Quick. Stop what you're doing and follow Nashville Sounds' pitcher Tim Dillard on Instagram. Right. Now.

(It's @DimTillard, if that helps you.)

Done? OK, so here's why.

First, he will make you laugh. A lot.

His social feed is filled with wacky pics, random musings and movie-scene recreations (like, say, "Reservoir Dogs" and "Robin Hood") with his teammates as the stars.

Second, he's a Nashville Sounds stalwart and baseball veteran who this season returned for his second stint with the team after pitching here from 2007-2014.

The 35-year-old is already the franchise's all-time wins leader. Dillard broke the club record for strikeouts when he notched his 353rd earlier this week against the Round Rock Express.

And in the coming months, Dillard will hit and break even more records.

"I don't really strike a lot of people out ..." Dillard quipped in the Sounds' dugout at First Tennessee Park one recent afternoon. "So I must be old."

Indeed, Dillard has long had baseball in his bones. His dad, Steve, played parts of eight MLB seasons as a reserve infielder, and the younger Dillard is now 17 seasons into a pro career that began in 2003 after he was drafted with a 34th-round pick by the Milwaukee Brewers.

Dillard has evolved from a young starter in search of big-league fame to a veteran sidearm pitcher with a cult following on social media. One who hurls baseballs and jokes with equal skill. Maybe.

Not a guy to let the Twitterati get him down

So, now that you're following Dillard on the Insta, want to know something really funny? Until about two weeks ago, this was going to be a story all about why you should follow Dillard on Twitter.

Crazy thing about that, though, his account has been suspended.

And he has no idea why. (Or, rather, he could hypothesize, but Twitter isn't talking. More on that in a moment.)

The recent development caused a flurry of confusion for his nearly 47,000 devoted Twitter followers earlier this month. Dillard was in Oklahoma City during a road trip when a buddy texted him with the news.

"Hey, you just blocked me on Twitter," he said.

Dillard doubted that; He's pretty sure he has no idea how to block someone on Twitter. So he pulled up his feed. He had lost all his followers, he wasn't following anybody, he couldn't like anything and and he couldn’t tweet anything.

Which meant, among other things, his mom didn't get her annual Mother's Day twitter shout-out a few days later.

He did the next best thing, he turned to Instagram as his many miffed fans mounted a #FreeDilly social media campaign (Free Willy ... Free Dilly ... get it?).

In the weeks since the suspension, he's posted Instagram videos funny enough to make you snort coffee out of your nose. (As an aside, Dillard loves coffee. He drinks out of a Chewbacca-shaped mug on most days, and he really might have negotiated a cup of Joe as his minor league salary with the Sounds, so long as he gets to keep playing the game.)

On Day 1 of Twitter's strike, Dillard posted an Insta video of himself crying in the corner of the clubhouse, hidden behind a rack of jerseys with his (mock) concerned teammates trying to talk him through his social media withdrawal. Another video appeared days later — an "Anchorman" spoof with his teammate Kyle Bird posing as a female-voiced Twitter.

Each video has thousands of views.

Dillard may be playing in the minors but his Twitter case is major league. The Rangers — the Sounds' parent club — have also contacted Twitter to ask why they would ban such a fun-loving baseball guy.

They haven't heard anything, either.

"They’re very elusive," Dillard says of the Twitter police. "You can only contact Twitter by email — and they don’t have to email you back. So you never know if they got it."

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You know who gets it? Tim Dillard does

Just ask his boss, Sounds manager Jason Wood.

"He brings a sense of joy to the clubhouse each and every day," Wood says. "You never know what Timmy is going to come up with, and he definitely knows how to have fun."

The Brewers drafted the Dillard twice. First, in the 15th round in 2001 out of high school in Mississippi, and again in the 34th round in 2002 after Dillard went to junior college.

He debuted in Triple-A with the Sounds in 2007. The Brewers promoted him to the majors in 2008. It happened to be the same season the franchise snapped its 26-year postseason drought by winning the National League Wild Card.

Coincidence? You decide.

Dillard made the first 13 of his 73 major league appearances that season and spent the next six years up and down between Milwaukee and Nashville.

Along the way, he fell in love with Nashville. So much, in fact, that his wife, Erin, and their three young kiddos made Music City their home — even when Dillard went and got a four-year gig with the Colorado Springs Sky Sox.

Life is a roller coaster, put your hands up and scream

And that's the thing about baseball for Dillard. The clubhouse offers that sense of home.

It's what kept him around all these years.

"I think I am the oldest guy in the clubhouse, and they remind me of that — all the time," he says. "'Hey, Dillard what year was that? 1970-what?'"

But what Dillard has learned is that the love of the game is what matters most. So when the bus breaks down at 2 a.m. on the road, he jumps behind the driver's seat and posts a pic.

And when there's a never-ending rain delay and players are milling around bored, he scripts a movie spoof and casts his teammates as stars. He's also been prone to bust out his phone to record an impromptu air-guitar session on a baseball bat.

That's why Dillard started his social media ridiculousness to begin with. To show everyone that "minor league baseball is awesome."

"No one wants to be in the minor leagues," Dillard says. "You all want to make it to the bigs. There's a lot of pressure. But life is the roller coaster. It has highs and lows, and it's what you do when you're on the roller coaster that matters. You have to put your hands up and scream."

Dillard doesn't want to stop the ride. He has pitched at total of 565 games in his pro career. He is 87-64 with a 4.11 ERA as a minor league pitcher. He is 1-4 with a 4.70 ERA over four brief stints in the major leagues.

And while his career in the majors is probably over, to be playing back home in Nashville again is awesome.

"If you can’t be in the big leagues, you play AAA baseball where you live," he laughs. "So I am living the secondary dream."

A piece of history

Now, Dillard is a sidearm pitcher with a cult following on social media.

But it wasn't by DM or tweet or even Facebook Messenger that Dillard received one of his most meaningful communications of late.

Instead, it came by old-fashioned email from long-retired minor league pitcher Jamie Werly.

Werly set Nashville's standing strikeout record with 352 when he played for the Sounds during the 1980, '81 and '83 seasons.

A few days before Dillard matched the mark last week, Werly reached out through Dillard's inbox. He expressed what the record meant to him and said he was ready to pass the baton.

That made the typically silly Dillard a little sentimental.

"In some ways, every time you have a record that’s broken you are probably looking at it like there goes my piece of history," Dillard says. "But at the same time, that’s what this life is, it's letting go and seeing the next wave and the next generation have success."

What if the Twitterati wins?

Nearly every day since Dillard's Twitter suspension, he has worked out his withdrawal and great despair with a video.

Meanwhile, his teammates have been keeping up the Twitter love by posting the videos there themselves.

Everyone is asking why suspend such a guy.

Dillard has his hypothesis. His feed is filled with movie dubs. It's probably a copyright issue, he says.

"I'm not digging too deep on it," he says. "But I do miss Twitter polls."

If Dillard ever gets his Twitter privileges back, he's ready. He's been keeping notes of all the things he would have tweeted. And if all else fails, and the Twitterati wins, Dillard is ready to start a new account — and use some old jokes.

"I recycle more of my tweets," he says, "than Styrofoam or glass bottles."

Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 and jbliss@tennessean.com or on Twitter @jlbliss and please support local journalism.