NATS (7-1) BETTER THAN BRAVES TONIGHT

 this is what we dreamed 
 about - Strasborg went solid 
 8 innings, & won 

 Ultimate Harper smashed his 
 first ever grand slam - MOAR PLZ 

NATS RISE TO GLORY game thirty-nine

(this is what I had hoped Stephon Strasborg would have

come back as after his robot arm surgery)

Sunday closed out the four-game series with the Fathers in San Diego, and our damaged hero Stephon Strasborg took the mound, having had a rough and rocky couple of outings, and actually not that wonderful a season. He stumbled his way through four more rough and rocky innings, gave up 2 runs, Nats offense caught fire and gave him 3 back in the 5th, then 4 more in the 6th, but that was all he could do. In bottom of 6th, shit started coming undone quickly for Strasborg (yet again), and he was yanked after two outless batters was setting up a potential Fathers comeback.

Sigh... oh Strasborg of the number one overall pick whom Tony Gwynn said was perhaps the greatest ever, what has happened? I mean, it's hard to be all over his ass, as he still won this game to move to 3-4, so it's not like he's a dumpster fire. But this is not what we had planned (by "we" I mean stupid people who attach emotional well-being to how good the Nationals do as a fan, who are prone to speculation and prognostication not necessarily too deeply attached to reality).

However, on the other end of things, top of the 7th, score already 7-3 in Nats favor, The Ultimate Harper smashed his 14th HR of the year, with two-on, and just straight up put a bow on this game to be like, "Fuck y'all, Fathers; we're gonna chill our way through 9 more outs then catch a first-class flight the fuck back east." And that is what they did.

Coming into this west coast swing, I had said some shit about, "Hey, will these guys solidify themselves as high mediocre, or perhaps make a step towards being the upper crust of this professional baseball of 2015?" Obviously the season is still very young (lolol it's not even Memorial Day), but they are starting to look like the type of team that is able to fuck-up but still handle themselves into the W column. Perhaps I'd even suggest to you (Kendall) that they could possibly be flirting with being the best team in baseball. But time will have to pan that one out, no?

Nats were 22-17.

NATS RISE TO GLORY game thirty-four

In a walking around moment of delusion yesterday, the thought swam through my mind, "What if they won every game for the entire rest of the year?" about the Nats, going 147-15, destroying all competition forever. So of course I knew immediately that meant they'd lose, which they did last night. Strasborg got blasted, finally getting the hook in the 4th inning after having given up 8 runs already. Something's up with that dude. Matt Williams was like, "Well, he felt good, like his body wasn't fucked up so that's a positive, and we just let him keep throwing shit until it was too ugly to take any more," almost as if they're just gonna gun this fucker a little bit and see if the engine will actually hold. I hope it's just working out further kinks, getting a good groove, because if there was ever a weirdo pitcher type who had to be mentologically in the right spot, it'd be Strasborg. But what if something's amiss inside that dude's arm? Or head? Or both? Maybe even heart? Fuck man, whatever, baseball ain't a one-dude game.
So the D-backs, having jumped out to a 10-2 lead, cruised to a 14-6 win, but Bryce Harper got another HR. Also Ugly Danny Uggla got in the second half of the game, going for 1-for-2, with an RBI. He's quietly becoming my bench hero, even though there's absolutely no reason to like him as he's just your normal ass middle infielder white guy playing Major League Baseball. Whatever. I don't have to explain myself to you; you're just the fuckin' internet, spying on my goddamned brain thoughts.
Nats are 18-16.

NATS RISE TO GLORY game twenty-nine

Yesterday was an afternoon businessman's special matinee, and The Ultimate Harper came to play. I had just written about being dialed-in, how he didn't seem to be dialed-in, and we'd just come off a questionable Strasborg performance the day before. There will always be questions regarding Strasborg/Harper because both were allegedly once-a-decade prospects (who were both hyped as once-in-a-lifetime talents), and they came back-to-back to this team. Well, yesterday Harper went 3-for-3 his first three times at the plate - 3 home runs that is. And sure, there's tons of players who probably have a hot day and get 3 HRs (well, maybe not a ton), but the fact after just fretting over whether he had dialed-in capability, he came out dialed the fuck in, it gave me excitement. That's all fucking baseball is anyways - a long boring slog through the slow decline of America, but with random chance bursts of excitement that may you think, "Hey, maybe 100 years ago ain't so bad!" But then we'll all die under the weight of our own greed and failure.
Nats are 14-15.

