Apparently news reports broke while I was at today’s miserable game that the Lerner’s have won the Nats ownership derby. Psych! MLB denies the “rumor”. I’m afraid to get excited about an unconfirmed Lerners/Kasten ownership group naming, so I’m going to pretend I never saw that and carry on pining away for an owner until I hear official word. However, something must be up based on all the ownership Google searches that have found their way here in the last 24 hours.
My son and husband attended last night’s game, arriving in the 1st inning when the score was already 4-0 and Billy Traber didn’t make it past two innings. Today, I took the afternoon off to attend the final chilly and chilling Reds series game. I have just a few bits of commentary to make. For one, Billy Traber needs to lose those sideburns! Eeyuck! But I guess it doesn’t matter now since we won’t be seeing much more of him after he was optioned and Jason Bergmann called back up. I think Traber had ants in his uniform or something last night. He kept jiggling around between pitches and pulling at his uniform sleeve or leg. I mean, something had to be up for that performance!
Today’s game – eh, well, if I had been listening to a radio, I would have had more entertainment and information. I wasn’t, so instead I watched our Nats rack up more errors than hits (and certainly runs) in a game as we were shut out 5-0. The bright solid red jerseys made our guys look tiny on the field – weird! They played tiny too. Zimmerman had our only hit. At least the red wasn’t fugly like those sleeveless Reds jerseys over black shirts. See, something could be worse!
In between innings, Majewski taught me how to throw a slider via Baseball 101 on the jumbotron. I giggled and thought it was rather apropos!
In the 4th inning, what should have been a double play on a weak grounder to the pitcher (Ortiz), ended up allowing the guy going to 2nd to take 3rd when Ortiz threw the ball well over second baseman Marlon Anderson’s head. That was the inning that killed us too. I worried about how to score when we went all the way through the batting order. Luckily, the 9th batter struck out for the 3rd out, so I didn’t have to face that dilemma. The other error occurred in the same killer inning when Ryan Church charged a shallow fly and then overran it. Sigh.
Something new: This was the first game I attended where a fan in the crowd won the Modell’s around the horn by answering all four questions correctly for a ‘home run’. Woohoo. At least someone on our side got a home run today ;-)
I heard part of today’s game on the radio. (I was at work and in and out of other conversations.) Once the Reds batted around on Ortiz I figured we were in serious trouble. I wouldn’t say there was much entertainment in the parts I heard, so the Jumbotron sounds like more fun. Did they correct the color balance on it? The day game I attended had the red jerseys looking so orange, the replays made the Nats look like Orioles.
This team is in very deep doo doo. The starting pitching is in shambles, the relief pitching is not reliable, there is no clutch hitting, the base running is just plain dumb and the defense is now breaking down, as is the morale of the team. If this continues, Frank Robinson is toast. Bringing Zach Day back, sore shoulder and all, is an act of desperation. Pujols and company will have a feast over the next four games, as will the Mets after that. After attending spring training, I predicted a last place finish and an attendance drop of 20-30% and I think those predictions are on target.