Thursday, April 5, 2012

Nationals Opening Day!

Last year I started the season saying it was a quest for .500, and the Nationals ended up 80-81, starting to reach relevancy. This year, though the excitement is much higher, and Senor Strasburg has given us an Opening Day Strasmas, and the large shadow of The Ultimate Harper looms from Triple-A over the upcoming summer months, and there has been talk bandied about of possible wild card appearances (especially now since the wild card has been cheapened with an unbalanced 5th team per league… so stupid, and I don’t mean the extra playoff teams but the idiotic unbalanced structure they went to, which goes 1000% against the natural mathematical nerdery that is deeply woven into baseball’s freak tapestry), I think it is important to just say to ourselves, shoot for .500. Sure, we can hope for more promise and more googly eyes towards the future, but this is a young team with a pitching staff made of unproven cyborgs and veteran frankensteins, and a team full of positional prospects that still need to pan out as golden nuggets. And if everything goes halfway right, then the Nationals should be able to win half their games.
It is important to look across the field on this Opening Day, at those sad bastard Chicago Cubs, who have had potential and promise time and time again turn into a hermaphroditic goat, fellating itself upon the dreams of hapless Cubs fans worldwide (who are perhaps the blackest rimmed most hipster goofus fanbase in the Universe). Hell, it’s hard not to cringe in memory of Kerry Wood every time Strasburg’s intense man-boyish goatee is hurling the ol’ Thor testicle at another batter. (By the way, in an effort to convince myself that baseball is more manly and agreeable to my genetic viking spirit, I have pretended that “Thor testicle” is an old slang term for a baseball, even signing up for assorted baseball-related –pedia sites to edit it into older pages. I hope you will help support that effort. Let’s not question the manliness of clutching a man’s testicle for sport though. I did not give it much thought and had been listening to a lot of Ghostface Killah’s Ironman CD at the time.) I mean, the Nationals have only been in D.C. for a handful of years, and are only two World Series titles behind the Cubs at this point, but that has been a long, hard row to hoe for the Chicago Cubs franchise, full of frustration and crushed hopes.
But this afternoon we all start fresh, and the Nationals kick-off their 2012 season, one that has a wide-eyed, shit-eating grin towards the future. This season is foreplay, so if the vaginal cavity of professional baseball is properly lubricated and ready for the Nationals to fuck shit up this postseason, then so be it; I will not frown upon such a thing. But also, 81-81 is still a good benchmark to aim for. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s just try to be better than the Cubs.

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