2 Things 2 Remember

So I was barely awake after the 4 hour beginning of the All-Star game the other night, but luckily caught life towards the end of the NL reserves being announced, and there they were, side by side, Harper and Strasburg. I was still half-dullard from both my napping as well as the harsh consequences of the life I've led, but my brain sharpened up with the reality that this is real. We had been conjuring up fantasy images for a couple years, about what could be, what might happen, and then there they both were, All Stars, together.
(Not to be forgotten is Gio standing on the other side of Strasburg, and dare I say Gio Gonzalez may be my favorite solid bro on this Nats team.)
Secondly though, as the deliriums of "STRASBURG! HARPER!" dances through the minds of long-tormented Washington sports fans, who would have little in their life to reminisce fondly of had Joe Gibbs never been born, and we think to ourselves, "The Nationals have the best record in the National League, halfway through the season" and start to imagine imaginary imaginings, it is important to remember this wasn't even the time for this to have fermented. Strasburg will be shut down as he should, and Harper is still 19. There legitimately should be no World Series this year for the Nats. I mean, come on. Don't be greedy.
But there seems to be a process of contention/playoffs/World Series that every franchise must navigate if they are building (unless they are the Marlins who just sort of pop in and out of the World Series every so often like magic unicorns), and perhaps we do make the playoffs and give this young ragtag collection of oddballs, castoffs, and top prospects a little post-season seasoning. I have not forgotten that at the beginning of the season on this blog I was charting the path to .500 every 16 games. They should be able to hit their target for this season, so everything else will be extra slices of blueberry pie, so to speak.
Also, of course, this is DC sports, so some terribly stupid tragedy could happen and derail the whole thing by the middle of August. But hey, let's enjoy the moment.

Curly W 17-9 (from Friday night)

Strasburg/Harper at home for the first time ever

Friday night, hosting the evil demon Phillies

what could be better than a bottom of the 11th victory, Natbros?

my wife & eldest kid are out so me and the two littler ones (8 & 4)

were strolling the pedestrian mall in our city

where I took them to a fashion show, bought them scarves,

and we ate pizza by the slice and frozen yogurt w/ toppings by the ounce

and when we got in the truck to go home I thought

"oh yeah, the baseball game..." and I cut it on

and seriously like 23 seconds later Hunter Pence blasted

his 2-run homer off of The Strasborg, so I wisely thought

that perhaps I was bad hoodoo on the game & cut it off

and then I look at the interwebs this morning and I see the glory

seriously though, nothing on this earth is worse than Philly fans

I will never once donate a fucking stolen dime to Stop Kony until

there are no more Philly fans walking free amongst us

normal humans

Sad DC 14-7

a stifling outing for Strasburg

a go-ahead RBI in the 9th by Harper

it was just like we had always dreamed

until Hank Rodriguez came into the game

and then it all went to shit

Sad DC 14-6

another day, another west coast loss last night

but today begins the quest of The Ultimate Harper

and is Strasburg/Harper, in the flesh

first time ever

Curly W 1-0

Strasborg survives

+ piddlin' offense

still, the Cubs

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.

CASUAL WASHINGTON NATIONALS ROSTER PREVIEW

I am a casual baseball fan, at best, and adopted the Nationals as my own the day they moved to D.C. from Montreal, though technically it took them more than a day to move there, plus unpacking, and picking which lamp looked best in the family room, etc, etc. But I have contemplated even getting that “listen to MLB games on the interwebs” thing, though I probably won’t because let’s be honest here – am I gonna listen to old dudes describe baseball games or scour music blogs for obscure Iranian psych-funk from the early ‘70s? What is this – 2012 or 1943?
I thought though that it would be important, in this year of Nationals Hope that Something Great is Beginning, where even the possibility of playoffs has been bandied around like slop rags at a Tijuana donkey sex show, that I should go through the roster, and share my thoughts.

PROJECTED LINE-UP POSITION PLAYERS
SS IAN DESMOND – One of the dudes who is supposed to be awesome who has not gotten awesome yet. Baseball is full of guys like these. His name is Ian, which judging from the baseball card collection of my youth, is a promising name for a solid middle infielder.
2B DANNY ESPINOSA – He is the other guy who is just like Ian Desmond. I guess if one of them ends up awesome, this is great, and they are both still considered young and developing by baseball standards. But also the dudes who put together baseball teams will always be like, “Oh shit, that dude is a motherfuckin’ crystal cut diamond in the rough, you wait and see,” and you wait and wait and don’t ever see shit.
3B RYAN ZIMMERMAN – Just re-signed to a gazillion dollar contract, but is a solid dude, so I don’t mind. The kind of guy you can feel good being the veteran star of your team, although there is a certain Will Clark Bomb aspect to Zimmerman where we might find out in ten years he hates anybody who is not white and used to throw fried chicken at Dmitri Young in the locker room. Of course, perhaps out of stubborn militant pride, Dmitri Young gave up fried chicken, which is why he lost so much weight there that one magical stretch. Where is Dmitri Young? He should be our AA batting coach. I hope he was. I think a few four-hour bus rides sitting next to Dmitri Young going from Bumfuck, Pennsylvania, to Bumfuck, Virginia, probably would’ve been very good for Bryce Harper.
LF MICHAEL MORSE – Sort of came out of nowhere last year to be good. Unfortunately, contrary to what those dudes who put together baseball teams will tell you, in 2012 this is not always indicative of someone finding their stroke, but perhaps some weird experimental European PED. Still though, I have a friend from high school named Mike Morse who is a morning DJ in the Raleigh/Durham radio market, so because of that I support this other Mike Morse who instead plays baseball.
1B ADAM LAROCHE – I don’t know man, at 1B we had Dmitri Young, then Adam Dunn, both of whom are personable as fuck. Thus, Adam LaRoche is useless to me. Do we have some super dude coming up? Wasn’t there a reason they didn’t let Harper play 1B? I think as a casual fan instead of a super baseball dork, there’s something I’m missing here.
RF JAYSON WERTH – Lol, Shaggy Werth got a fat sack of Scooby snacks and all of a sudden wasn’t worth a shit. And now people are convincing themselves that he will start being good again. Whatever man. I can dig it. In order to go from being the Washington Nationals sucky team of eternity to Washington Nationals legitimate franchise, you have to show the world you are willing and able to blow money on useless shit, to show you are able to compete with the Yankees and Phillies and Tigers and Red Sox of the world. I would rather see them blow it on Werth and draft a bunch of dudes who are going to be good one day, just wait and see, than do what the Marlins did where they blow a ton of money at their new ballpark by hoping flashy names and a kitschy park will somehow make people care. At least the Nats are building something, and any long-term building project needs some overpaid stoner guy to be considered an elder and just kinda watch things come together and go, “Yeah, this shit is good.”
C WILSON RAMOS – While other people were dicking around in the offseason, Ramos got kidnapped and ransomed. At one point, motherfuckers were worried he was already dead. But then he was air rescued and now he’s back to catch baseballs. Fuck all other catchers.
CF RICK ANKIEL – Holding Harper’s spot for now, and is the rare occasion where when pitchers suddenly remember all sorts of repressed sexual abuse memories that happened at the hands (and penis) of a little league coach and can’t suddenly remember how to pitch a baseball anymore, he was able to turn it around. It took a of therapy and a complete positional change (remember, the dude was an MLB pitcher at one point), but he’s here, and he’s not queer. Or maybe he is. I don’t know. I’m good either way to be honest.

