Are You Not Entertained?

Man, how about that Rangers/Blue Jays fight, huh? My favorite part was when Rougned Odor punched Jose Batista right in his damn face.

Moments before this picture was taken, those glasses and that helmet were actually on that guy's head.

Is that bad? Should I not have enjoyed that? Here's a Craig Calcaterra piece that suggests that I shouldn't have without managing to say much of anything.

These takes [takes expressing the idea that the fight was rad] have one thing in common: for them to make coherent sense, players have to play roles to satisfy an audience rather than be actual human beings with feelings.

Here I run into a problem with empathy. Unless it's sympathy - I've never been able to keep those straight. I'm aware that baseball players are human beings who hurt when Rougned Odor punches them in the jaw, but can I actually care?

There are over 7 billion people in the world. How upset can you get about how many of them getting punched before that's the only thing you have time for?

Speaking only of baseball, I can barely bring myself to care about the 26 guys I'm supposed to (that's the Nats active roster plus Dusty Baker and Matt LeCroy minus Jayson Werth). Maybe it's just that my brain isn't big enough to maintain that kind of Monkeysphere, but Jose Batista's feelings aren't important enough to me that I'm not going to enjoy a fight in which he gets turned into a bobblehead doll by a tiny violent lunatic infielder.

Stand by for News

Anthony Rendon's back! That's great. Rendon is my favorite Nat for two reasons:

1. He came up through the system. I saw him in a game with Harrisburg. He didn't do anything, but he was there. Well all like dudes our team drafted more, right?
2. It was a mere nine years ago that I told Nats fans that we were going to love Matt LeCroy because of his miles of smiles. The first thing I noticed when Rendon came up was how cheerful he seemed. He was always smiling, and his body language seemed to say "Yay I'm in the majors!" It was really endearing.

And then he turned out to be the best player on the team last year, so it all worked out pretty nicely.

Now he's back, and they decided that he's a second baseman again. According to the dude on the MASN broadcast that they got to replace Debbie Taylor, the Nats' reasoning here is that they want to keep Yunel Escobar in the lineup, but they don't want him to switch positions because it might make him uncomfortable.

Who cares if Yunel Escobar is uncomfortable? Sure, he's been a pleasant surprise. He's jacking all kinds of singles and probably scoring on a lot of Bryce Harper homers, but you don't move Rendon out of his natural position for a guy like Escobar.

It only lasted an inning before Escobar came out of the game and Rendon was playing third anyway, but still. I don't like the thinking there.

By the way, when I saw Rendon with Harrisburg, his manager was . . . Matt LeCroy.

And now you know the rest of the story. Good day.