Let’s Figure Out What Dodgers Game They Watched On The Bulldog

Members of the Defector staff often send each other animal photos and videos. Some are cute, or doing funny things; others are abominations (mostly Instagram Chihuahuas that Samer has found). Often a theme will be enforced: For example, today we are celebrating Wet Beast Wednesday. A thing immediately noticeable, if one were to observe and track these exchanges over a length of time, is that the viral animal trafficking is much heavier on slow news days, because we are bored. Today, we sunk so low as to share this guy:

A viral Twitter account, sharing a screengrab of a Tiktok shorn of identifying information, of the latter half of a French bulldog named Handsome serving as a projection TV screen for Major League Baseball. We're digging the bottom of the barrel.

However! "Would be a fun project to try to find what game that is," Kathryn suggested. Like I said, slow news day. But slow enough that we eagerly donned our detective caps and peered closely at Handsome. Let us consider the visible clues:

• It's a Dodgers game.
• They're playing a team wearing solid blue tops: The Mets or the Cubs almost surely.
• It is a national game, because we can see the ESPN Bottom Line.
• On the Bottom Line, we see that the Wizards appear to have won their game by a score of 93 (or perhaps 92, or even 98) to 83.
• Somebody scored 18 points, on 4-of-7 shooting from three.
• The Bottom Line helpfully, if curiously, informs us that this person was a No. 15 pick.
• Handsome is a sleepy guy.

Some assumptions can be made, as well. The Dodgers are likely on the road, if their opponents are wearing solid-color alts. We are probably dealing with a late-summer or early-fall situation, as opposed to late spring, because it is much, much more likely that the Dodgers made the playoffs than the Wizards did.

But we must begin with what we know. The Washington Wizards have had only two 15th-overall draft picks since ESPN came into existence: Corey Kispert in 2021 and Troy Brown in 2018. We decided immediately to focus on Kispert, as he is a shooter, easily capable of scoring 18 points while hitting four threes, and Troy Brown sucked.

The lamentable 15th pick in the 2018 Draft, Brown flamed out of the NBA without much notice, though in his one meaningful season, with the Lakers in 2022–23, he did go 4-for-7 twice. The two games came just four days apart, as he did it against the Thunder on March 1, 2023, then again against the Warriors on March 5.

He is 4-for-26 in his playoff career.

Kispert, on the other hand, has shot 4-for-7 from three four times in his four-year career—none of them in games that correspond to the prostrate hound above. He posted the line in a one-point loss to the Hornets and a 21-point win against the Spurs in his sophomore season, then did it again the next year in a blowout loss to the Rockets in which he finished minus-27 in 35 minutes. Last season, he hit the mark once, in a narrow loss against the Bucks in February.

A Stathead search for games in which the Wizards won and their opponents scored 83 points after Kispert was drafted turned up just one game, a 98-83 win late-October victory against the the Raptors. Unfortunately, Kispert did not play in that game, and neither the Mets nor the Cubs made it to late October in 2021.

But, finally, we stumbled across the key that unlocked the entire Handsome mystery, staring us in the face the entire time: Under what circumstances would they bother mentioning a guy's draft position? Early in his first season, perhaps, but not in this case. What about preseason? Unfortunately, Kispert had no games in the four preseason games of his rookie year in which he scored exactly 18 points.

But what about Summer League?

There it was. On Aug. 15, 2021, in Las Vegas, the Summer League Wizards beat the Bucks 93-83, led by recent draft pick Corey Kispert and his 18 points, including four three-pointers, to go with three board and two blocks. Mamadi Diakite led Milwaukee with 18 points of his own, but it wasn't enough in the face of Kispert's hot shooting.

And now, having a date for the game being projected onto the Frenchie's belly, the rest was simple.

On Aug. 15, 2021, ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball matchup was the Dodgers at the Mets, a 14-4 Los Angeles victory in which five Dodgers homers chased Carlos Carrasco to an early shower, while Max Scherzer pitched six solid innings to win his 10th of the year. The Mets went 0-for-12 with runners in scoring position. Attendance at Citi Field was 31,205. Game time was a robust 3:48. Thank you for the pitch clock, Rob Manfred.

We later learned that Patrick was somehow under the impression the entire time that Handsome was a pig and not a dog. So while we all achieved one epiphany today, he had two.

Rest in peace, Handsome. They used to watch Dodgers games on you.