OTHER NOTABLE POSITION PLAYERS
OF BRYCE HARPER – He’s starting the year in AAA, for long-term contractual reasons, but make no fucking mistake bros, The Ultimate Harper is about to be unleashed upon the Universe, like a thousand Josh Hamiltons, blessed with the power of magma molecules from deep inside the dark mountains of Nevada/Arizona wastelands, not so much born as found under a joshua tree, surrounded by coyotes, standing on their hind legs, who gifted him to his parents, and thus gifted him to us all.
IF MARK DEROSA – I think I have a baseball card of this dude, which means he has to have been playing for at least 30 years. Wasn’t he and Manny Trillo boys or something?
IF STEVE LOMBARDOZZI – Rookie offspring of former wrestler The Brooklyn Brawler, whose cousin is fat bearded white rapper Action Bronson. I tell you this so you go watch some Action Bronson videos on youtube.

PROJECT PITCHING ROTATION
RH STEPHEN STRASBURG – I know he is supposed to be the greatest thing ever to have ever done anything, but I have to be honest with you – his goatee makes him suspicious in my mind. I do not have Excel spreadsheets and algebraic formulas to break all this down, as is the norm nowadays; I am old school, and I trust my gut, and something in my gut tells me this Strasburg kid is going to end ugly. Still though, I’ll take what we can out of him. Kerry Wood the motherfucker for all I care.
RH JORDAN ZIMMERMANN – The great thing about the possibility of Strasburg being the most awesome fucking thing ever is that Jordan Zimmermann also has some immense potential to be awesome as fuck, so in a game of hoping shit breaks well for you in terms of player development, our potential high watermark is really fucking high. As am I.
LH GIO GONZALEZ – The thing I love about the way the Nats continue to build their team is it is almost like somebody somewhere this off-season said, “You know, I know we have to let Livan Hernandez go, because he will most likely be murdered by Cuban drug lords at some point in the next two years, and we want to be removed from that. But there’s a lot of degenerate money-spending 30-something types who absolutely love Livan Hernandez. Perhaps we go throw a bunch of shit at the A’s and get this Gio Gonzelez kid, because he’s fairly insane, but he’s also young, and can eat up some innings, and might actually be pretty fucking good. But he’s crazy, so people will love him. And he most likely won’t get murdered by Cuban drug lords for at least another eight or nine years.” So they got him, and now we can all be dumbasses who go “NAT GIO” because it is a play on National Geographic and we are all retards nowadays, or at least slightly autistic as a whole, so simple stupid play on words like that make us giggle inside but we don’t call it giggling we call it lolol which feels weird to type an –ing after so I just left it like that. Man, shit is confusing nowadays.
RH EDWIN JACKSON – His name, to me at least, sounds like a gospel singer, and when I think of gospel singing, or more appropriately gospel sanging, I think of this song –

LH JOHN LANNAN – He is the fifth guy in our rotation. On the surface, that might not seem like a thing, but he has been as high as our #2 starter in the past, so trust me when I say it is a thing.

