Nats Relievers: Lotto Advocates

Via Deadly Don Hammack comes this find by Nats Enquirer. This find is also, quite understandably, your Daguerreotype of the Evening:

The grainy, sepia-toned image you see above, which was created using silver halide, heated mercury, cold-rolled cladding, and a dipping solution of sodium thiosulfate, is of the lotto ads at tonight’s Phillies-Nats tilt (and also what appear to be some lovely geraniums). The discerner will observe that the Pennsylvania Lotto would seem to be claiming that in excess of 1.2 billion clams and or pieces of cheddar are in play at the moment. But hold everything!

MASN’s F.P. Santangelo pointed out during Tuesday night’s Nats-Phillies broadcast on MASN that members of the Nationals bullpen had messed with the jackpot numbers on the PowerBall and MegaMillions boards out in the visitors bullpen at Citizens Bank Park. And suddenly, a couple of paltry $25 million and $75 million payouts become $521 M and $705 M, respectively.

I’m pretty sure Sarbanes-Oxley expressly forbids the manipulation of powerball boards by NL East relievers — even decidedly merry relievers such as those boasted by the Nationals — but sometimes the law must be broken in the service of comedy jokes.

This I roar: #estimatedannuity