I Before E

On Friday I donned native garb and went to walk among the infidel in Baltimore. It was a special occasion - the arrival of Matt Wieters. Maybe you heard something about it.

Once I got accustomed to the weird accents and garish orange garb of the natives, I realized something: I was having approximately a million times more fun than I ever did at a Nats game. Approximately.

It's not because I'm an Orioles fan. I've been to scores of meaningless, indifferently-played O's games that left me with the same "Hey, at least it's baseball" feeling as most Nats games gave me. This time was different, though, because the Orioles are a team on the rise, and their fans are keenly attuned to it.

Wieters didn't do anything, but it didn't matter. There was enough spillover excitement for Nolan Reimold and Luke Scott and Brian Bergeson to carry everyone through Wieters' fruitless at-bats. The fans, their sweat reeking of Old Bay and National Bohemian, were satisfied that their team had good, compelling players and a rotation filled with talented, homegrown pitchers. Perhaps they reflected on the twin masterpieces of the Miguel Tejada and Erik Bedard trades. It also helped that they won.

The good news about the Orioles is hugely magnified because I'm looking up at it. Fans of the even competent teams would scoff. But as a Nationals fan, I couldn't help but envy every single thing I saw, from the pretty ballpark to the 8+ inning pitching performance to the complete lack of a Nat Pack.

Meanwhile, the Nationals have lost . . . what, five or six or ten or fifteen in a row? All to the sound of Josh Willingham bravely throwing himself into outfield walls but forgetting the part where he catches the damn ball? People are now talking openly about poor Manny Acta being led to the altar to appease the bloodthirsty gods of Base Ball. I'm a diehard - I'm still here. But who can blame the casual fan's eyes for drifting Wietersward?

Still Real

Hoo boy, did we ever get Livaned. I kind of enjoyed it, I have to admit, and I would have enjoyed it even more if the big guy had hit a triple or something. Did you see that crap he was throwing, those slide whistle curveballs? I miss it. It's still real to me, dammit.

I'm not going to enjoy so much losing to Santana, but what can you do? Sometimes the unstoppable force meets the unthreatening, barely noticed object.

Meanwhile, here's something about how glad I am Daniel Cabrera's gone. There's some other nonsense in there too, including ancient Chinese wisdom. I buy it in bulk and pass the savings on to you.

And the Feeling's Right

I just realized that it's ¡Livan! Night! It's a night of divided loyalties and gelatinous, 80 mph fastballs, and it should be a natinal holiday. I love ¡Livan! so damn much, and it hurts me that he's a Met now. And this time he's going up against my man Craig Stammen, so my loyalties aren't as divided as they usually are on ¡Livan! Night.

Please indulge me - I'm going to get all nostalgic for minute. Here is the entirety of my favorite post about Livan and maybe my favorite post ever.

I got nothing today. But I tell you who did have something was my main man Livan, who went 3 for 4 with a homer and two doubles. I'm sure you're aware of this, but he's a pitcher. And sure, maybe his pitching wasn't so hot, but some of that was Joey Eischen's fault, and the rest of it you can cram up your ass because Livan rules.

And here's my heartfelt tribute after the ugly SOB got traded, sacrificed to the stern principles of the Youth Movement.

Whatever age ¡Livan! is -- let's say 38 -- he was such a youthful 38 that we all agreed to call him 31, but I guess that's not youthful enough for the movement.

Good times. But now I hope he's awful enough that Stammen gets the win and stays in the rotation forever.

It turns out that the best resource on the internets for information about El Cubano Gordo y Feo is (of all things) Who's Dated Who, a website I'd never heard of until doing a Google search to see if ol' Distinguished Senators figures anywhere in the results for a search for "Livan" (it does not). They get his age wrong - they have 34, when the correct figure is "34" - but there is a downright disturbing wealth of information there. Height, weight, profession, religion ("Christian" - if you want more detail than that, you have to go to another site). You can vote how good a date he is; there is currenly one vote, a 10. I will not deny that it is mine.

Who's ¡Livan! been dating? I hadn't been wondering, but now I know, and there are pictures too. I have not yet voted in the contest to determine "Livan's Best Romance." Other features: commentary on the great man's love life by such internet experts as "MiamiPapi" and "no1diamondback fan"; a list of his eye-opening quotations presented free of encumbering context ("It's hard to beat that team"); and a fairly puzzling "Related Profiles" section. This is totally going in the links if I ever get around to updating them.

I Once Preferred A Human Being's Company

I spent most of my weekend in Natstown, just like they're always telling me to - I was there Saturday and Sunday. I'd recommend it, as long as you don't have to get on the Metro afterward. Some observations:

• I'm estimating 40% Orioles fans.
• Ryan Zimmerman is good at baseball.
• The ovation for the troops each day was the only thing the crowd could agree on and the longest anyone seemed interested in anything. It would have gone on for ten minutes on Saturday if the announcer hadn't started yakking about someone coming up to bat.
• The presidents race actually is pretty entertaining. I know I'm supposed to be all jaded and from the internet, but what can I say? On Saturday, Teddy had the thing wrapped up until that damn Oriole bird came out of the crowd and tackled him. I wasn't not entertained.
• Those statues out in front of the park? They're starting to come to life, and I think they're going to kill everyone.

I noticed a report over at Nationals Pride that the Walter Johnson statue has a crack. I checked, and it's true. I can only assume that all three statues are gradually breaking away from their bases, and that they will eventually come to life with malice in their stony hearts. Wielding their poop-covered bats and extra arms as weapons, they will wreak havoc on all around them. Watch out, Ray Knight and Johnny Holliday.

Please enjoy the awesome reflection effect, which was totally intentional. Note how the crack cuts right through those Nationals fans, reflecting the heartbreak that we've all experienced since we've started following this team.
Who is the mysterious woman reflected in the base of the statue? I don't know, but she looks as though she's pissed that the Orioles lost and she wants to get the hell out of there.

Typical Nats incompetence! I went around to the back of the statue and found another crack.

Get it?

And here is a small cat that is asleep.

Relief

I'm kind of relieved that Manny let a starter blow a lead for once. Really.

New Favorite Nat

Apparently Jordan Zimmermann addresses John Lannan as "Eyebrows." If I were ever talking to Lannan, I wouldn't have the stones to say that, but I'd sure as hell be thinking it. Dude looks like a Batman villain's henchman.

Why yes, they are real. Why do you ask?

American Dream

I made the mistake of watching the Nats game on Monday night, and I kept thinking of the Dusty Finish.

The Dusty Finish is a professional wrestling booking technique popularized by jive-talking fat man Dusty Rhodes. Basically, you make the crowd think that the good guy has won and maybe even taken the title from the bad guy (usually Ric Flair). Then, some pro-wrestling nonsense happens (double disqualification, whimsical act by an authority figure, etc.) and the decision is reversed. The crowd, having seen its dearest hopes fulfilled and then dashed, went home pissed. It is said that excessive use of the Dusty Finish killed off entire towns for Rhodes' employers. Even people who are willing to pay money to watch dudes pretend to fight will put up with only so much.

Above: Dusty Rhodes says some things about Elvis that probably aren't true, threatens Jerry Lawler with 17 dancing go-go bears

Did you watch that game last night? It was awful. Ross Detwiler, a recent first round draft pick, made his first major league start, and he really looked out of place. By which I mean he threw strikes and didn't suck. I was excited - finally something was going right. How did the team respond to this breath of fresh air? Well, they committed three errors and blew the hell out of a lead that would have given Detwiler the win. Manny Acta did his part as well, foolishly pulling his starter after five innings, six strikeouts, and no walks. His reasoning made me despair.

...if I have to keep a Class AA guy out there because I don't want to go to my big league bullpen, that's really scary.

Yeah, it is scary, and a good manager would adapt that this situation. You know, maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses. As soon as Garret Mock walked the first post-Detwiler batter on four pitchers, we all knew what was coming. It was like I thought Kerry Von Erich was finally going to win the belt from that strutting bastard Ric Flair until the ref got knocked out and reality set in.