BULLPEN
RH DREW STOREN – With Joba Chamberlain’s bizarre ankle/blood-letting injury, Drew Storen now is the flattest hat in MLB, having picked that up from the Chief Chad Cordero, who is already retired apparently. Man, relievers have really become sports’ biggest bitch, haven’t they, used up and spit out like Russian whores in Prague. Storen is white as fuck. Like seriously, I bet that dude gets stoked to go to Applebees.
RH TYLER CLIPPARD – He is our set-up man, and he can go for multiple innings, which will be necessary as two of our five starters are using robot arms, one of them is old, and the other one is the crazy guy from Oakland. I know that’s only four, but fuck you. John Lannan is the other guy and I couldn’t think of how to disparage him. He’s just a hard-working second-tier starting pitcher who will help make 162 games disappear, and then hopefully sit in the bullpen during the playoffs.
RH CHIEN-MING WANG – He is already broke I think, which is a bad sign, as the key to our haphazard experimental surgery pitching rotation working was for nobody to break too badly. The fact our Wang is sore and we haven’t hit opening day is not a good sign.

So there you have it, friends. I could have also talked about Davey Johnson being a weird fucker as a manager, but weird fuckers as a manager are a dime a dozen nowadays. Davey Johnson is the perfect manager for this team at this point, to instill tradition in a tradition-less franchise, at least in this town. Maybe we get somebody else to managineer things in the future, but for now, there is nothing more perfect than Davey Johnson, who will say crazy things and take all the heat off of the young budding superstars as we wait and see, wait and see, wait and see.

My Inevitable The Ultimate Harper Jersey

I am perusing Chinese bootleg jersey sites at work today, fantasizing of not having more financial responsibilities than financial income, and pretending what I would pimp the fuck out of on hot Friday nights in back yards throughout south central Virginia, playing dice on picnic tables with people who are better known by assumed names than given names. (Note I did not say "real names" because the name you are known as is as real as it gets.)
I just had to get a fucking minivan for my family as our stupid fucking Subaru finally died and we've had like 19 more children since we bought that, so I can tell you with complete factual proof that my credit rating is in the very top of the bottom third of all people. It is enough to get by with until our entire western economy collapses in on itself as the smoke and mirror false wealth system that it actually is. Which is fine.
I was actually contemplating that yesterday while leisurely tossing scratch to my chicken flock in the back yard (seriously... I was), and it made me sad that MLB owners clique is such an uptight group of assholes that they won't allow crazyboy Mark Cuban own the Cubs, because he'll outspend everybody but the Red Sox and Yankees. What with the impending collapse of normal economic systems we've come to enjoy in our lives, I think now more than ever it would behoove baseball to allow Mark Cuban into their stupid fucking fraternity, and in fact encourage more like him, as the world shifts. Because in ten years, when America is full of fat, helpless slaves who are being victimized by the more animalistic who have been caged in inner-city breeding grounds of violence for generations, where will baseball go? Mexican drug lords are a good idea. Mafia influences, from traditional Italian as well as more modern Russian mafias are probably good bets to keep teams based in the northeast. These are all important things to consider, and imagine what a wonderful game it would be if it was owned by outright admitted criminals who are only too glad to have achieved a level of success in life that they can leisurely watch sports teams they have accumulated like trophies compete on the field of brown diamonds? It's far better than fuckheads like that McCourt dude and whatever newspaper owned the Cubs and just the general uptight asses who own things as it stands now, at least as far as I can tell.
That being said, I did not come here to talk about the collapse of America, and how America's past time will actually become more awesome upon that collapse. I came to talk about the most awesome jersey that does not exist that I may have my wife sew for me, because she knows how to do such things, just so I can look like the most etsy'd out sports jackass there ever was, and some douchebag with an inflated sense of the sanctity of dumb shit will cry "JERSEY FOUL! JERSEY FOUL!" at me indignantly.
You see, the bootleg Chinaman site I was looking at while wasting another work day of my life had none of the new blue Washington Nationals in The Ultimate Harper's number, which I find ridiculous. The blue uniforms themselves are not quite regulation I guess, and the initial style with the D.C. logo that has stars and shit on it has gradually been replaced by that ugly and stupid curly W that I guess hearkens back to yore old days of the Washington Senators boring the fuck out of a previous generation, probably at RFK Stadium I would imagine, but maybe something even older and more forgotten that is only seen on those weird postcards that look kinda like day-glo colors from the 1950s. You know what I mean; they are in every antique store ever, like two for a dollar.
The Nats uniforms have always been a boring comedown from the swank powder blue Expos joints with the bulbous M, but you know what? If you flesh that stupid curly W out into bubble letters, it looks sort of like that bulbous M, just upside down. So what I'm saying is take that old powder blue Expos style, flip the M over into a W, same red, white, and blue colors, throw it on with the #34 HARPER on the back, and what I have then my friend is straight motherfuckin' style. And I don't tell you this because I'm a huge Nationals fan... I sort of took them on by default because I had always rooted for the Giants since that was the name of my first little league team and I naively thought as an 8-year-old centerfielder that if I said my prayers and ate my vitamins and hulked up just right, one day I could be playing right alongside Johnnie LeMaster and Atlee Hammaker and Duane Kuiper and the like. But the Barry Bonds years really sapped me of giving a shit about the Giants, so when the Expos moved to D.C., I said to myself, "Self, this is a baseball team near where you live, so you can indulge in reading the daily newspaper prints about these guys and involve yourself like any literate nerd ass motherfucker, and emotionally tie yourself to a goddamned sports team you have no say over and no control over and no real reason to attach to yourself, other than to chew up that emotional space inside that otherwise is going to be empty and make you start looking for double penetrations of hirsute punjab chicks on youporn or something." So that's what I did.
It is more a matter of convenience that The Ultimate Harper is so ultimate. Strasburg seems kinda like a tool, very introverted and self-obsessed, pretty much the makings of another Roger Clemens if he can somehow not destroy his arm in four years, and I say that more on the douche-y psychological level not like he's the next 200 game winner MLB will ever see. Bryce Harper is just a stupid fucking kid who is really good. Any team's fringe fans who enjoy painkillers for leisure and having sex with ugly women so long as their breasts are big but real would feel the same as me. Which is why I don't understand how there cannot be a blue alternative Bryce Harper jersey available. But at the same time, it may drive me to create my own fake Expos/Nats alternate universe jersey.

