Frank Had A Plan It Was His Master Plan

What a crappy weekend of baseball. Some observations, since I can't maintain a train of thought for more than five minutes.

• Remember Saturday's game when we're forced to get rid of Ryan Drese because of his bad attitude. Drese became the latest victim of Frank Robinson's Pitcher Humiliation Plan, being lifted in a 2-2 count to Dave Roberts in the 7th. Joey Eischen proceeded to give up a go-ahead RBI double, and Drese proceeded to look pissed off and puzzled on the bench. Don't worry, Frank -- I'm behind you! All those pitchers who get a little prickly after being publicly humiliated just have bad attitudes!
• Speaking of assholes who make it hard to root for the Nationals, Jose Guillen recently caused the normally mild-mannered Brad Wilkerson to explode during a team meeting on Friday.

  According to another source, the only heated exchange was between outfielders Jose Guillen and Brad Wilkerson. Guillen told Wilkerson that he wanted him to take charge a little more in center field. Wilkerson responded by saying that that he would take charge a little more, but that Guillen never listens to him. Guillen became very upset. Heated words then followed . . .
  

  I wonder whose side the halfwit homers will take in this dispute. Both these guys are sacred cows. Anyway, you'll be happy to know that ¡Livan! broke it up.
  
• Who's the radio play-by-play guy? Charlie or Dave? Whichever one of them it is, I'm sick of him. The "Bang! Zoom!" thing is really wearing thin even though I don't hear it very often anymore. A bigger problem is his bizarre recalcitrance in telling me what the damn score is. Unless it's the end of a half-inning, he acts like it's classified information. The final straw came last night, when I flipped on the radio after studiously ignoring the first five innings. Not to bore you with my own play by play, but the Padres were down by one run and had men on first and third with none out in the 6th. Mark Sweeney hit a single to center, scoring the man on third. Meanwhile, Brad Wilkerson convinced Mark Loretta, the man on first, that he as going to catch the ball, which prevented Loretta from advancing and led to a force out at second base. That's pretty neat, but let's not forget that the play scored the tying run in what wound up being a one-run game. Here's how Dave/Charlie called it, as I recall: 1) decribed Wilkerson's play 2) described Wilkerson's play at somewhat greater length 3) mention briefly that a Padre scored 4) described Wilkerson's play again 5) called Wilkerson a genius 6) shockingly told me the damn score. I don't know if it's homerism or just bad announcing, but Dave/Charlie utterly missed the point of that play, and he's lucky I don't know which one he is.