The Nationals are booking a Dusty Finish every night, and it's killing baseball in this town. Attendance is in the crapper and TV ratings (I assume) are still terrible - people will find other ways to divert themselves. Take, for instance, me. I like baseball a lot more than most people. I'll watch just about anything. But last night when the Pirates scored their thirtieth or fortieth run (I stopped keeping track pretty early into the implosion), I said to myself, "I don't have to watch this shit. I've got better things to do." And I said that last part even though I totally didn't have better things to do - how long would someone who actually did stick around?

Here's a thing about how much I hate Daniel Cabrera. Well, hate isn't the right word. I mean, it's not like I think he's a bad person because . . . no, wait. Never mind. Hate is the right word, and I do think he's a bad person. It's from last week, but not a damn thing has changed in the interim. There something timeless about Daniel Cabrera sucks articles.

Rhymes

So Tom Boswell has for a while been making arguments that the Nats shouldn't draft Stephen Strasburg. Whatever. Neither I nor anyone else listens to anything Boz has to say - you've got to wonder how a polished, embarrassed journalist like "Chico" Harlan feels about some crusty old sportswriter straight out of central casting intruding on his blog. But anyway, he did it again today by pointing out that it's hard to tell who's going to be a hall of famer. Which is inarguable, really. Whether or not it has anything to do with the situation at hand can be determined by looking at who wrote the damn thing.

The important thing to remember here is that Boswell isn't trying to talk us out of unreasonable, slavering enthusiasm about Strasburg; he's trying to talk himself out of unreasonable, slavering enthusiasm. You know how Boz gets - he's not exactly balanced when it comes to what's been one of his two favorite baseball teams for more than several years.

Anyway, here's something I wrote about the pert, supple back end of the Nationals' pitching rotation. I gotta admit, I like this one. It's short, it's light on "facts" and "analysis" and all that other crap that internet baseball writing has made me so tired of, and it employs a hell of sophisticated literary device where I'm talking about one thing but I make it sound like I'm talking about something else. What is that thing? Here's a hint: it rhymes with ass.

Italics

The Washington Examiner came wrapped in a Nats ad this morning. I usually pay it no more mind than I do the Epoch Times or the Washington Blade or any other of the free newspapers or sub-newspapers that beg for my commuting attention, but I grabbed it today.

It was nothing but an ad - I had hoped for some Nats content to distract me from my Wodehouse, but nothing doing. Still, ads can be instructive. Let's see what the team is dangling out there as lures to pull in the pigeons.

Front page: Zimmerman throwing, racing presidents, an utterly indifferent peroxide blonde in a short skirt and a warmup jacket clapping with all the enthusiasm of a Lerner signing a check. Seriously, I cannot overemphasize how bored this woman looks.

Inside: some gremlin-looking kid holding a sign demanding a curley [sic] W for its 9th birthday, Screech prancing, a Los Nacionales t-shirt you get for going on Friday, and Adam Dunn bearing a bat and that stubble that makes him look like a hood from a 1930s cartoon strip.

Well if that doesn't make you want to get your red and make it your pastime and change your mailing address to Natstown, USA, then nothing will! I mean, that blonde looks very nearly almost interested! It's good enough for me, at least - I'll be there tomorrow. Unfortunately, it's a day too soon for me to get a Los Nacionales t-shirt, but I'll still get to see Albert Pujols beat the infierno out of our culos.

Count It Up

I wrote something about pitch counts, particularly as they relate to Stephen Strasburg. Are links not showing up for you? They just look like normal text? I have complained about that.

I was thinking about this, in an ill-formed kind of way: is there an analogue in any other sport to pitchers' arm injuries? Is there a body part that routinely fails just as a result of an athlete doing his job? I guess soccer players have a lot of leg problems, but that seems to be from people regularly diving cleat-first into them. Plus they're faking half the time.

I don't know. Concussions in boxing, maybe? That's from getting hit, but that's half the job description. Do beach volleyball players get really bad sunburns? Do mixed martial artists start getting a little too used to having a sweaty man in combat panties on top of them? I don't know. Just thinking out loud here.

Phrenology

Did you ever notice that when the Nats make any kind of splash among the general baseball fan population, it's for something bad? Of course you have. Well it happened again recently, when Sports Illustrated's Tim Marchman put up something that's practically indistinguishable from my last ten or so posts, except for the lack of swears and kitten pictures.

Here's the difference, though: look at Tim Marchman.

That's a face bent on finding censure. Stern, unforgiving. Now look at me (I'm below the poop arm).

Note the pronounced joviality, the willingness to assume the very best, the comforting beigeness of the hair.

What this means is that when Marchman finds something to complain about, you can more or less dismiss it. It's like a positive review of Thunderbird from a wino. When I, on the other hand, find fault, it's an occasion to sit up and take notice. I'm not going to complain about just anything, as it obviously goes against my cheerful manner.

Therefore, you should all go check out my extended critique of the statues of the Elder Gods they plopped down in front of the ballpark. It features my own exclusive photography, endless use of the inherently amusing word "poop," and a full, uncensored look at that cheery face of mine.

Even better, go here, where all instances of my joy-bringing grin have been collected, and take your pick. You'll be amazed at how much better you feel about everything. Well, until someone hits a fly ball to a National. My mug isn't that powerful a painkiller.

Dirge

Well, that was just awful. Just completely, thoroughly, unjokeaboutably awful. Joking about that game would be like cracking wise at a funeral.

Speaking of which, I think it's time for a Manny Acta Getting Shitcanned Watch. Whether or not it's his fault, this team cannot catch baseballs, and it's gotten so bad that every announcer we've got (with the intermittent exception of Sunny Bob Carpenter) is all but calling for Manny's head. If this keeps up ("this" meaning "not just losing but playing like our shoelaces are tied together"), it's going to happen soon.

One thing about Bob Carpenter: when Elijah Dukes avoided that fly ball in center like it was a court order, allowing two runs to score and shattering Daniel Cabrera's porcelain self-confidence, this was the exchange in the booth, more or less. (WARNING: I went ahead and wrote out all the swears that Dibble was thinking but didn't say because he's a broadcast professional.)
Dukes dodged that fly ball like it was a court order! Two runs score!
Oh for fuck's sake! What the ballsack is going on here?
Yeah, that was pretty bad. BUT DAVID WRIGHT IS ONLY ON SECOND BASE!
I mean, why can't any of these dumb motherfuckers catch a fucking ball? Or hit a batter in the head, for that matter.
DAVID WRIGHT SHOULD BE ON THIRD BASE! WHY DOES HE NOT HUSTLE?
Yeah, whatever. Catch the ball, dipshits. This isn't fucking Mario Bros. You don't lose a life if it touches you.
DAVID WRIGHT IS THE SUCKIEST SUCK THAT EVER SUCKED!

It wasn't that Sunny Bob ignored the mistake. He briefly acknowledged it and then moved on to more homer-friendly topics. Dibble is growing on me precisely because he doesn't want to sweep that kind of stuff under the rug - he's just as mad as you are.

The Solution

I watched the whole game last night, and at the end of it, I was pleased. "I say, old man," I said to myself, realizing as I did so that I'd been reading P.G. Wodehouse again, "that was a diverting three hours. Time to polish off the last fourth of this fifth and totter off to bed." Obedient as ever to the instructions of my internal monologue, I did so.

I slept the innocent, dreamless sleep of a baseball fan who'd seen a fine pitching duel, a closely-contested 1-0 contest that pushed both teams to their limits. Both sides, I was sure, had walked away with their moral fiber more fibrous and with a healthy respect for their foes.

But that's drunk talk. I woke up to face several unpleasant realities: it felt as though I had been entrusted with the safe-keeping of an unusually valuable wad of cotton balls and had kept them safe from burglars in my mouth; work (damn the concept!) meant that I couldn't resort to my usual practice of staying in bed and crying meekly for Wendy's; and, worst of all, the Nationals walked in the winning run.

What kind of pitching duel ends like that? This wasn't the well-struck dinger or the crafty squeeze bunt - this was rank incompetence. There's nothing more humiliating - baseball-wise - than walking in a run.