the Ultimate Harper being the Ultimate Harper

inside the park home run (aka double with shitty outfielders on the other team) from sketchy camera phone viewpoints, where Harper blazes around the bases and ends up sliding head first without a helmet into home and breaking his belt on the play...

The Ultimate Harper is the new Charlie Hustle

Also, Strasburg rehabbed the fuck out of dudes yesterday, striking out half the chump ass A batters he faced, and hitting mid-90s on his fastball. COME ON 2013!

Strasburg singing some Amy Winehouse "they bout to send my ass to rehab..."

while yall bitches is contemplating actual playoff pictures and trade deadline tomfoolery, for me it's all about this next week...


plus they had an SI fluff piece on how awesome The Ultimate Harper is going to be, and I went to a minor league base of the ball game the other weekend and was gonna write poetry about it, but then I thought I was gonna get fired at my for-real job and forgotted to do so. I will pull out my notebook later this week and update you on my In Real Life minor league Ultimate Harper watching findings, okay bros?

Nationals 10-10, 2/16th of our way to Mighty Decent

(JFK got involved with a bat 4 Horsemen style in the Racing of the Presidents the other week)

Nats have now played 20 games, and pitter-pattered their way thru a weekend series against the Pirates. Jayson Werth has sucked thus far and most of the commentary has been, "He always tweaks things, he's adjusting, he's a hard worker, etc etc." This makes me think UH OH, considering the Washington Redskins/Wizards historic tradition of high-priced free agents. Of course we knew that UH OH would eventually come on his 19-year contract, but I guess I wanted 2 or 3 years of glory to usher in the drug-addled reign of The Ultimate Harper.
Anyways, Jordan Zimmermann has been pleasantly nice, pitching has really saved this team thus far, as I think only six of their position players actually carry bats into the batter's box. The rest just walk up and say, "Ump, I'm gonna pop out to 3rd," and save themselves the wear and tear on their body.
It sucks rooting for a team like this, in a sport like this. You'd like to be relevant or at least a move or two away from relevancy. As it stands, I am rooting for them to be mediocre to put us in position to be better if other things go well. It's like rooting for your family to not be poor, yet being fully aware of how these things work, so you go, "I can get my kids into a better college than I went to as the first person in my family to go to college, and then they hopefully will not fuck up and make good money at that level so that their kids could maybe go to private school and an even better college, and eventually in like four generations, if everything goes perfectly, nobody fucks up or dies or ruins something with cocaine addiction, we'll not be a fucking doomed ass poor family." This is being a baseball fan from about 25 cities in a nutshell.

Tommy Johns in the House

Last year Jordan Zimmermann was recovering from his Tommy Johnson surgical implants and was having control issues with a lackluster fastball, in the process of re-learning his shit, so to speak, like a stroke victim but about the pitcher's arm instead of the half of brain. Last week, he had a strong showing in punking out the Mets on their opening night, to piss on their field and declare that, "No, we Nats are not the bottom feeder in this NL East motherfucker no more."
Last night against the Phillies though, Zimmermann took it to the next level. Holmes pitched five perfect innings, not allowing a single punk ass Phillie bitch on base, and gave up a homer in the sixth but made it through 7 solid innings with only that one earned run. On top of that, after the game, Cliff Lee remarked that Zimmermann's fastball was one of the nastiest ones he'd seen. Coming from Cliff Lee, that's high praise. Of course being stoked that a star pitcher lavishes praise upon one of your starting Ps kinda goes against that whole "not the bottom feeder in this NL East" mindset. But hey, we take what we can as Nats fans.
Some important excitements and calmnesses to take from this are, it looks Tommy Johnson Surgery can be recovered from, as we all hold our collective stupid breaths looking at the $300 million dollar Kid Strasburg. But the recovery process is longer than just getting back on the mount. Even if Kid Strasburg is back this year by the fall, he's gonna be going through what Zimmermann did last year - relearning how to do what it is he does. Zimmermann got his speed back but took a while longer to get control of that again. Hopefully Kid Strasburg can do the same.
Man, looking at the stupid Phillies pitching line-up a few days in a row is ridiculous. Even if Zimmermann ends up a solid as fuck starter for more than a few months of a few seasons, and Kid Strasburg returns as great as his potential promised, that still pales in comparison to the Phillies. What the fuck man? What the fuck?

