No excuse for the original hat indeed.
Also while I was annoyed that he left so many cool Pokemon, most at least had good reasons. One thing that pissed me off though was that Ash told Pidgeot he'd come back for it, and he hasn't even thought about it once, while he even thought back on Butterfree twice much later in the DP series.
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Easiest bracket ever, yet we all failed!
Well except SuperNiceDog, of course!