Nationals’ closer Sean Doolittle shares history of his relationship with Smash Mouth...

If you’ve heard/read all this before, feel free to move on, it’s just a funny story about a young couple and a pop band from the late 1990s-early 2000s, that’s still around today, and has been tangentially connected with sport because of one hit song, and their Twitter feuds and friendships over the years.

During Monday’s pre-All Star Game media availability in Washington, D.C., a reporter asked Nationals’ closer Sean Doolittle about the history of his relationship with the band Smash Mouth, who recently congratulated the reliever for his second All-Star selection and at the urging of Sean’s wife Eireann, said that thing they’re famous for saying:

So how did all this Doolittles and Smash Mouth stuff start (and also why isn’t Smashmouth just one word? And why do I type “Smashmount” every time I try to type ‘Smashmount’ — damn it I just did it again!)

Anyway, here’s the story from Sean Doolittle himself:

“So like they’re from the Bay area, and like one time they were kind of going back and forth with the A’s, and they were kind of getting in a heated — it was a very online thing, and I was trying to calm the situation down by tweeting sentences using like titles of their songs. It didn’t really work. Like they were at each other’s throats, and then fast-forward a few months later — this is so weird...

[ed. note - “Before he continues with the weird part, here’s just a small sampling of the A’s and Smash Mount— damn it, Smash Mouth’s battle... which might seem sort of one-sided since the A’s deleted their tweets and I don’t feel like screencapping someone else’s screencaps right now...”]

So, back to Sean Doolittle’s telling of the story, which we pick up with the Nationals’ closer getting to Smash Mount— for f****’s sake, Smash Mouth’s involvement in their engagement, also it says “for Frank’s sake” right above here count the *s, cause you know, family friendly:

“My wife and I had got engaged, we got engaged a day before, but we didn’t announce it to anybody, we wanted to give it a day or two and tell our family and friends. My wife was tweeting with a friend of ours, and somehow Smash Mouth jumped in — they ended up in the conversation. Smash Mouth jokingly said, ‘Sean, you really need to a buy a ring,’ like, ‘when are you going to step up and propose to Eireann,’ and I was like, ‘Eireann, oh my gosh, like now if we announce our engagement it’s going to look like Smash Mouth was like the reason I finally decided to step up and ask you to marry me,’ so that’s exactly what happened, a few hours later we did tweet out like an announcement with something that we had gotten engaged, and a bunch of people caught on and they were like, “Smash Mouth” finally convinced Sean to propose to Eireann, and they jokingly offered to play — I don’t know if it was joking or not, maybe we should have taken them up on it, they offered to play our reception, so there’s been some — so like when this happened again, maybe every major event that happens in our life we need to find a way to celebrate it with Smash Mouth.

“I don’t know, it’s one of those kind of beautiful things that can only happen on social media.”