We had a Phillies media kerfuffle on Easter weekend. Matt Gelb of The Athletic vs. Michael Barkann of NBC Sports Philadelphia. It wasn’t very combative, maybe a 0.9 out of 10 on the conflict scale, so this is more of a butting of heads between a talking head and a scribe.

Admittedly, I had no idea what Gelb was referencing when he wrote this:

We asked around for some clarity here, and one person responded on Twitter with this:

“My guess is Ricky Bo being mad about them supposedly asking too many questions about Nick Nelson after game 2. He wanted them to focus more on the struggles of the more marquee players.”

That thought was corroborated by a super-secret source, who explained that Bottalico was “sounding like an ass” while complaining that the writers were asking too many Nick Nelson questions. That could be true. The writers possibly may have been asking too many Nick Nelson questions, but that’s just like, Ricky Bo’s opinion man, as Jeff Bridges said in The Big Lebowski. More on that in a moment, but first, Barkann’s reply to Gelb, who deleted his tweet:

Oh man, I bet Gelb is shaking in his boots. Not sure why he deleted, however. If the Ricky Bo thing is true, maybe Gelb backed off because it wasn’t really Barkann he was going after, but Barkann’s postgame partner instead. Perhaps Barkann just caught a ricochet here, and is not the source of the ire. Or maybe Gelb just thought the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze and said “ah fuck it, nevermind.” Last thing you want is Barkann blowing up your phone over and over again until you pick up.

The bigger story here is outrage and how much of it is warranted in April. Bob Wankel calls the postgame show Fake Outrage Live and he’s not wrong, because how upset can you really be after 10 games? There will be a time for discomfort and accountability, but it’s not on 4/18, despite what the WIP morning show says. Ricky Bo need not worry, because the Phillies media corps isn’t exactly comprised of wussies, so they’ll do the job when required. And if they don’t, we’ll dust off Howard Eskin and send him down to Citizens Bank Park to start asking the hard questions.