Tuesday night’s Braves game against the Pirates saw a pretty drawn-out rain delay, so the Braves passed the time like any of us would: by playing Nintendo games together. Inclement weather forced a three-hour delay that had fans and players finding interesting ways to pass the time. Showing their nerdier colors, Braves Nick Markakis, Ender Inciarte, Sean Rodriguez, Jim Johnson, and Jace Peterson all got together for a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe tournament. This, according to MLB.com.
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The report (hilariously) states that the guys got together to play the game on their “Nintendo Wii Switch.” We’ll forgive the author for being a little out of touch because, hey, we don’t know a damn thing about baseball. Playing Mario Kart on the Switch has apparently become a favorite pass-time around the clubhouse. “We love it, and it brings back the good ‘ol days,” shortstop Dansby Swanson said. “It is fun and competitive, and it’s entertaining.”
The winner of this tournament, and most tournaments, was Nick Markakis. Apparently Markakis plays the game quite a bit, and favors Princess Peach. “The best in the clubhouse is definitely Nick Markakis, as he is phenomenal,” Luke Jackson said. “[Eric] O’Flaherty is pretty good, Ender is good and Sean Rodriguez is an actual solid sleeper pick. But Markakis is probably clubhouse champ.”
Of course Markakis doesn’t mind playing Mario Kart all the time when he’s the clubhouse champ, but it seems to have really caught on with the team; it brings them all together for something other than baseball, and apparently that helps. “You’ve got to have some camaraderie in the clubhouse, and some fun other than baseball,” Markakis said. “We are here for one thing, and we realize that, but when you have down time, you’ve got to have some things to do. It is just one of those things.”
It sounds like something Nintendo would pay to set up for promotional purposes, but this is real life. Just a bunch of dudes who love Mario Kart and play it together any chance they get. It’s stories like this that make us believe that the Switch is going to be much bigger than the Wii before it’s all said and done. Nintendo really has (forgive us) hit a home run.