The tightly-played, narrowly-won pitching duel is one of baseball's sweetest delights and most time-honored treasures. And the Nats screwed it up, as they screw up everything: trades, free agency, statues of legendary players, jerseys, drafting, the Dominican Republic, text messaging, giving the game situation on radio broadcasts, hitting coaching, everything.

At least I figured out a remedy, based on my 24-hour mood swing: DRINK. Drink and never let yourself sober up.

Unstengelian

So I was reading Chico Harlan's latest chat on the Washington Post site. I always check those things out since Harlan's embarrassment is palpable, and I really like the way embarrassment feels. It's warm and kind of spongy, and it leaves your hands smelling a bit like tar.

There was some discussion of Manny Acta's handling of Jordan Zimmermann during the young fellow's unwatched debut. With two men on in the sixth, and with Zimmmermannn having thrown just 72 pitches, Acta pinch hit for him - which was a good idea - with Alex Cintron - which was not. The issue was addressed in the chat.

Alexandria, Va.: Why is Cintron the go-to pinch hitter with Kearns and Willingham on the bench? Cintron repeatedly got the nod in the big spots over the weekend and last night. And he delivered like you'd expect a backup utility middle infielder.

Chico Harlan (mood: embarrassed): It was the sixth inning. It's OK to save your better pinch hitters for the latter innings. (Willingham, by the way, was starting LF last night, but Kearns was indeed available to PH.) But there's no problem is using a guy like Cintron in that spot. Plus, I believe Lowe was still pitching at the time. Kearns is 2-for-17 lifetime against DL.

This is utter tactical nonsense, right? The point of pinch-hitting in that situation is to blow the game open; to make it, as "Chico" himself mentioned earlier in the chat, 5-2 rather than 3-2. If it works, you won't need your better pinch hitters later, and it's a lot more likely to work with Kearns than with Cintron. But I don't need to explain this to you - "It's OK to save your better pinch hitters" is obviously moronic and requires no commentary. These aren't the higher Stengelian functions we're dealing with.

But why am I making fun of the sportswriter who defended the bad move rather than the manager who made it, other than to make fun of the sportswriter for hating his job? I guess it's because I don't want to see Acta fired just yet.

Steel

The "Natinals" incident has taught something about myself: I am steel. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that a fan of a better team would be pretty upset about that, or at least amused. I am neither. It is as nothing. Years of constant humiliation have made me immune, and I'm betting you're the same way.

Yes, dear reader, embarrassment to us is like water off a duck's back. Our team makes headlines only for metaphorically peeing itself in front of the whole class? Well to us that's like a blown save to Joel Hanrahan or fatherhood to Elijah Dukes - not a big deal, happens every day.

So . . . I got to admit: I don't have a big finish here. I just wrote this so I could make that Dukes joke. I think it was worth it. There is a thing that I wrote, by the way.

Photo Dump, Featuring Kitten

I ambled down to Nationals Park on Saturday to make it my pastime and get my red on and whatnot, and you could not have asked for a better day. As long as you ignore the on the field happenings, of course. I was favorably impressed: the staff was almost too friendly, the place is quite nice when it's only half full, it was a pretty good game for eight innings.

One of my reasons for making a stop in Natstown was to get some personal, non-copyrighted photos of those horrendous, seemingly poo-covered statues they've just added. I did that, but I did not let my photo-taking rest with that mission accomplished. Please enjoy the sights of the first half hour of a day at the ballpark.
I'm not a huge fan of the park from an aesthetic standpoint (I'm even less of one from an ascetic standpoint), but this is pretty cool.
The sweet sounds of the Obscure Nationals Jazz Ensemble! I don't know who these guys are, but they made some interesting jersey selections. Which is more likely: 1) They did this on purpose, just as I would have done, as a gag? or 2) The Nats just gave them some jerseys they found in a crate in the basement? I wonder if the guitarist knows that Levale Speigner's a golem.
Ray Knight and Johnny Holliday! I don't know how they do their job with yokels like me this close to them. Shortly after this, Knight stood for the entirety of the national anthem, which I thought was nice.
Unattended snacks!
The ceremonial first pitch, delivered by a guy from IHOP. Probably because of his ground-breaking work in the field of hash browns.
Portait of the Artist as a Young Man Standing in Front of Walter Johnson who has Poop Shooting from his Shoulder Socket.
American, 2009
Artist: Ryan Moore, b. 1977
And here's the ferocious kitten who guards both my towels and my gin. I pay her in kind, but she's not interested in the gin.

PS. I wrote a thing.

Those Are Some Dumb Flute-Players

I think I'm going to the game on Saturday - I'll be the guy in the pink Nats cap with his head in his hands. But there's point in mentioning that, since I'm probably going to be only person there. Right? I'm also going to get some pictures of those nightmare statues, which must have been designed by Nyarlathotep, accompanied by the piping of two amorphous idiot flute-players.

See, that right there is why I like the Internet: all the info you need about Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, is right there on Wikipedia.

Incidentally, I wrote a thing. It's a thing full of delightful nostalgia, and you're sure to enjoy it. Have a couple drinks first just to make sure, though.

Your BREWPUB Has Evolved Into DISTILLERY

Do you like beer? Go to Denver! As I was strolling the ten blocks from my parking space to Coors Field, every third building was a brewpub. And, based on my limited sampling, a damn good brewpub. There was a even a distillery in there, which I like to think evolved Pokemon-style from a particularly accomplished brewery.

Like this pretty much, except replace "ABRA" with "brewpub" and "KADABRA" with "distillery."

Here's my report from the Rockies home opener: It's just like going to Camden Yard except that things that would be orange in Baltimore are purple. And there's more beer. There you go.

Anyway, I return to find that the Nationals are just awful. But I've reserved that kind of content for over here, where you should go right now. Also, I notice that no one gave me a suggestion on what to call my pieces over there. Don't feel too guilty, though, because it's not too late. Come on, people - I obviously can't come with a name. Help a brother out.

Is "Friends of the Nationals Zoo" too long? Too stupid? Will people not understand the learned allusion and think that I'm referring to the Yankees or Ol' Dirty Bastard? Give til it hurts, dear readers.

Right, so the Nats are lousy. But that is an ephemeral concern. The true Nats fan has his eyes on the future, on the generations to come. Maybe we're terrible now, but we're leaving a foundation for posterity, just as our Founding Fathers shot at Englishmen so we wouldn't have to put up with the Queen's bullshit.

Let's have a look at our latest contribution to the embiggening of baseball in the nation's capital.

WHAT IN THE FUCKING FUCK IS THAT?! I'll have more on this later - see the previous sentence for a preview.

Apologies

It's the second game of the season, and Rob Dibble is already apologizing for being repetitive before he talks about throwing at heads again. I guess we should congratulate him for his self awareness.

Others who should apologize:

• Lastings Milledge for fielding his position about as well as he raps.
• The Marlins for kicking the shit out of us in such a predictable, unimaginative fashion.

Holy crap, did you see the ump eat it on that pitch right down the middle to Kearns? Even Homeboy Bob Carpenter was outraged.

Oh, and speaking of which, is Carpenter completely full of crap on those homers to left field being mere flyballs elsewhere? Or not?

Game Notes

This is going to be one of approximately ten games over the course of the season that I'm going to be around for the end of, so I'm really paying attention. Starting . . . now! I missed the first three innings.

I LOVE the new road jerseys. I wonder why the Nats and the Orioles decided at the same time to do that right.

I'm good luck: I tuned in just in time for Guzman's single, and now we have a couple runs.

I'm enjoying the emerging narrative around Julian Tavarez: that he's a total dick who throws at people just because he can, but he's our total dick who throws at people just because he can.

Over on MASN1, Sabathia just got booed by a de facto home crowd.

And now I'm not good luck anymore.

I knew Bonifacio would turn out to be a player. Dammit. Lastings Milledge in center is going to be fun. Anyone miss Brandon Watson?

Josh Bard to went to frigging Cherry Creek High School? I have a new least favorite Nat. Fuck Cherry Creek. Smoky Hill 4 Life.

