The Houston Astros are spending a substantial amount of time in Philadelphia this week as they battle the Phillies in the World Series, and they need to grab some grub worthy of pro baseball players while they're in town.
Hilariously, it seemed Tuesday night like they were having a hard time finding the right post-game meal.
At least two popular eateries - Angelo's Pizzeria and Mike's BBQ - seemed uninterested in catering requests from the Astros, according to posts from the restaurants' social media accounts.
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Philadelphia sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
Here's the post from the official Mike's BBQ Instagram, in which Astros dietician Lisa Clarke reached out to the restaurant in search of catering:
Oddly, Clarke called owner Mike Strauss "Gil" and appeared to be in search of Latin food, which isn't served at Mike's. I have to wonder if Clarke was trying to reach Gil Arends, the co-owner of Puyero Venezuelan Flavor in Society Hill on 4th Street.
NBC Sports Philadelphia reached out to Mike's BBQ via Instagram ahead of this story's publication on Tuesday night. The message was read but never received a response.
By Wednesday morning the Mike's BBQ account had deleted the original post and replaced it with a new one with a more Astros-friendly statement:
MLB
"YO!!! Hey Philly & Houston !! A local news org took a recent post about not feeding the Astro’s as a “refusal” while we are die hard Philly fans. We don’t refuse serving anyone. We fed the Braves twice , we serve the Mets, the list goes on. It was a funny post as the Astros contacted the wrong restaurant . We did help them contact the right one. Both parties on this text knew that. It was very funny saying we weren’t going to feed them. Which we couldn’t anyway. We don’t make Latin food. Nor were we open those days . That was there wish. Every team should have the opportunity to try local cuisine , or cuisine of their choosing when they are on the road. Im happy that it fired up Philly fans . I thought it would bring lots of laughs. However I don’t want people to think we refuse to feed anyone. We really don’t . We’ve given thousands of dollars of food away just during the pandemic to anyone that needed it. And even ball players need to eat! Hope this clears this up. Cheers ! And of course ! Go Phillies !!!"
NBC Sports Philadelphia reached out to Strauss for comment on Wednesday, and he provided more context as to what exactly happened, explaining that he told Clarke she had the wrong number and telling her she should refer back to the Phillies if she was indeed in search of Latin food.
Got it.
Then we had a pair of posts on Tuesday from Danny DiGiampietro, the man behind the famous Angelo's Pizzeria known for its pizza and sandwiches on 9th Street.
Danny posted a video to his Instagram story in which he refuted any suggestion that Angelo's cooked for the Astros, asserting he told the team no, and shortly thereafter he reposted a story from Phillies team chef Keith Rudolf showing a party tray of Angelo's hoagies fueling the Phillies ahead of Game 3:
Unfortunately, DiGiampietro was apparently flooded with hateful posts and messages from angry Astros fans decrying his saying "no" to Houston's request.
NBC Sports Philadelphia reached out to DiGiampietro for comment on the situation:
"Honestly, I haven't seen any stories. I'm just going off what people told me, but everything that was written before today was an accurate [sic], but I'm taking it all and str [sic]. I'm not mad at anybody."
So there you have it: fun internet posts that turned unpleasant, because that's the internet.
This story was updated Wednesday, Nov. 2 at 3:40 p.m.