So in the top of the second, Chris Johnson hit his first of two home runs to tie the game at 2-2, and some Cubs fan did the most Cubs fan thing ever. Dude caught the ball near the top of the left-field bleachers, wheeled around, switched a ball he later claimed to have caught during batting practice out of his glove while his back was to the crowd, kept the home run ball, and threw the alleged batting-practice ball back onto the field to the approval of the unknowing crowd.

See, this is why the Cubs can’t have nice things. Their fans mythologize their own long-suffering fandom, but ultimately they can’t be arsed to actually participate in their own chosen rituals. Baseball is sort of ancillary to the experience there, so actually putting effort into being a “long-suffering Cubs fan” seems entirely beside the point, so I get that this dude really just wanted to keep his home run ball while placating the crowd.

I’ve been to Wrigleyville, and it’s fun the way Buckhead Village is fun; if you enjoy watching douchebros who are completely hammered by 4:30 p.m. jumping into the fountain at a patio bar, you’ll have a good time. (For the record, I totally enjoy watching this sort of thing, so I totally enjoyed that afternoon in Wrigleyville.) But yeah, it’s a party scene that happens to host baseball games, so they’re liable to cut corners as fans and not really be all that concerned about the on-field product. (See also: Miss, Ole.)  The Bartman thing, when you think about it, was the inevitable fight when the kegger has gone on for too long. It’s good for everyone that the party typically gets cut off before it gets late enough to go downhill like that.

Anyway, baseball. Mike Minor, despite the fact that I traded my 2015 10th-round pick in a keep-your-top-eight keeper league for him, continued a month-plus of really not having it. He left a bunch of balls up in the zone, got whacked around in the first inning and gave up two runs. It would have been worse but for Christian Bethancourt big-arming an out on a throw down to second; as much as I like to say a plus catcher’s arm is overrated as a runs-prevention tool, point for you, Mr. Bethancourt.

Minor did settle down long enough to keep the Braves in the game until they broke it open in the fourth with a batting-around inning featuring Johnson’s second homer of the game (caught by a Braves fan who declined to even pretend to throw it back)  and a bases-clearing Justin Upton double. As whackable as Minor’s pitches were, Edwin Jackson‘s were whackabler. And Minor helped his own cause with a home run in that fourth. The wind was blowing out today, for better and for worse. B. J. Upton at one point got completely bamboozled by a ball that appeared to catch some sort of jetstream toward right-center, and there were a frightening number of popups that seemed like they might split a Bermuda Triangle of Braves fielders, only for someone to figure it out at the last second.

But after taking a 9-3 lead, the Braves could weather Minor giving up three more runs in the fifth. That was all the Cubs would get, and quite frankly that’s where I stopped watching this game and went running, and so that’s where this recap ends. I see that apparently the Braves tacked on two more in the ninth for good measure, and that there was some sort of continued silliness involving the replayability of the neighborhood play at second base. I didn’t see it. I’m running my first 5K tomorrow morning and I wanted to get out there before dinner and take a warm-up run and so I wasn’t really acting the part of the committed baseball fan. I get you, Cubsbro. Maybe that’s why we can’t have nice things either. I’m sorry, guys.