Livan: Now More Than Ever

Today is the last day to write in Livan in the Franchise Four vote. I'm not expecting everyone to show the dedication that I did - I did actually write him in for every one of the nine teams he played for (I had completely forgotten that he was on the Rockies, and I bet they'd like to), along with Greatest Living Players and MLB Pioneers.

I didn't write him in for the Negro Leaguers vote. Outta respect.

While I don't expect anyone else to go through that rigmarole (much less to find the url for each team and paste them into nine consecutive words in a sentence that you've gone back and lengthened just so you have nine words for the urls), I do think it is the duty of every Nats fan to:

• Vote for Ryan Zimmerman
• Write in Livan
• Or at least someone who played for the Nats - Keith Osik or Levale Speigner or someone

Every vote that doesn't go to Dutch or Livan (or Deivi Cruz or whomever) goes to some damn Expo. I mean, Tim Raines is the poor man's Rickey and that makes him pretty great, but I'm not exactly burning to see him honored at the All Star Game in place of someone - anyone - who played in DC.

Write in ¡Livan!

Write In ¡Livan!

It's time to vote for the Franchise Four, the fun, official activity that reminds us that this franchise doesn't have any history to speak of! Each team has eight candidates, and you get to choose four.

Except for Nats fans, who get to pick Ryan Zimmerman and three Expos.

At least it's an opportunity for education. I didn't even know who Steve Rogers was until yesterday, even though he might be the most 80s-looking ballplayer in major league history.

So I give credit to MLB for raising awareness of dudes who played in Canada 30 years ago and for having the intellectual discipline to go with the actual best players in franchise history rather than trying to appeal to their current paying customers.

I will point out, however, that the candidates list has a glaring, gelatinous omission. There's a pear-shaped hole in the ballot, but together we can fill it. #WriteIn¡Livan!

Click to enlarge the official Distinguished Senators ballot

Delay

The game was delayed, so I resorted to watching Austin Powers for a little bit. Remember the part where Powers and Elizabeth Hurley are talking about all the stuff he missed while he was frozen? One of the things she mentions is "the first female British prime minister."

(This isn't my main point, but this is a British person talking to an ostensibly British person, so saying "British prime minister" is kind of clunky. Who's your favorite American president?)

Later, when Powers is being tempted by the fembots and trying not to let his spyboner distract him from his mission, there's a "think about baseball" gag - Austin shouts "Maggie Thatcher naked on a cold day!" twice.

But he had never even heard of Margaret Thatcher until half an hour before that happened. I suppose it's possible that Elizabeth Hurley showed him a picture, and he found her so revolting that she instantly became his go-to debonerfication aid, but I don't find that convincing.

So then I did watch the game and holy crap did you see Ryan Zimmerman catch that bunt? That was awesome! He dove for that thing like a Secret Service agent leaping in front of a bullet.

Like the first game, it went according to plan. The pitching was good, the real players were good, and the ragtag bunch of misfits standing in for the other real players didn't do a whole lot. And we won! Not only did we win, in fact, but we beat a pitcher who looks like the next Tim Lincecum.

By which I mean that he literally looks like Tim Lincecum.

It Happens Every Spring

Spring Training has so far gone just as I predicted. It's been, from a fan's perspective at least, a complete waste of time. My own personal interest in the Nats and their works was just starting to bloom anew, only to be crushed under the muddy boot of meaningless games and Viera datelines. It can't end fast enough.

The big story out of Florida has been that everybody sucks. There was some foolish optimism about the pitching -- Tim Redding or Jason Simontacchi or one of these other guys was going to put it all together maybe by discovering a baseball-repelling substance or breaking his arm and having it heal in such a way that it gives him a super fastball.

When I put it that way, it's not all that surprising that it hasn't happened yet. It would require more interest in this nonsense than I have to determine exactly who's sucking and how much, so I'll just leave it as a generality: they all suck. I fully expect those three words to become a refrain throughout the season, because it's not going to stop.

Similarly predictable are the early returns on Nook Logan. Minors, majors, spring training -- he can't hit and he never will. For the love of Richie Ashburn, what's it going to take for this team to realize that for a speedy centerfielder to be useful, he has to be a better hitter than, you know, me? The propaganda ministers over at the official site didn't even sound convinced this time around. "He can hit lefties!" "He can . . . um . . . I guess he can bunt." He's a poor man's Brandon Watson, who's a poor man's Endy Chavez, and I swear Ladson almost said that once before he caught himself.

Also sucking is Ryan Church, but there's a vital difference here. Church has something of a pedigree. While Nook has never hit, Church has. Not at an MVP level or anything, but enough to be useful. And the most joyous difference we've noticed between Frank Robinson's and Manny Acta's managing style is that the former seemed to judge his players on the basis of grittiness and guttiness and testicular mass (figuratively) (I hope), while Acta has already awarded Church the job based on -- get this -- the fact that he's good at baseball. Truly a new breed of manager.

Meanwhile, Ryan Zimmerman didn't sign a long-term deal with the Nats. Astoundingly, this has produced news. Maybe the adverb at the beginning of this sentence should have been "preposterously." Or, depending on how drunk I am, "completely retardedly," because this is pretty close to the exact opposite of news. I don't know if we can chalk it up to the lack of actual news or the healthy ignorance of fans about the arcane rules of major league indentured servitude, but Zimmerman is owned by the Nats -- lock, stock, and nickname -- for years. Years. Seriously: by the time we have to worry about whether or not Ryan Zimmerman will be a National, not one player on the roster now, in March of 2007, will still be wearing the curly W.

So the fact that Zimmerman's people talked to Kasten's people and nothing happened other than the inevitable renewing of his unbreakable contract is about as newsworthy as the sun rising tomorrow then, after a certain period, setting.