Rob Dibble is going to spend 162 games (plus spring training) advocating chin music, isn't he? I'm not saying he's wrong, but mix it up a little.

This rad, danceable simile just came to me: I miss Don Sutton . . . like the deserts miss the rain.

They probably should have gotten Nolasco out of there. Just sayin'.

It doesn't matter that he's a completely run of the mill hitter: Zimmerman's in there for his defense.

The first Dibble comment I liked, on Bonifacio: "He's hitting 1.000 right now. In two weeks he'll be hitting .220."

So it's gonna be like that, is it? Well get used to Hanley doing that to us, if you aren't already.

OK, so my wife is sitting here playing with a cat and not paying particular attention to the game. I present a transcription:
Bob Carpenter: "And at the end of the seventh, the Nats are down 12-5."
Wife: *SNORT*
Wife: "Sorry."
Cat: "Meow."

And finally, in case you were wondering when the Future was finally going to get here, wait no more. Here is a video of this very post performed by me in a butcher's apron, with commentary by my biggest fan, Australian Ben Franklin. I'm not kidding when I say: this is the best thing on this miserable blog since I called Dayn Perry an asshole.

Tonight's the night

Well, tomorrow's the afternoon, but whatever. This is going to the best one yet! I can feel it.

Seriously, though, it very well could be the best season since the first one (over/under on how long it'll take the Nats to break .500? Anyone?). While that's not a particularly high bar to leap, anything north of "watchable" will be a mood-changing improvement.

To see my mind-blowing official prediction, you'll have to go here.

Windowless

You see that article in the Post about how much better things are now that Jim Bowden's gone? I don't know - something about that thing rubbed me the wrong way.

Some of is just really obvious "the king is dead, long live the king" stuff - I mean, we heard a bit about the horror of the Bowden Regime while it was going on, but it's just so much easier to complain about the guy when he's no longer around and is presumably handcuffed to a desk in the basement of FBI headquarters with a phone book-shaped bruise on his face.

The story around which Chico Harlan (who's embarrassed by all this) chooses to build the story is pretty flimsy. The agent for recently-signed reliever Joe Beimel gets a call from Mike Rizzo while Bodes is still GM. He hangs up on Rizzo. Four months pass, Bowden resigns and is hauled off in a windowless van by straight-faced men in black suits and sunglasses and - mirabile dictu! - a deal gets done. Clearly Rizzo is some kind of miracle worker.

Or (and just let me know if this doesn't make any sense) Beimel's agent discovered that the free agent market had turned scatological and suddenly his objection to landing his client with the Nationals disappeared. Like magic!

Also note the list of Rizzo's general manager-type moves provided by Harlan (who's just plain embarrassed): the acquisition of the some roster-filler that may or may not make the team; the Dmitri Young nonsense that the team's going along with because Bodes promised; and the Beimel signing, which was, according the beginning of this article, Bowden's idea.

I don't miss Bowden or anything, and I don't doubt that everyone hated him. Rizzo's probably fine. In fact, I don't really have a point here except that 1) this article is actually kind of worthless and B) anyone who just now started hating on Jim Bowden is about four years too late and needs to find more positive ways to kiss ass.

Meanwhile, I'm just going to keep linking to this. Unlike Chico Harlan, I have no sense of embarrassment.

The Pride Is Back

You ever get internet nostalgia? The thing's been around long enough that it's inevitable. I miss ugly Geocities pages and Old Man Murray and websites with rumors about Diesel and Razor Ramon. But mostly Old Man Murray.

I'm pleased to announce that, thanks to some murky technological developments in the (probably Eastern European) parts of the internet that I do not and do not want to understand, Distinguished Senators is now once again home to a very special, part of internet nostalgia: as of my last post, random-ass comment spam has returned.

Man, does that ever take me back. I remember back in the day when some no longer extant blog whose name will not be mentioned but whose proprietor was schismatic had this 12,000 word comment that was just a list of . . . something. Porn sites? Something like that. Blogger subsequently came up a filtering system. It was a pain in the ass, but at least worked. Not anymore, though! Stay tuned to the undercarriage of this very post for more!

In completely unrelated news, those dudes who were reading my thoughts and columnizing them did it again. This time they even hired an accomplished male model to pose as me to give the content an immediacy it had previously lacked. Plus, you know, chicks come a-runnin'.

You may notice, if you happen to give it a click, that they're calling my contributions "Nationals Pride," and that name is already taken. So I'm officially submitting a request for suggestions. All the good "Nationals" puns are taken. Anyone got anything else? Readers? Spambots? Anyone?

I Knew It!

I have long suspected that my thoughts were being monitored, read, indexed, and catalogued. What could I do? The accepted method for preventing this is the use of tin foil, and I could have wrapped my trademark cowboy hat in it. But when the integrity of the inside of my brain comes into conflict with fashion, fashion wins. Obviously.

So I left my thoughts unprotected, unlike my legs, which were protected by stylish leather chaps, but very much like my ass, which was unprotected by stylish leather chaps.

I was therefore relieved to find out that my thoughts were being tracked not by the government - not even by a government - but by some website that distilled them into column form and was even kind enough to put my name on the result. I think that kind of consideration deserves clicking; maybe even many clickings. Don't you?

Central Casting

So, it turns out that the Washington Post's Nationals beat writer hates his job.

“I don’t like sports—I am embarrassed that I cover them,” Chico Harlan says. “I can’t wait to stop. It is a means to an end and a paycheck.”

And who can blame him? I mean, this guy had to watch Paul LoDuca in the outfield.

He apologized for this intemperate burst of honesty, and in doing so led us into Chico Harlan's Fantasy World, where archetypes that exist only in his head abound.

I didn't want to be portrayed, though, as some central casting sportswriter: the sort who always dreamed of athletic glory, lacked the skills, and chose the next best thing. That's not me.

You know anyone like that? I can honestly say that I don't, and it strikes me that Harlan could only have further revealed his ignorance of and distaste for the whole milieu if he'd said something like, "You don't cheer in the press box, even when the home team kicks a home run in the last period."

Well, whatever. As they would say on the internet, snotty j-school grad is snotty. I really don't care - he does a fine job, and the knowledge that he'd rather be Woodward and/or Bernstein bothers me less than that he pretends his first name is Chico.

Spanish, Guitar and Awful Hair, Manny, Sugalumps

You'd think that just posting once a week I'd be able to come up with something. But thinking like that is what led to the Spruce Goose, Daikatana, Communism, and Lenny Harris: Hitting Coach. Julian Tavarez said some funny stuff, but the only jokes I could come up with about it are far too edgy for a space as high class as Distinguished Senators. So here's some Youtube videos, some of which I haven't watched.

Here's ¡LIVAN! talking in Spanish about . . . hell, I don't know. Even if I had watched the thing, my Spanish is as bad as my Akkadian. Enjoy!

Hoo boy is that guy ugly. Did he say anything rad? Anyone?

Here's Cristian Guzman performing a tune for us - he's our very own Bernie Williams! I don't understand why when "doing" a "gig," as they say, he looks like Moqtada al-Sadr, but I'm sure he has a good, artistic-type reason.


And here's Manny Acta talking about Toby Keith and related issues.

That's really endearing, actually. Manny deserves better than this shit-making team.

Finally (and I shouldn't have saved this for last, since I can't imagine that anyone's still with me at this point), the greatest thing English-speaking culture has ever produced. Seriously, I cannot overstate how awesome this is. I have tried, and it didn't work.

Met With a Paradox

Good news for fans of things existing: scientists have determined that, contrary to some apparently reasonable theories, things - everything, for instance - do continue to exist even when they're not being observed. Don't ask me how they did it, but quantum physicists have managed to look at photons without really looking at them. The verdict is that they're still there even when they don't know we're watching them, which is kind of a relief.

Something like this happened to me recently. I could have sworn that I saw a very intelligent article about the Smiley Gonzalez mess. Specifically, it related that the Smiley Gambit was a terrible, laughable (in the sense that people on the scene who worked for good teams actually laughed) move; that even if Lugo or whatever actually were 16 when they signed him, the Nationals overpaid. This was common knowledge at the time. A case, as I recall it, was made that this hugely important signing, a representation that the days of MLB-enforced cheapness were over forever, was just another bone-headed pratfall.

