This Is Where the Title Goes

Here's some stuff before my investigative report, in which I blow the lid off something no one else cares about. Tune in tonight at 10!

• The Nats remain undefeated after beating hated rivals Bethune-Cookman. As is traditional in College Park, I dragged my sofa outside and set it on fire to celebrate the triumph.
• Nationals Pastime, or as I call it, Nats Pastizzle, has a good recap/scouting report on yesterday's game.
• Ben Jacobs of Hardball Times is ranking the offseason of each MLB team. We come in 25th out of 30, between Pittsburgh and Colorado. He likes the Guillen trade, but the rest of it sounds pretty familiar if you frequent this humble blog.

  That was the end of the good things this offseason. After that, they decided it would be a good idea to sign Vinny Castilla and Cristian Guzman, thus saving everybody the trouble of waiting until the end of the season to see who finishes last in the NL East.
  
  Seriously, what were they thinking not only signing Castilla and Guzman, but giving them a combined $23 million? By picking up these two, Washington has pretty much guaranteed that the left side of its infield will combine to get on base less than 30 percent of the time while not providing nearly enough power. . . . By the way, the Nationals also lost two draft picks because they decided they couldn't wait to sign these two awesome out-makers, and gave them all that money before the arbitration deadline. I think it's safe to say that neither player would have been offered arbitration, but I guess they just couldn't risk losing them...

• Phil Wood (in an Examiner column that's not online) reveals that Jim Bowden's hero as a GM is . . . Syd Thrift. Well that explains a lot.
• I have a theory that the quickest, most efficient way to demonstrate that you know a little bit about baseball but not much is to advocate Roger Maris for the Hall of Fame. This morning, Mike Greenberg did just that, putting him on what I like to call the Dan Patrick List of Smug Broadcasters Who Don't Know a Damn Thing.
• Veronica E. Raglin hates America. The Post reports that the Nats were planning to shoot off fireworks after every Friday home game, but Comrade Raglin, the "advisory neighborhood commissioner in nearby Kingman Park" put the kibosh on it, no doubt following the injunctions of whatever sinister foreign dictator pays her salary. "Settle down, jackass," you're not doubt saying, "they're just fireworks." Shut up, commie! There's nothing more American than baseball and fireworks. The baseball bit has been done to death in various books, movies, etc., all scientifically designed to make you want to hug your dad, but the fireworks have been overlooked. You don't have to be some effete Euro-type to realize that America is a violent country. Our national anthem is a harrowing tale of kick-ass explosions. Our nickel is adorned with the (noticeably) male buffalo, Nature's most vicious creature. The violentest people in the world, the Irish, were welcomed into this country and allowed to become law enforcement officers. It's part of our national heritage, and we should embrace it just as the English still have a queen or the Canadians still base their economy on beaver pelts. And what are fireworks but harmless, rad examples of violence? As far as I'm concerned, every moment a firework is not exploding is an affront to everything this great nation stands for. Victoria E. Raglin may be able to promote her Red agenda in the People's Republic of Kingman Park, but I won't stand for it.