the dilemma of the baseball jersey purchase

From time to time, I decide to switch my whole style up ala Ghostface Killah, and just throw people the fuck off completely. Most of the folks I run with in real life are either 30-something dudes who are a normal mix of hip hop/wacky art/pop culture/indie rock/metal mess, who drink beer out of cans, smoke weed out of pipes, and have more than one stupid tattoo usually. My wife's friends are earth bear types, naturalist folks that can run the gamut from cool new age types who are actually doing good things on the sides of mountains where no one is looking to goofy stereotypical hippies that are thankful for really Portlandia-ish things, to whole packs of non-descript white couples who look like Whole Foods starter families with children named after different species of trees. Some of those couples the earth tones blend together so heavily that I seriously cannot remember who is who. Seriously. It is a source of amazement and amusement for my wife, to the point that when I'm like, "Who is Bill again? Married to Sarah? Who are they?" and she laughs and goes, "They're 'THOSE' people," and we laugh and I know they are one of the indeterminate pack.
Perhaps because of these people, my very recent style switch has been to buy cheap as fuck but pimp as hell stitched jerseys, most likely of a bootleg nature, off of Ebay, to get my swagger on. One of the first things that came to me was an ABA Virginia Squires warm-up jersey in a moment of state pride, with the snaps, in garish blue, red and white, not a fucking thing earth toney about it. First time we had to rendezvous publicly, I threw on my Levi's carpenter jeans with the bottoms cut off because they never have pants the right length for me, always too long, rocked a red t-shirt underneath to match the red trim in the snap shirt, mostly blue, with big stitched VIRGINIA SQUIRES on the back. Walking around, my dick immediately grew 3/4 of an inch longer, plus with more hair around the base of my shaft. (I think this may be how black people do it, so if you have a son, I can't encourage you enough to buy him nice jerseys when he's like 11 and 12. He'll thank you for it later.) Most of the circle we run with do not bother with professional sports at all, because for the spiritually enlightened, I guess sports is a mouth-breather activity. Whatever. I think kids would be a bit healthier if they were running some full court basketball a few months out of the year rather than letting soccer be the only accepted new age sport. But I digress.
Well, obviously, me being a goofy assed whiteboy who likes to stir shit in people's sensibilities, I figure the proper step in assaulting these Whole Foods people's norms was to acquire a few nice ass Negro League jerseys. This also would be an interesting style to rock when I am in the blacker parts of my monthly routines as well, because I also like to fuck with those worlds. One of my favorite things to do lately is when like a burly black dude or bearded older hobo white dude is passing in or out of a store and holds the door or we cross opposite directions on a sidewalk, is to go, "Thanks podna" or "How's it goin' podna?" Oddly enough, there is something about calling these types of people a slurry version of "partner" that automatically makes you comrades. At first I was doing it just to see what would happen, but actually it has generated positive responses, and even one dude I passed again a few days later, and I was in work clothes - khaki pants and button down lavender oxford shirt, and he saw me, recognized the beard and wild eyes, and was like, "Sweet ass day out today, ain't it podna?" I said, "You know it," and as he walked past, he was talking to me and the sky, "I'm 'bout to get me a ice cold double deuce of Budweiser, and sit on the motherfuckin' porch." It was a moment that made my soul more pure, all because I called a random dude "podna". But I'd like to rock this "podna" test while wearing very obvious Negro League jerseys.
I've actually been reading a little bit about Negro Leagues online when I get a chance. There's a ton of great books about the Negro Leagues, because baseball fandom is one of the more nerdy/intellectualized pro sports there is, and is considered the National Past-time, so there's tons of sociology and anthropology professors out there looking to ease into retirement with a tome about the Negro Leagues. Some of it looks good. Some of it looks not so good. But this has helped lead to a ton of information inside the interwebs about the Negro Leagues, and I've had much fun reading through the hundreds and hundreds of team names, and wacky little facts. (I was gonna do a few lists of these for Baseball Feelings, but I do not have the leisure time of an anthropology professor. Plus I are lazy. Like I might not even finish writing this thing.)
Well, the only affordable sewn/stitched jerseys you can find online are usually bootleg. And there are those jersey snob types that would have you believe you should only rock authentic because fuck cheap Chinese knock-offs. I can understand this thinking, but also know it's complete bullshit, because the authentic ones are made by the same Chinese 9-year-olds, and really all you are paying for with that extra $100 is the endorsement of the overlording body, who would rather you feel proud to spend four times as much for the same thing, to be an official part of what is going on, as opposed to supporting illegal and non-designated entities. Well I say fuck that. I am a broke ass man who has a $110 electric bill most months, and to ignore than to buy an $180 jersey, when I could siphon $20 off thru paypal, get me a jersey, still pay the electric bill, and have money left over to rent a couple of Caballero Classics porns from the 1980s to watch on a drunken Friday night with the ol' lady on top of white lambskins stretched across the hardwood living room floor. A much better overall experience for my $180 than being authentic.
The problem with this philosophy of mine though is that the Chinamen only bootleg popular jerseys, or what they think will be popular. This means normal teams, and more famous players. I guess most black people still don't have the parts of the internet that shows them Chinapeople stuff, because you cannot find yourself a good source for affordable bootleg Negro League jerseys. So your next choice, if you are fucking around online, is to just look for legit sources.
This will lead you to Ebbett Field Flannels, a Mitchell & Ness type throwback company where the jerseys are made of actual flannel that slaves used to cry tears of hopelessness into, to make jerseys as authentic as humanly possible. If you had a time machine and wore one into the past, when you walked into the stadium, they would be shocked that there was an albino on the team, until they saw your normal white people hair, and then they'd think you were police. Ebbett Field Flannels are some very nice shirts, there is no doubt, but they are also very expensive. And when it comes to authenticity, at least if you are being MLB authentic, you can pretend to yourself that the player is getting a small cut of his merch sales. I don't think Negro League authentic throwbacks are digging up the crumbled bones of yesteryear's Negro superstars to send them to college.