The problem is that I didn't bookmark this article or send myself the link or whatever. Basically, I didn't observe it for something like a week, and in that time it stopped existing. Except that quantum physicists are now telling me that that's not how things work, so something else must have happened. Maybe I dreamed it. Anyway, if I could have posted about that article, I would have reiterated the point that, although the organization has been purged of anyone who may have had a personal financial interest in overpaying for second-rate prospects, the numbskulls who signed the checks are still around and can never be purged since they own the damn thing. Keep in mind also that not only did these marks get juked out of $1.4 million (at least), they also failed to budget for their first round draft pick. I wasn't hugely upset about the non-signing of Aaron Crow at the time, but ever since it's come out that the Nats blew about a third of what Crow wanted on Smiley, it's been bothering me a bit.

And really, if you have on the one hand some guys who successfully relieved a sucker of well over a million dollars American, and on the other hand the fools who were soon parted from their money, whom would you rather have in charge of ripping off others on your favorite team's behalf? Because the situation now is that we got people running this team who, whenever they walk past a sharpie leaning against a wall wearing a purple zoot soot and flipping a coin, appear as cooing pigeons with big dollar signs on their sides.

The other thing about quantum physics is that while photons and whatnot continue to exist even when people aren't observing them, baseball teams don't. So they better keep racing those presidents and unveiling re-worked Screeches until those season ticket numbers get a little healthier.

Casimir Pulaski Day

Happy Casimir Pulaski Day, everyone! As far as regional holidays go, this is definitely my favorite. It's much better than Lee-Jackson Day. Please enjoy this artistic representation of the last thing many a redcoat ever saw:

You limeys are about to get PULASKIED!

A further Bowden thought that has very little to do with Polish cavalry commanders: It seems like Bodes had been on kind of a hot streak, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of his more recent moves had an impact on that thus far only hypothesized entity, a Good Nationals Team. Jesus Flores, Lastings Milledge, Elijah Dukes - good players, acquired for very little.

But didn't Bowden's moves always seem like that, only to fall apart when confronted with on field reality? I don't want to single anyone out, but I can't help but be reminded of a certain outfielder whose name rhymes with "Costin' Earns." Also, if that unnamed outfielder wanted to follow Milledge into the field of terrible hip-hop, there's his name right there.

I asked Casimir Pulaski about all this, but he just gave me that "why are you spending all this time worrying about a children's game when you could be trampling Englishmen with a horse, you peon" look. It's this look:

*Snort*

Ave Atque Vale, Bodes

We're finally rid of Jim Bowden. Let's be honest: he had his moments. He pulled off some really nifty deals. Jesus Flores for nothing, for instance. He pulled off some other deals that sure seemed like coups, but didn't work out for one reason or another - the infamous Cincinnati hijacking, after which everyone we got turned into a pumpkin. Or my personal favorite, Vinny Castilla for Brian Lawrence.

He had other virtues as well. He couldn't keep his mouth shut, he couldn't keep the tracksuits in the closet, and he couldn't keep himself off that damn Segway. For a franchise desperate to establish a brand name, these kinds of things are, if not important, at least worth something. Look at the racing presidents.

His virtues, though, are swamped by a tidal wave of whatever the opposite of virtues is. Not all his deals were good ones. I still think shipping out Maicer Izturis and Juan Rivera for Jose Guillen was a huge mistake; even huger once the Guzman contract is appended. Smiley Gonzalez for $1.4 million proved to be a loser as well. But beyond any individual decision, Bowden presided over a team that had gotten steadily worse, with a stagnant player development system and lagging fan interest that not even the dopest tracksuit could allay. A lot of things had to go wrong for the Nats to lose 102 games last year, and the fact that Bowden wasn't responsible for all of them doesn't mean he wasn't responsible for any of them.

And that's why it's worrying that it took a massive scandal to finally bring Bowden down. You can't find fault with Bodes getting the GM job in the first place. The Nats were wards of MLB, and there was no guarantee that whoever took the job would keep it for more than a year. Better men than Bodes turned it down, so they settled. Bowden was a stopgap, a bargain bin GM for a bargain bin franchise.

My hope, and I don't think I was alone in this, was that the new owners would come in and hit reset, that they would purge all the vestiges of the Nationals' embarrassing orphan background. New stadium, new players, new management - imagine my disappointment when the first thing the Lerners and Kasten did was confirm Bowden in a post he hadn't earned. There was to be no clean break; the owners were not saviors. They were just some guys with a lot of money and too little judgment.

Jim Bowden should have been fired on Day 1 of the Lerner regime. The fact that he wasn't is a sign of complacency, and nothing that's happened since has changed my mind. And that's why, as welcome as Bodes' final dismissal is, I'm skeptical that much will change. That 100-loss season, that unsigned top draft pick, that million-plus paid to Dominican con artists - these things happened under management that is by and large still with us. If Bowden is responsible enough for these things to be fired, what about his bosses?

Still, it's at least a step in the right direction. We won't get a completely fresh start, but at least Nationals management will not consist largely of people being investigated by the FBI. The team's Dominican operation (at least) has to be rebuilt from the ground up, but a good GM can do it. Let's hope we get one for a change.

As for Bodes, I just hope he uses all his newly-found free time to write a book.

Heartache to Heartache

A quick non-Bodes note. MLB Network has demanded that I pass along the following announcement:

On Monday, March 2 at 9:00 p.m. ET, MLB Network will debut the first-ever original film from MLB Productions, We Are Young: A Baseball Family, the story of MLB players and brothers Dmitri and Delmon Young, who overcame personal struggles to persevere in the Major Leagues. . .

We Are Young: A Baseball Family, the first-ever original film by MLB Productions, chronicles a seven-year period of MLB players and brothers Dmitri and Delmon Young, and their demanding father, Larry, who helped guide them into the Major Leagues. The film documents Dmitri, currently on the Washington Nationals, who makes the All-Star team in 2003, watches with joy as his brother is selected as the number one pick in the Draft that same year, but then begins to battle alcoholism and is released by the Detroit Tigers in 2005. Soon after, Dmitri comes close to death due to an undiagnosed case of diabetes, and then bounces back to make the All-Star team in 2007 and become the National League’s 2007 Comeback Player of the Year. We Are Young: A Baseball Family also chronicles the controversy that has surrounded Delmon—the first overall pick in the 2003 Major League Baseball Draft—ever since his 50-game suspension for flipping a bat in at an umpire during a Minor League game. Delmon would learn a valuable lesson, and eventually is called up to the Major Leagues in the fall of 2005, where he would make an immediate impact with Tampa. After finishing second in the American League Rookie of the Year honors the next season, Delmon was traded to the Twins. Monday will mark the television debut for the 96-minute film, which was selected for inclusion in the first annual U.S. Sports Film Festival, held in Philadelphia last October.

Could be interesting. And it emphasizes what I love about the MLB Network: Their first in-house documentary is about two less than famous players on two less than famous teams. If ESPN had done this, it would have been a 13-part series about the relationship between Derek Jeter and A-Rod. Plus they named it after Pat Benatar lyrics!

Bowden Resigns

From the Nationals Journal:

Jim Bowden resigned this morning as Washington Nationals general manager. The team has not yet named a successor, even on an interim basis.

Another original Nat bites the dust, and Bowden's one of the few (according to my recollections) who wasn't traded to Arizona. More later.

He Better Soup Up That Segway

The bear ate Jose Rijo and now it's only getting faster.

A federal investigation into the skimming of signing bonuses given to baseball prospects from Latin America is looking at Washington Nationals general manager Jim Bowden as far back as 1994, when he was GM of the Cincinnati Reds, according to a baseball executive familiar with the investigation.

This is a pretty big deal. As far as I know, it's the first time the verb between "FBI" and "Jim Bowden" has been "investigate" rather than "question." Bodes' position seemed to be that of an innocent enabler; a bumbling, ass-headed dupe like Stan Kasten rather than an actual perpetrator. Also, you'd think that this has to be it for Bowden. Be honest - are you going to miss him?

