AAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!

Do I Really Need To Write A Caption?

What a great day to be a Nats fan and a Cub hater. Taking two-out-of-three from the Cubs has been one of the few bright spots in this season of discontent. Nothing makes misery tolerable quite like company.

The Cubs now stand at one game over .500 – a full nine games behind the Cardinals for the division and 7 ½ games behind Colorado for the wild card. Certainly not an impossible task with 37 games to play, but the way they lost those games and who they lost them to indicates that this team doesn’t have the moxie to pull it off.

J.D. martin was less than sharp yesterday and managed to get out with his hide. Martin allowed three runs (two homeruns) in only five innings of work. The Nats bullpen (that’s right, THE BULLPEN) bailed him out allowing only one run over the last four innings to hang onto the 5-4 win.

The night before, Livan Hernandez (more on him in a moment) allowed only 2 runs in six innings. Speaking of Livan Hernandez, I was on the road for work on Wednesday and had not heard about the acquisition of Hernandez until about a half-hour before game time. What the hell? First the Nats front office states they will NOT acquire veteran free-agent pitchers to supplement the rotation. Not only do they throw that plan out the window, they do it FOR LIVAN HERNANDEZ?!?!?! Should we expect Orlando Hernandez next? Perhaps Bert Blyleven would like to come out of retirement to bolster his Hall of Fame chances? Really? Livan Hernandez? I live in New York and I could’ve SWORN I saw Livan in the line to sign up for social security back in June. I swear it was him.

Tuesday night, Garrett Mock was less than perfect but when you get two homers from Josh Willingham and a grand slam from Elijah Dukes, do you really need to worry?

So the Cubs lost to Mock and Martin who are both still developing and hoping at some point to be major league-caliber pitchers. The only win came in the Livan game and that game may have gone to the Nats if Jorge Sosa (who someday hopes to develop into a major league-caliber bathroom attendant) didn’t allow 5 runs in ONE-THIRD OF AN INNING.

Random thoughts……

Say, you know who’s had a career year?

The Guy On The Right

The photo comes courtesy of Nationals Inquisition who represented at bloggers day and got a photo op with Josh Willingham’s gigantic guns (apparently Dangernat had his tickets to the gun show).

Willingham is hitting 25 points higher than his career average and has 21 homers so far – only five fewer than his career high for a season. If the Nats hadn’t wasted their time with Willingham toiling away on the bench early in the season, just think of how much better they’d be. This team benched him and then when they finally gave him his shot, they asked him to change positions – then after they traded away Nick Johnson and moved Adam Dunn to first, they asked him to switch back. All of this and he never moped, never complained and never publicly blasted the team. Instead, he went about his business and earned the job that probably should’ve been rightfully his to begin with.

If I had disposable income, I’d get me a Nationals “Willingham” jersey because these are the types of players worth rooting for.

F**k The Cubs

This Is The Word Of The Lord

Any journalistic integrity I have or may have had at one time in my life is going completely out the window today: I HATE THE CUBS.

And no, this doesn’t stem from Alfonso Soriano signing with the Cubs after his one ill-fated season with the Nationals. I’ve hated them since I was a teenager. I tuned into WGN (the Chicago Superstation) every day to enjoy watching the Cubs lose.

I never found Harry Caray to be charming, I think Ron Santo sounds like an alcoholic who masturbates during Cub radio broadcasts, I don’t feel bad for Ryne Sandberg or Ernie Banks or Cubs fans. I am contented when the Cubs are the Cubs.

You see, I always found it patently unfair that the Cubs had the right to broadcast their games to a national audience (for that matter, I guess that’s also why I hated the Braves so much) – and why did WGN pick the Cubs? THEY SUCKED! At least the White Sox were interesting; but no, they chose the Cubs.

The fans are terrible. They walk around like it’s their right to a championship and they’re rationale is that they’ve “waited long enough.” Really? I don’t think so.