What this all led to was a decision on my part, as I was perusing bootleg Chinaman baseball jerseys, to consider going all in on my budding Washington Nationals fandom, and get a Nats jersey. I mean, I am brainwashed by hip hop, so I am not above just buying colorful shirts I like with matching t-shirts to go underneath, and probably some dollar store stocking caps in various colors to rock with the ensemble when it gets colder again this fall. And obviously if you go this route, your two obvious first choices are an old Dave Parker Pirates jersey, most likely yellow, and a Rollie Fingers Padres jersey, doo-doo brown naturally. And after that, my first choice when looking through the bootleg choices online, is an all-black, black numbers on black jersey with orange trim, Giants jersey of some sort. That's a nice style. But that also reminds me that I grew up rooting for the Giants but made the conscious decision to go Nats when they moved to D.C. So that always makes me think, "Okay, look at the Nats jerseys, and get one. Let's do this."
That's when the problems begin. The Nats have boring colors - basic red and white. The red is not even an exciting red, but just a dull normal middle of the pack red, with no third color highlights to really set anything off. And curly W, traditional as it may be, definitely leaves something to be desired with my 2011 mind. I fear if I wore a boring ass home white Nationals jersey, I'd lose that 3/4 of an inch of dick-growing that I just copped from the ABA shirt. I'm not operating on enough of a surplus to be throwing dick away like that.
They did show off an alternate jersey in the off-season, but it's a dark blue deal with a stars and stripes in the D.C. letters on the breast deal - kinda iffy. I'm not ever at all into the whole red, white, and blue thing, especially if you are following the color codes of the U.S. flag. Those are some boring ass colors. If they had done an alternate jersey in red, white, and blue, and styled it after an old Expos jersey, that would have been tight, powder blue with a stars and strips bold ass D.C., bubble letters like that old happy fucking M used to be for the Expos. But they didn't, they went boring. But I guess I could talk myself into a red jersey, or an alternate blue one. But it would have to be stitched, buttons on the front, and feel pimp as fuck. Pimp as fuck, because really, the colors are pushing my limits of acceptance.
So as I settle into that, then I am confronted with what jersey do I get? If you have a deep Chinaman catalog to go through, maybe you can find a Nyjer Morgan jersey, which would always be great. But how long is that guy going to remain on any one team? He was flipping out last year, and I'm sure as the team gets whiter and whiter to make things feel safe for Herr Strasburg, they're gonna run off Nyjer Morgan, probably to some middling contender that could use his potential, which probably won't show up.
So if I limit myself to people who are on this team, and will be on this team, and I can not be ashamed of, what does that leave me? Not much. There's Ryan Zimmerman, who was a local boy who played at UVA right down the road from me in college, and has been the face of the Nationals since he was drafted. But that dude is white as fuck, and not very exciting. Plus, let's be honest, if they don't get their shit together, he's gonna go play for the Red Sox or Phillies or Yankees when his next big contract comes up. Fuck losing for less when you could win for more, you know?
I could jump into a Jayson Werth jersey, and really Werth's shaggy-faced good-timey probable stoner attitude fits my personal philosophies fairly well. But being a Redskins fan in football, jumping on board a brand new overpaid free agent signings jock with a new jersey is way too Dan Snyder-ish, and has me thinking Werth is gonna be dead or traded for a fifth racing big-headed President or injured into oblivion before we hit the 2012 election. So that's a no-go.
That brings us to the alleged can't miss phenomenon of last year - Stephen Strasburg, who was everything he was touted as being, blowing strikes by motherfuckers, until he fucked himself up right good and had to get Tommy John surgery. Now since he's the future of baseball in D.C., they are saying everything is going great, and he's building super conditioning right now while he can't throw, so that when he comes back, even after the surgery, he will be a monster of cyborg proportions who will strike out at least 4 of every 5 hitters he faces. This is what Nats people say. Other people say he has mechanical flaws that suggest he is fucked, completely. Historical evidence backs the trajectory that he, as a #1 super-hyped pitching prospect, will not be shit beyond exceptionally mediocre if he is lucky. Now I know he certainly looked awesome as fuck when he was pitching in the bigs last year. But I also know he's already damaged goods, at a tender age. And he's a quiet, studious starting pitcher. Those types are weird, and really untrustable, because they usually end up being salesmen of some sort when they are older, for like John Deere tractors or RVs or something like that that's popular in places like Indiana or South Carolina. And I'm just not comfortable hitching my wagon to the Strasburg train just yet. It seems doomed to fail, especially considering how the Redskins have done, and especially considering how the Washington Wizards have done in similar matters, and especially double especially considering how the Nationals have not exactly showed and proven themselves to be savvy on the management end of things thus far since they came back to America.
All that leaves is Bryce Harper - young and crazy fucking Bryce Harper, confident beyond his years, yet being molded with the fears of a franchise that has not yet showed and proven themselves to not be snake bitten on all matters personnel related. And I could get into a Bryce Harper jersey, if they embraced Bryce Harperness, letting the kid wear the Ultimate Warrior facepaint, and howl at the moon in teenage goofiness, and even rock some alternate black jerseys, get all grimy, with the dark blue starry D.C. on the breast and a dark blue number and name on the back. Or better yet, dark blue number, bright red name, bright red small number on the front, and like red outlines to the white stars in the D.C. letters. Tweak that shit out, make it crazy, embrace the Bryce Harperness. Fuck tradition and safety. You are the fucking Washington Nationals, pretty much engineered thus far to be looking up the divisional standings at Philadelphia and Atlanta, not nearly as prominent in the public's mind as the Mets, with the same social status of the Marlins, but with a few less championship rings, and your first one nowhere in sight on the horizon. Why would you want to hold onto that bottom feeder mentality so strongly? Shake it up.
But they have not. Instead, Bryce Harper is being asked by vets to not wear the crazy face paint. Catchers aren't supposed to last, so he's being switched to outfield. They are doing everything they are supposed to do in such a situation, following time-honored methods of assimilating the young buck into the Big Leagues.
And that's ultimately my problem, not only with getting a Nationals jersey, but in getting on-board wholeheartedly with the Nationals team. I mean, geographically, I'm more tied to them than anyone else, so I'll ride it out, my enthusiasm waxing and waning with their on-field performances, or getting spiked when Nyjer cranks up some new wacky antics and gives me something to amuse myself with. But they're mostly just doing the same shit everybody else thinks you should do, and there's not much to get excited about.
That's why rather than waste the money on a bootleg Chinaman Nationals jersey, I'll just keep stalking Ebay for a nice Ethiopian Clowns or Detroit Stars or oh man a Washington Black Senators jersey to show up. Because a lot of times, it's far more stylish to go the way of what is not accepted to do. And if you're gonna lose fucking 90 games every year, it's more fun to be stylish and crazy than boring and vanilla.