Speaking of embarrassing Dominican Republic-related affairs that keep the Nats in the News, the Odalis Perez situation has been resolved.

Today, the Nationals released Perez, 31, terminating the waiting game that began almost two weeks ago when the left-hander decided not to report to camp. On Feb. 5, Perez had signed a non-guaranteed minor league contract with Washington, a deal that would pay him $850,000 if he made the club. But after Perez signed the deal, he regretted it. He held out for a better deal. He never reported to spring training. He cut off all contact with the team.

A couple notes here: First, I need to give a shout-out to Chico Harlan for holding it down at the Nationals Journal. He's been doing some great work, and it's pretty much the only place I go for the shameful parade of Nationals news. The second note, though, is that this is pretty poorly worded. Whether or not Perez "signed" that deal is important, to the extent that anything involving Odalis Perez and the Nats is important.

Jim Bowden says he did sign. Perez says he did not; he merely agreed to sign. The Players' Association has no record of any contract being signed. And even if that weren't the case, in a case of he said/he said, I tend to side with the he who is not under investigation by the federal government.

By the way, can someone look at this and tell me what the hell is going on?

This just in!

But behind the scenes, according to sources, some within the team's ownership group -- which includes Managing Principal Owner Theodore N. Lerner, seven principal owners and nine founding partners -- are eager to cut ties with the general manager they inherited almost three years ago, and see the investigation as a way of facilitating Bowden's exit. The Nationals, one source said, are encouraging the investigation to return an answer on Bowden so the parties can "go on their merry way."

OK, look: I'm done mocking Bowden. He's no longer our problem - he's done. My question is, what kind of vacillating, indifferent, spineless, moronic owners does this team have that they need a major, multi-national, FBI-investigated scandal to fire the GM? You nitwits should have fired this clown the very damn moment you got the team. It's not like you weren't warned. It's becoming ever clearer that Bowden isn't the biggest problem this franchise has - there's a much bigger roadblock made up of a bunch of rich subnormals who can't be fired.

Bowden has embarrassed this franchise in more ways than I can ever hope to remember at this point, but the slope-browed cavemen who own my favorite baseball team are, "according to sources," actually relieved that they were flim-flammed out of $1.4 million because it gives them an excuse to fire an underperforming, overembarrassing employee. It's not hard to dismiss someone, you Cro-Magnons. It's not the damn quest for fire. It's easy. Let me put it in terms you wall-painters can maybe understand: Man with tracksuit bad. Tell him go away. You real big stupids.

We'd just better hope that a black monolith lands at the ballpark pretty soon and finally teaches these evolutionary throwbacks how to hit things with a bone, or else we're in for a practical eternity of stupidity.

Pursued by a Bear

It's like they say - when you're being chased by bear, you don't have to outrun the bear; you just have to outrun Jose Rijo.

José Rijo, the Washington Nationals' front-office member linked most closely to the fraudulent signing of a Dominican prospect, has taken a leave of absence from the team.

I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping that this is only the beginning of an organization-wide purification by fire that claims thousands.

Above: Jim Bowden outrunning Jose Rijo. For now.

Meanwhile, Odalis Perez still isn't in camp, despite having allegedly agreement to don the W for another year. Perez was Washington's opening day starter last year. Maybe that says more about the Nationals than it does about Odalis, but it's something. He was . . . OK. League average, more or less, and that - thanks to the mysterious forces that control and occasionally destroy the economy - tends to be worth millions of dollars. It costs good money to keep Matt Chico off the mound.

Because of that, I was certainly surprised when he agreed to come back for a non-guaranteed 850 large. Odalis was apparently as surprised as I was, because as soon as he sobered up or got around to looking up the exchange rate with the Dominican peso or whatever, he decided that that kind of deal wasn't worth getting on a plane; he's staying home.

The reaction to this (at least among the tiny proportion of the population that is at all interested) is predictable and understandable. Plenty of fat jokes, shots at Perez' ability, and plenty of possibly overdone enthusiasm about this year's crop of Young Pitchers of teh Future. Nothing wrong with any of that. After all, it's a matter of public record that Odalis is a dick.

He stopped his O's 45's program, in which he bought 45 tickets for inner-city school children to attend his starts, after losing his starting job. He said he would not reinstate the program now that he is starting again because he felt he never got enough credit from the club or the public for his charitable contributions.

Also, Jim Bowden claims that Perez has actually signed a contract. Jim Bowden also claimed that Smiley Gonzalez was worth $1.4 million and that Aaron Crow was too expensive, but maybe he's right this time. If that's the case, then yes, Odalis Perez should absolutely get his ass out of bed and come to camp.

If it's not, though - and when we're figuring the odds of the Nats being wrong about this, we have to adjust for the indefensible, franchise-destroying incompetence we've seen from time to time - I certainly don't blame Perez for reconsidering a cut-rate contract with the worst team in baseball. I'm not going to make a moral argument for backing out of an agreement, even if it's an unofficial, "engaged to be engaged" kind of situation. Haven't we all had momentary lapses in judgment that have haunted us for years? Deciding to start a blog, for instance? Wouldn't we like the chance to take it back?

At any rate, my advice to Perez is to grow a goatee, forge Johan Santana's driver's license, and come back to the negotiating table. The Nats have proven themselves vulnerable to that kind of bargaining ploy.

Smile!

I'd always assumed that Stan Kasten was the smart one - if not the Robert DeNiro in Casino to Jim Bowden's Joe Bob Briggs in Casino, at least the Moe to his Curly. But now, I'm not so sure.

It's probably not news to you that 19 year old Esmailyn "Smiley" Gonzalez, recipient of a $1.4 million bonus, turns out to be 23 year old Carlos Lugo Something Something (does it matter?) and not quite the prospect we knew. Some very important people messed up very, very badly, and it didn't take me long to get sick of the ass-covering. So sick, in fact, that I'm pleased to announce the long-awaited return of swears to this space.

Kasten - and, according to some books I skimmed at Kinko's, this is the mark of a good executive - could not wait to blame his underlings [scapegoats bolded].

Let me give you some background on all of this... We were awarded the team in early May [2006], and really soon thereafter, within maybe two weeks or three weeks, right in the early stage of the transition, we did not yet own the team, Jim [Bowden] came to me and said his staff had seen this kid, they thought he was special, they thought he would command a premier bonus, and what was our appetite for that. And, obviously none of us had ever seen the kid or heard of the kid. But he described him, the staff described him, and we said, 'Yeah, we want to be aggressive, we'd back you on something like that if that's what everyone feels like.' So we did support their recommendation, and we went ahead and signed him on the first day we were able to, which was July 2.

It's not my fault! The people who work for me are retards! I mean sure, I cut the dude a $1.4 million check, but it's not my fault! Unhappily for this overrated hack, the Post has what he was crowing about at the time:

It is quite possible the Nationals overpaid for Alvarez/Gonzalez, even if he had been 16 at the time, and the original Sports Illustrated report said the next-highest bid was $700,000. (The Nats paid $1.4 million.) But even the point at the time - one pushed by the Nationals, and one that makes sense - is that they had to overpay to make a statement about their intention to be players in Latin America. ..."This lets other teams know we are a player," Stan Kasten told me on July 2, 2006 - the day they signed Alvarez/Gonzalez. "We will take a back seat to no one - repeat: no one - when it comes to pursuing talent."

I have to disagree with Barry Svrluga here: paying double does not make sense. It does not let "other teams know we are a player." It lets other teams know that you are a dipshit, and the difference between the two is important. At best, Stan Kasten is a chump, a sucker, a pigeon - his bragging about dropping one and a half mil on a half a mil player makes that all too clear.

Kasten wants to cover his ass, and this isn't getting it done. This organization has since Day 1 been very publicly drooling all over itself, and the flow didn't stop when Kasten and the Lerners came on board. Hell, the only thing that changed at that point was the Nats went from incompetent to evil and incompetent. The New England Patriots have shown us that if you're evil and really, really effective, no one will care. But there's no Bill Belichick in this crowd of short bus riders.

