Phillies crush Nationals with epic Ariana Grande clapback in Twitter beef over Bryce Harper

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The Phillies took on the Washington Nationals on Tuesday night in Bryce Harper's first game in D.C. as a member of the visiting team.

It proved to be an epic battle between the two clubs ... on Twitter.

Things started out promising for the Nationals' account when Harper struck out in his first at-bat against Max Scherzer.

Baseball Twitter was loving it. And, admittedly from a Philly angle, it was a solid tweet.

For the pop culture newbies, the Nationals' tweet was referencing the song "thank u, next" by Ariana Grande, which Wikipedia will tell you should be stylized in all lowercase. It's a breakup song. Because Harper broke up with the Nationals, in a sense, when he turned down their less-than-impressive offer in favor of a much more lucrative deal from the Phillies. We'll come back to this jam in a second.

The Nationals later followed up the Ariana Grande tweet by referencing the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Philadelphia's own Will Smith.

Again, pretty solid tweeting there from the Nationals' social media people. But there was plenty of ballgame to be played at the time of that tweet.

Harper came back to bite them. As did the Phillies' social media team in a big way.

After a big top of the sixth inning in which Harper hit an RBI single and the Phillies took a 6-0 lead, Harper trotted out to right field, where he greeted the hundreds of Phillies fans who made the trip down to D.C. to take over a portion of the outfield near him. Harper did a bow and fist pump in their direction similar to the move he did at Citizens Bank Park on opening day.

The Phillies' social media team GIF'd the moment, went a bit further down Ariana Grande's lyrics page, hit send and waited for the RTs to roll in.

The fun didn't end there, though, as Harper absolutely crushed a baseball in the eighth inning to light a proverbial match to whatever was left of Phillies and Nats' Twitter at that point. The bat flip was extra spicy. It was Harper's third home run of the season.

Ballgame.

It's always nice to come out on top, as the Phillies did on social media and on the field on Tuesday night. And shoutout to the resurgent @Phillies social team; they've upped their game in step with their new on-field lineup this season.

The Phillies defeated the Nationals by a final of 8-2 on Tuesday. The Phillies remain undefeated on the season at 4-0.

Nationals fans, for their part, hit the road early last night, as seen below.

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