The Tyrone Turkeys lost 6-0 to the Enniskillen Donkeys on Wednesday, which is the kind of sentence I have typed so many times this September that my phone now suggests it.

Three innings. Three zeroes. The line score reads 0 0 0, which, if you squint, is also the number of times anyone offered to get me a beverage.

The Donkeys put up two in the first and four in the second and then stopped, presumably out of mercy or boredom. Chris went 3-for-4. Austin went 2-for-4. Neither of them struck out, because striking out requires the pitching to be decent.

Which brings us to the great absence of the evening. Dean was not there. Dean, whose pitching has been described by at least four grown men as "crazy annoying," was missed — openly, loudly, by people who spend the rest of the week complaining about it. I have personally heard a man call Dean's delivery "a war crime in a cul-de-sac." On Wednesday that same man stood in the grass and said the game felt hollow without it. Grief is complicated.

"We just couldn't string anything together out there," said Dan, who said no such thing and instead stared at the fence for a full ninety seconds like it had wronged him personally.

Dan went 1-for-4 and was held homerless, a phrase he insisted I use, as though the Donkeys had assembled a defensive scheme around him rather than simply standing where people normally stand.

Kevin went 1-for-4 with three strikeouts, each one followed by a long inspection of the bat, which continues to be plastic and continues to be the same bat.

"I was seeing it well from the first pitch," said Austin, who was not asked a question, was not being interviewed, and was mainly yelling this at his own teammates while they packed up chairs.

The Turkeys fall to 1-5, losers of four straight, having now been outscored by the Donkeys 20-1 across two meetings. The Donkeys sit 5-1.

My son asked if we could leave after the second inning. We could not. We live here.