Just a Bit Outside

Remember back in October when 2004 Nostradumbass Award Winner Will Carroll said that the Expos were about to be renamed the Grays? Here's what I said at the time:

As soon as I read that, I called Vegas and put everything I own on "not Grays."

I wasn't kidding, and my winnings arrived last week. It wasn't all that much. I don't own a whole lot, and Vegas isn't particularly interested in Japanese wrestling videos. And of course the odds weren't very good - Vegas knows just as well as we do that Carroll's always wrong, and they have a profit motive to be right about things. You've seen Casino, and you know what happens when the money stops coming in. That's right: baseball bat to the head. The only thing that happens to Carroll when he's wrong is that it gets more people talking about him. You can't lose credibility when you don't have any to begin with.

Anyway, the point of this story is that I had 400 bucks to burn. I almost went with a lifelike Nats jersey simulation tatoo - "Hernandez 61" right across my back - but the guy who was going to do it caught a parole violation, so I decided to buy some 20-games tickets instead. They're up in the nosebleeds (or, as I prefer to call them, "the Uecker seats"), and I'm going to miss a couple of games on account of the sacrament of Marriage and its related sacraments, Honeymoon and Rehearsal Dinner, but I'll see you there, fans!

If you're in the market for a round-up of Nats-related news from the weekend, I direct you to Capitol Punishment. Also see Nationals Pastime for analysis of the acquisition of our47th outfielder, Alex Escobar. Chris at CP also provides a recap of a chat with the Washington Post's Barry Svrluga. The most interesting bit is that on Wednesday Barry will be starting an official Post Nats blog. Should we be nice in the hopes of making friends, influencing people, and getting some sweet Post traffic? Or should we do the typical internet thing and flame the hell out of him just to make ourselves feel good? He did answer Chris' question, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

Jim Bowden was on the Nats radio show with Marc Sterne this morning (10 am Saturdays on 980 AM). It was the same stuff we always hear from him, but there was one interesting bit. Asked how good the team would be, Bodes replied that if everything went well, we'd be a .500 team. Bowden and I agree on something, at least.