This is more than a mere Dominican lying about his age case (doesn't it seem like this time-honored trick should have a name? The Dominican Passport Tapdance? The Hispaniola Hula? The San Pedro de Macarena?). Do you remember the signing? It was kind of a big deal. We heard rumors about the super-secret teenager who was going to prove the Nationals weren't cheap and had could develop talent. They had a press conference for this "kid" and everything. No one seemed to notice him talking about how rough he had it under Trujillo and showing reporters pictures of his grandkids, but hell - we were excited. Finally a real team with real owners and management that doesn't spend more time trying on bicycle helmets and thinking about McNuggets than it does trying to win games!

And it was all bullshit. Not only did we fall for the classic Dominican Passport Tapdance, check this out:
1. When teams were bidding for Gonzalez, everyone dealt with his agent. Everyone except the Nats, who went straight to his sleazy-ass buscon (a Spanish term meaning "like an agent, but sleazier. If you can imagine that").
2. The Nats offered double what anyone else was willing to come up with (we're players!).
3. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the organization's role in skimming money from bonus payments to Dominican prospects.

You don't have to be Elliot Ness to put 2 and 2 and 1.4 million together. When management is so incompetent and/or crooked that they're getting phone calls from the damn FBfuckingI, heads need to roll.

I'm sick of it. I've dealt with my favorite team being a laughingstock since before they were even my favorite team. Every moment as a Nationals fan is a further humiliation, and I'm tired of it. This goes out to Jim Bowden, Stan Kasten, and each and every Lerner: GO TO HELL. My only consolation is that some people are going to be fired and that maybe some of those people could go to jail. That's nice, but it doesn't address the root cause of this problem: the dumb assholes who call the shots.

Am I the only one who misses the days when Major League Baseball owned the team? At least then you could that something better would come along.

This just in: Smiley's agent posits a new victim.

I don't know where the origins of this thing are. It seems to me this thing is much too complicated and involved for a 19- or 20-year-old from an impoverished neighborhood to pull off... He may have been duped as much as anyone.

Bullshit. A 20-year-old from a bad neighborhood can't figure out that when he's being instructed to tell everyone a fake name and age, he might be doing something a bit shady? Honestly, isn't this more offensive than blaming him for it? He's pretty much saying, "He doesn't know any better - poor people from the Dominican are animals. They can't help it." Sports agent Stanley King: shut the fuck up.

He's Going to Help Pun-Loving Headline Writers, Too

It took a lot of things coming together to ruin my brilliant marketing idea: a bad economy, a puzzling free agent market, and a player's particularly unappreciated skill set. The signing of Adam Dunn has pretty much ended any chance that my new slogan - We Ain't Got Bats, We Got Straps - would join previous sales pitches like Make It Your Pastime or Get Your Red On or 2008's regrettable The Aaron Crow Era Begins. We ain't got bats? Well, now we have one. Plus Dunn doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would shoot you unless you're a deer.

I gotta admit that I'm excited in spite of my copywriting setback. The Nationals have signed a big ticket free agent. That's never happened before, right? Who comes closest? Esteban Loaiza? Dmitri Young? You see what I'm talking about. I wonder if this is how Royals fans felt when they signed Gil Meche. Someone find a Royals fan and ask him for me.

OK, now I'm done celebrating and ready to start analyzing. What exactly do we have in Adam Dunn, other than a dude who looks kind of like Lee Harvey Oswald with a mild case of acromegaly? Let's weigh the pros and cons. Cons first.

Adam Dunn is a good player, but he's a boring good player. He has a distinctive skill set, and none of it makes for good television.

-He walks a lot. Don’t get me wrong – walks are great, and there’s nothing I like more than an obviously terrified enemy pitcher watching his nightmares come true as he walks in a run. But by and large, a base on balls is not an exciting thing to watch develop.

-He hits home runs. Home runs aren’t boring, exactly, but they’re not as viscerally fun as a whole pile of doubles. Not enough running.

-He strikes out. A LOT. And the only fun about a strikeout is trying to lip-read the guy as he stalks back to the dugout.

-He doesn’t catch anything. I don’t think I’m kidding when I say that the only on field thing I remember from the 2008 Nationals is Willie Harris making preposterous catches in the outfield. We're not going to be getting any of that from Teh Donkey. (By the way, that makes three things I remember from 2008. The other two are (1) the fact that at most 8,999 people who weren't me were watching Nats games (2) and "you dead, dawg.")

Now on the pros:
-Remember that home runs thing I dismissively mentioned above? That's actually pretty important. Dunn has a system: he hits exactly 40 home runs a year. He's been on this system for the last four years, and if he keeps it up, he's sure to lead this weak-ass hitting team by somewhere in the vicinity of 40 homers.

-Walks, too. Hundred-something walks, lead the team by a hundred, same deal.

-Here's the vital thing: Adam Dunn is funny. Actually, intentionally witty, which is an unusual thing to see in a professional athlete. Consider this interview of Dunn, conducted by Astros pitcher Chris Sampson back in 2007.

Sampson: What pitch do you struggle with the most?

Dunn: I would say like most hitters in the league would say, fastball right down the middle.

Sampson: Are you ever going to fulfill on your offer to take me hunting on your ranch and take me and my wife out to dinner?

Dunn: The hunting all depends on if I go 0-for-4 off ya again. But no matter what happens, I will take your wife to dinner. I guess you can come too.

Not bad, right? And it's not just threatening to date other guys' wives; Dunn is also a master of more uncomfortable than funny Andy Kaufman-style performance. Here he is whiling away a rain delay by calling into the Reds pre-game show in the guise of his popular "Adam from Milwaukee" character, sort of his own Tony Clifton.


That's more memorable than anything I can recall any National saying ever (not counting ¡Livan! and death threats, of course). The Nationals don't have an Alexander Ovechkin, but they may have just gotten their Gilbert Arenas.

Addendum: Upon further review, Adam Dunn doesn't really look anything like Lee Harvey Oswald with a mild case of acromegaly. He looks like Will Ferrell. I realize now that I probably think about Lee Harvey Oswald more than is healthy or healthful or sane. So I guess we all learned something today.

We the Nats

I've been thinking about archaic grammar and how it relates to the Nationals. Our old friends the ancient Greeks had a number between singular and plural - the dual. It pretty quickly fell into general disuse and came to be used only for things that were usually found in twos, like twins or plow horses or testicles. If ever an ancient Greek could come up with a sentence that included a phrase like "the twin plow horses' testicles," he was credited with a Triple Greek Score and got free desserts for life.

I've been contemplating this because the limitations of the English language make it hard to write about the Nats. When you say "Nationals fans," it's problematic. We learned last year that Nationals TV ratings are small, so tiny that it was posited that they must have been the result of a misplaced comma or a couple of delinquent zeroes. Using the plural of "fan" is an insult to the very concept of the plural AND fails to express the author's scorn at the serious crappiness of Washington's reaction to getting its fourth (more or less) major league team, but using "fan" is pushing it too far. Obviously, there's more than one. Not many more, but more.

That's my problem; the Nationals' problem - as represented by the ratings issues - is being addressed by an aggressive rebranding. Maybe you've noticed that the Nats have taken on an edge lately. You have the acquisition of Elijah Dukes, you've got the FBI investigating the team for filching money from hopeful, fresh-faced Dominican teenagers, and now you have the new color commentator, Rob Dibble.

I'm not quite prepared to complain about this. For one thing, I've never actually heard Rob Dibble: Broadcaster. Maybe he's good. Every piece of evidence argues against it, but stranger things have happened. From the Nats' standpoint, the point is that he's not Don Sutton. I liked Don Sutton. He was even-keeled and intelligent, he had a soothing voice, and he didn't inflict an obvious catchphrase on us. Now we have this:

As edgy as a special guest verse from Fred Durst

See that? The shades, the phony snarl? The bat, which represents his truly impressive hitting record (3-25, .120) and the microphone, which represents his equally impressive talking record? That's branding. This ain't your daddy's color commentator! We're not in Kansas anymore! It's like if the X-Games and Mountain Dew and Poochie the Dog came together and took the form of a gel-haired jackass! Etc., etc.