Some things need to be a certainty; like death, taxes, the sun rising in the east, etc. We had the futility trilogy not too long ago: the Red Sox, the White Sox and the Cubs. Well both Sox are off the hook now and we just have to keep this Cubs thing going. It makes for a great story line and it makes me happy.


So what could make me doubly happy? The Nats really have a chance this week to put a hurtin’ on the Cubs’ post-season chances. The Cubs are currently eight games behind St. Louis in the NL Central and 7 ½ games behind the Rockies for the NL Wild Card (with San Francisco, Atlanta and Florida between the Cubs and Rockies). Plus, the Astros and Brewers are both just two games behind Chicago in the standings and both are below .500 . This could be a great week if only we didn’t face Zambrano and Harden in games one and two. Hopefully Mock and Martin can bring their A-games with them as they have their past few starts – each are 2-1 in their last three.

Please Nats. I haven’t really asked for much during this awful season, but can’t we just win 2-out-of-3 here and keep the cycle of Cub losing going? I plan on living until at least 80 years old and I hope the Cubs never win one in my lifetime. I want to die knowing that for 142 straight years, people lived, people died, people were taxed, people watched the sun rise in the east and set in the west every day and the Cubs still never won a World Series.

ESPN - Going The Way Of The Do-Do?

ESPN: The Total Sports Network (of areas surrounding Boston and New York)

The time has come. It’s time for “The New England/New York and NFL Network” – better known to some as ESPN – went away.

Did you know the Yankees and Red Sox played this weekend? Okay maybe you did, but do you know the outcome of any of the games? I sure don’t; and I attribute that in large part to having no access to ESPN anymore, and that’s voluntary.

With the advent of the networks for all four major sports, there really isn’t a need for ESPN anymore. For example, today I am listening to, as I always do, XM Radio’s MLB Homeplate (XM-175) for all of my baseball talk. Sure, they’re covering the Red Sox-Yankees matchup from this past weekend, but they’re covering lots of different topics. This morning they talked about historical improbable endings to baseball games because The Phillies’ Eric Bruntlett turned an unassisted triple play to end the Mets-Phillies game yesterday.

Also earlier today, Kansas City Royals manager Trey Hillman was on to discuss KANSAS CITY ROYALS BASEBALL. Do you think the super-mega-conglomerate which can’t be bothered with anything outside of New York or Boston (unless it’s the NFL) would ever consider spending anymore than a 30-second highlight segment on Kansas CIty unless it was of the Royals getting pummeled by the Yankees – and it not being about the Chiefs? If ESPN was your lone choice for sports information you would think MLB only had two teams (well, okay maybe three if you add the Cubs).

And in case you say, “well gee, that’s all well and good if you’re a baseball nut, but what about football? ESPN covers football.” To which I say, “why wouldn’t you watch the NFL Network instead?” It’s offered on just about every cable system there is. If you’re into satellite radio, Sirius offers an all-football NFL channel. The same is offered by the NBA and the NHL. Hell, even NASCAR and the PGA have their own radio networks and I know that The Golf Channel exists on television.

Why on earth would you ever rely on ESPN for any sports information anymore? Even if you are a fan of the Yankees or the Red Sox, there are 24-hour television stations devoted to those teams.

Maybe ESPN can put the “E” back into its name and move to a 24-hour network that provides just ports-based movies and mini-series. Sorta like an AMC of sports. They could keep the one useful network they have (ESPN News) and get rid of everything else.

With all of the information out there it seems time for these all-inclusive networks to rethink their strategies. Look at MTV and go back and look at where it was 25 years ago; or the Weather Channel. Wake up ESPN. Your days of pandering to a certain segment of your audience and forcing the rest of us to like it are numbered. If I want to hear about baseball that doesn’t have to do with Boston or New York, I can find it now. I don’t need you anymore and soon nobody else will either. I hope you enjoy a programming scheduled filled with World Series of Poker reruns.