all.
I'll take responsibility for a lot of things. I'll own eating you too fast. I'll own eating you when I shouldn't. But the risk here is too great now. I've seen what happens on the other side. I need wings in my inner circle who I can trust. Wings who know their boundaries. And right now, I just can't guarantee that you are those wings.
Maybe, in three years, things will be different. Exactly three years. I promise you, I have a calendar invite synced up and I turned on every alarm in my house. I can't wait for that day. But that day isn't now. Hell, it isn't even nigh.
Wait ... is this two years from 2025? Or am I still in 2025, having a meat sweats-induced vision as I lie on my hotel room floor contemplating my own mortality and the quickest and most direct route to the latrine (it's right over there)? Wow ... yeah, whoa. I'm still in a haze. Time hasn't passed at all. You're not even a real plate of talking chicken wings.
I need to get my head right. I have to lick the back of a poisonous toad to balance things out. There. That's better.
Thanks for hearing me out. I'll see you again in five years. And we'll both be better for it.