Joe Kelly spotted making NSFW taunts before Astros' powerful comeback vs Dodgers

Joe Kelly really hates the Astros. He's not alone in that; upon the Dodgers' trip to Houston, Clayton Kershaw told reporters multiple times that he "doesn't like coming here". Kelly seems more willing to fight if things came down to it than Kershaw and the rest of his teammates, though.

More than that, Kelly seems to want to fight. Just give him a time, a place, an opponent in an Astros uniform, and he'll be there with fists swinging.

In 2020, a benches-clearing incident between Kelly and then-Astro Carlos Correa became lip-reading fodder for Jomboy, who racked up over five million views on that video. It also got Kelly an eight-game suspension.

Kelly wasn't a Dodger in 2017, the year LA lost the World Series to Houston and the same year identified as the start of the Astros' complex but somehow still inelegant sign-stealing scandal. But he was a Red Sox, and the Sox fell to the Astros in the ALDS that year.

In the second game of the Dodgers' visit to Houston, Kelly was caught in the dugout, yelling at Astros pitcher Ronel Blanco, and he — well, uh — he didn't have anything to nice to say. Unfortunately, it came right before a cascade of bad pitching and one of LA's worst losses of the season.

Known Astros hater Joe Kelly caught yelling profanities at Ronel Blanco ahead of Houston's surge

The Dodgers were enjoying a 5-0 lead over the Astros until the bottom of the sixth, when Evan Phillips came in to relieve Justin Wrobleski with two outs and two men on. It was only the second time Phillips has been brought into a game as early as the sixth inning all season, and the second time in July as he's struggled heavily since the month began.

All Phillips had to do was get one more out for his team, but instead, he gave up four consecutive runs to make things 5-4. Anthony Banda was called in to replace him, and Banda finally got Jon Singleton to line out and end the inning.

Things looked okay — good, even, until the bottom of the eighth. In the interim, Cavan Biggio homered to extend the Dodgers' lead to two, but the Astros tied things up again. LA couldn't get anything going during their turn at the top of the ninth, and Blake Treinen was given the ball to force the game into extras.

He didn't. The Astros lineup had turned over and Alex Bregman was the first batter up. He saw one pitch that was called for a ball, then he smashed the second 407 feet to walk things off for Houston. The crowd went berserk, and the Dodgers had to walk away with their heads hung low.

If we believe in curses or jinx — and we're baseball fans, so we do — maybe we should keep the taunting to a minimum? Kelly's allowed to hate the Astros all he wants, but maybe he should be a little quieter about it when it's this Astros team, who crawled their way up from one of their worst starts of a season in franchise history to the top of the AL West.