And don't think it's not intentional. MASN interviewed, among others, Buck Martinez, whose musky, scotch-soaked elegance has fallen out of fashion ever since Ricardo Montalban passed away. Clearly, Buck's status as the best-dressed man in baseball (seersucker? Yes! White after Labor Day? No!) just doesn't fit in with the Nationals' current attitude, which emphasizes informality and malfeasance.

See, that's class right there.

Hence Dibble. It might not be that bad. Maybe he'll spend the season browbeating Bob Carpenter because he didn't play the game and doesn't know how to man up and strap it on or whatever (I'm expecting hits from some pretty hair-raising Google searches based on that wording, by way). Maybe he'll just complain for seven months (this is known as the industry as "Blogger-Style"). Or maybe he'll just be completely terrible. Regardless of the actual outcome, I don't think the Nationals went far enough. If you're going to go edgy, go all the way edgy. Don't settle for some safe-for-ESPN Radio-type controversy - you've got to do the damn thing.

Fortunately, it's not too late. The Nationals' marketing strategy can be completed simply by firing Clint and the Nat Pack and replacing them with these guys (WARNING: this is not safe for work and regrettable in a number of other ways):

Now that's edgy. They have our new advertising slogan: We Ain't Got Bats We Got Straps. Which is to say, maybe we suck as baseball, but we will shoot you. Or at least text you a picture of a gun.

Either way: edgy.

Tonight's the night

Baseball in 2009 starts tonight! Ramon Ortiz is on the hill, Cookie Rojas is in the booth, and we're off, live from Mexicali, the Chinesest city in all Mexico.

And once again, no one seems to care but me. I can't find a scoreboard on ESPN - and keep in mind that ESPN's site makes damn sure to keep you up date on each and every score from the third tier Scottish soccer league.

There is hope that this thing's going to catch a little bit, though. The MLB Network has programming hours to fill, and what else are you going to show in February?* Maybe with their muscle behind it, I won't be the only one watching this thing in a couple years. So this right here is the place to go if you're interested - they got a scoreboard, and they're even doing the live Gameday thingy for it. This ESPN preview is a little bit interesting too. I recommend that you get on this bandwagon before everyone else does and I lose interest.

*Here's another thing I love about the MLB Network. Naturally, when I heard about it, my feelings were mixed: Yay for more baseball, but this is inevitably, I thought, going to wind up being the Yankees Show with special guest stars the Red Sox. We're a month in, though, and that absolutely has not happened. The other day they showed an hour-long documentary about the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers. It wasn't the Yankees, it wasn't the Sox, it wasn't even the Mets - it was a full hour about small market World Series loser. And it was damned interesting. It would have been even moreso if I were a connoseiur of hideous white guy moustaches.

This was one of the tasteful ones.

UPDATE!!!!!!!!! I don't want to oversell this thing (the Caribbean Series, not the Brewers' awful facial hair) - it's not quite the Major League product. Case in point - Brad Knox (it would appear that the Venezuelans have a ringer) is pitching a no-hitter for the Tigers against the Tigers (yes, 50% of the teams in the thing are called the Tigers). He is removed from the game in the 7th because his pitch count has gotten up to 88 pitches. Oh, the PAP! The shoulder-destroying PAP! The good news is that the Dominican immediately ties the game on a bomb by . . . BIG FAT RONNIE BELLIARD! See what I'm talking about? This is great.

Programming

It's that time again. As the football season lumbers to its merciful conclusion, thoughts turn to February and to baseball. Not to, you know, real baseball, but to real baseball's harbingers. Stained artificial turf is its wilderness; fat former major leaguers are its locusts and wild honey. The Caribbean World Series is about to set straight the paths to Opening Day.

MASN in the winter is as useless as TNT without Law and Order reruns, but they've earned their slot the last few years by covering the Caribbean Series. The problem with this thing is that it appears that I'm the only one who cares. I'm not making this up (and I don't remember if I've mentioned this before): I was watching this thing being brought into my living room live during the Super Bowl, and announcer Victor Rojas actually made fun of everyone who was watching baseball instead of the football game. He may as well have mentioned me by name, because I must have been at least 100% of the viewing audience.

My point, though, is that it's tough to find news on this thing. No one cares, and there aren't websites being set up, rich with multimedia features, weeks before it happens. The best you can get - if you're as solidly monolingual as I am - is the occasional obviously Babelfished press release from midsummer. I hadn't seen any news on this, so I went to the MASN website and went to the trouble of filling out one of those forms they make you do to communicate with them. That thing is as uncomfortably curious as the survey you take before you give blood. Naturally, I made most up of the info. What the hell does MASN need to know my address for? An Anita Marks candygram? Anyway, I asked them - in between demands for more Buck Martinez and more less Bob Carpenter - whether they'd be bringing us the Caribbean World Series. I made sure to appeal to their ratings-grubbing side by truthfullly nothing that it's the only reason I would even think about watching them.

I never got a response, and I just figured out why.

MLB Network announced today that it will televise live the 51st annual Caribbean World Series from February 2 through February 7, 2009 scheduled to be played in Mexicali, Mexico. The telecast of the Caribbean World Series will mark the first live games telecast on MLB Network.

Hell yeah!

In addition to televising 12 games of the winter tournament, otherwise known as "La Serie del Caribe," MLB Network will air game highlights and recaps of tournament play, preview match-ups and provide extensive coverage as part of its studio show "Hot Stove."

HELL YEAH! Look, it seems like it's the in thing among people who hate everything (I'm a member in good standing since about 1982) to hate the MLB Network, but take it from me, your favorite avuncular, trustworthy, intermittent internet commentator: it's rad. Super rad. Sure, the studio show is as dumb as Sportscenter, but don't watch that. Where else are you regularly going to find footage of Stan Musial on your television? When's the last time that or any other appliance emitted the words "Tris Speaker"? Finally there is a channel that loves baseball as much as I do, and it's replaced Oxygen as the thing I check first during my television viewing hours.

John Patterson

I quote from my last post, which is more temporally than visually distant from this one.

Seriously, historians are going to look back and see the early history of the Nationals as little but a parade of shitheads.

That parade does not include John Patterson, who announced his retirement today. I get the feeling that years from now, vivid memories of Patterson will be one of the things that distinguishes Day One Nationals Fans from those who adopted this painful pastime more recently. He never did much other than that first season (which becomes more amazing the longer ago it gets), but that was enough for me. His record that year was only 9-7, but without looking at more closely, I don't think that tells the whole story. 2005 was a year of thrilling, last-minute victories, and that's not the kind of outcome that inflates a starter's victory total. He was there, and he was as big a part of it as anyone.

I almost regret that the John Patterson content of this blog, which serves as a mausoleum for the mildly magical 2005 Nationals just as much as any image of Vinny Castilla in the jersey, is restricted to two topics: 1) He wants to be called "Big Nasty"? That's hilarious and 2) He's going to get hurt; TRADE HIM. He deserved better. But now, the profession he'd spent most of his life preparing for is now cut off to him by medical necessity (i.e., excruciating pain). His ruminations on this turn of events are heart-breaking.

"That's a year I look back on and go, 'You know, that year really went right for me.' That's the way my career was supposed to be," he said.

Patterson came to the realization that his life wasn't going to work out the way he'd dreamed later than most people, which makes it even more poignant. The end of the article is crushing; it's a quick tour of the landscape of a broken dream:

Patterson, a Texas native, declined to say what he was going to do with the rest of his life, but acknowledged that he has been doing a lot of hunting this offseason.

"There are a few things I have going here in town with a friend of mine -- business-wise," Patterson said. "Now that I have made the decision to move forward in my life, maybe some opportunities will open up for me. As of right now, it's up in the air."

Good luck, John.

Scott Olsen, Huh?

Seriously, historians are going to look back and see the early history of the Nationals as little but a parade of shitheads. They won't be wrong.