If you feel the need to purchase a Negro League jersey, I officially suggest you do it here where you can also get ancient Chinese medicine, Islamic items, and protection against harmful EMF rays. Really, House of Nubian is your one-stop internet shop for everything you need to be motherfucking righteous in the year of the devil 2012.

position players report

Position players showed up for work today, which means a couple of things. First off, as you can see from above, the Shaggy Jayson Werth era begins, apparently involving some sort of return to slavery for our beloved Tony Plush, who spent the offseason starting malingering brawls in the Dominican Republic... or at least I would assume, except it seems iffy if he played this winter or not to try and get back on track as a solid lead-off hitter. Truthfully, this team is not going to be good, and most likely 5th in the NL East, so if he just gets in fights and does crazy stuff, he's worth my dollar.
Of course the Jayson Werth deal was ridiculous, but so is every big deal done every spring. Werth allows the Nationals to transition towards credibility, I guess, because have both Ryan Zimmerman and Jayson Werth makes it seem like you're better than say the Royals, and at least trying. I guess.
The big deal today though was the mutual appearance of both Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper in Nats uniforms, at the same time, for the first time ever. Of course neither will matter to this year's team (always next year), but just the sheer orgasmic possibilities of the two actually achieving 75% of the hype is enough to drive me to giddiness about long summer commutes up US 29 through the clusterfuck of inhumanity that is northern Virginia to go watch weekday afternoon games in the polluted sunshine of the District of Columbia. There is a giant Wegman's in Gainesville on the ride that has the most ridiculous beer selection ever that could fill up a nice cooler for sitting around the early afternoon in the back of the truck with a selected compadre, getting drunkered up nicely (because even ultra microbrews from the grocery store come out cheaper than stadium cups), and just being good ol' Americans - blowing off work, being unproductive, and dreaming about millionaires standing around not doing a whole lot in front of us. (Jesus, no wonder America is fucking dying. Oh well, when in Jim Rome...)
Strasburg is still gonna be recovering most of the year, maybe get back to the Big Leagues for some trial runs of his bionic elbow late in the summer/fall. Harper is not expected to be pushed into the majors this year at all, though he apparently is carrying himself like a superstar already. Not sure if that's good or bad. This time of year the local beat writers are always drumming the positive djembes of brightness, you can never tell if someone is a giant asshole until it's too late.
Meanwhile, yesterday's 70 degree day turned back into today's 40 degree day. It's still February. It's still miserable. But goddamnit, spring is almost here.