I might be heading to the San Francisco area tomorrow and even though I will be missing 2/3 of this season’s Nats and Orioles series at Nats Park that doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts on it. In 2005 I started to go to baseball games with my father on a consistent basis. As time went on and I got to see more and more fathers and sons at the ballpark I started to feel a little cheated. The moment really happened for me in 2006 when I was trying to get autographs from several of the Nats players during their picnic at the park event. I was kindly reminded by Nationals pitcher Mike O’Connor to let the kids go first. At first I was a bit disgusted with myself for being such a rude a-hole, but the more I thought about it the more disgusted I become with other people.
There is a long list of men who deserve blame for baseball being out of DC for most of my lifetime, but I think it should start with a couple owners. Mainly Bob Short and Peter Angelos. I am not going to go into those reasons here as a quick Google search will give you a good amount of reading material by people who have done a better job than I could, and besides this is about what this series means to me.
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JJ hardy had hit nine homeruns on the year. Ian Desmond five. JJ Hardy has walked 11 times in 171 plate appearances. Ian Desmond has walked 6 times in 166 plate appearances. They both play short stop for teams in the Baltimore/Washington area and have been their respective teams primary lead-off hitters despite low on base percentages.
Ian Desmond’s slash line of .276/.300/.448 is close to Hardy’s line of .261/.310/.497 but it isn’t there yet. Hardy has more power and doesn’t a marginally better job of taking a walk, but those lines are very close. Advanced metrics rank Hardy as a much better fielder than Ian Desmond, but having watched both Hardy can’t get as deep in the hole as Desmond can but he also doesn’t make errors on plays that should be routine.
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Monday night in the Nation’s capital saw a story line come to a crisis moment for the Nats. Because of the injury to Drew Storen the Washington Nationals have been dealing with issues at the back end of the bullpen all season long. The question now is do they replace Henry Rodriguez, who has been filling in for Storen, or do they let him work his issues out in the ninth inning. That is an interesting question as Nationals fans have been here before when Joel Hanrahan had the same sort of confidence and control issues before being traded in 2009.
Joe Hanrahan has since gone on to become one of the best closers in the NL and an all-star for the Pirates. It is important to remember players like Hanrahan when discussing what to do with Henry Rodriguez because it demonstrates that simply getting rid of a player isn’t a solution. It is also important to look at the struggles of players like Heath Bell to understand that a closer is not a position a team should spend money on. Relievers in baseball are volatile. It is the nature of the small sample size that follows them for the entire season.
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Baseball really is a wild game. That is probably the reason it drives me crazy when someone tries to say they do not watch baseball because it is boring. I admit that I think soccer is boring, but I also admit that I know nothing about the sport nor do I respect it on the level that I should in order to actually have an opinion on it. Therefore, I do not go around saying soccer is boring so much as I go around talking about how much I do not watch it and how little I know/care about it. Baseball is a chess game, one man’s move against another man’s move. Baseball is a fairly slow paced game, but that is part of what makes it exciting.
At any moment a game can turn in one direction then back in another. Monday night was a very good example of this. The game, at first glance, was somewhat unattractive for the Nationals. On Monday night the Nationals got off to a quick start, scoring a run on the first time they came to bat in the bottom of the 1st inning. That lead, however was short lived and eventually the Padres would take the lead. Ross Detwiler did not seem to have his best stuff, and would go 5 innings that I am sure he hopes to learn from. Ross may have not had his best stuff, but there were also 2 errors behind him Detwiler that caused the young starter to give up the lead a couple of different times in his long 5 innings. Ross Detwiler has been solid for the Nationals though, so it is okay for Detwiler to show a little bit of humanity now and then by not having his best game. Sandy Leon had gotten bowled over in the 4th inning after taking a full contact hit from Chase Headley, Leon would get helped off the field and immediately put on the disabled list. Henry Rodriguez had a tough night would get pulled after loading the bases and recording one out in the 9th inning, with an ugly chorus behind him.
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Often times when the Washington Nationals are out of town I will find another place to watch baseball, and one of the ways to do that is to enjoy an evening up in Baltimore watching the Orioles play ball. It is a different brand of baseball and a different atmosphere. It is this atmosphere I noticed more than anything. Especially after the Orioles had won the game and strengthen their grip on first in the AL East. While leaving the stadium I couldn’t help but notice how happy the fans were. One young man in a black collard shirt kept yelling about, “The first place O’s,” while in the distance I could hear other such screams of elation.
This entire display of happiness and outburst of emotion was foreign to me. One week prior I had been leaving the home stadium of the Washington Nationals after they beat their chief rival in the division, the Philadelphia Phillies, and while there was some happiness over winning the game the pure elation that the Orioles fans had could not be found. The Orioles fans were in a state of euphoria over being in first place whereas the Nationals fans were in a state of disbelief.
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Yesterday I went to watch a minor league baseball game in nearby Richmond, Virginia. This of course caused me to wonder how many state capitals have baseball teams. I could think of a few off the top of my head, but couldn’t think of them all. So I decided that I would look it up and provide a list of all the state capitals that have a professional baseball team.
Alabama: The Montgomery Biscuits
Arizona: The Arizona Diamondbacks
Arkansas: The Arkansas Travelers
California: The Sacramento River Cats
Colorado: The Colorado Rockies
Georgia: The Atlanta Braves
Idaho: The Boise Hawks
Indiana: The Indianapolis Indians
Iowa: The Iowa Cubs
Massachusetts: The Boston Red Sox
Michigan: The Lansing Lugnuts
Minnesota: The Saint Paul Saints
Mississippi: The Mississippi Braves
Montana: The Helena Brewers
Nebraska: The Lincoln Saltdogs
New Hampshire: The New Hampshire Fisher Cats
New Jersey: The Trenton Thunder
New Mexico: The Santa Fe Fuego
New York: The Tri-City Valley Cats
North Carolina: The Carolina Mud Cats
Ohio: The Columbus Clippers
Oklahoma: The Oklahoma City Redhawks
Oregon: The Salem-Keizer Volcanoes
Pennsylvania: The Harrisburg Senators
Tennessee: The Nashville Sounds
Texas: The Round Rock Express
Utah: The Salt Lake Bees
Virginia: The Richmond Flying Squirrels
West Virginia: The West Virginia Power
So today, the BS,W admin staff decided to have a nice little trip down to the city of Richmond, Virginia to take in a minor league game. These weekend excursions are becoming more common when the Nationals are out of town and not taking in a baseball game is seemingly out of the question. When I was given the options on which teams were going to play this weekend, the one that stuck out to me was the Richmond Flying Squirrels. The reason for this is likely that I had driven past this stadium several times when I was still in college as I had a couple of friends who attended Virginia Commonwealth University. Having driven past it and not ever going had given me a sort of odd curiosity of The Diamond and the Flying Squirrels team.
The day started out exactly as it should have, a trip to Wawa to fuel up and some good old fashioned BS’ing on the way down. It does not need to be mentioned, but I will do it anyway when I say that Wawa is a golden haven of amazing. None dare cross it’s threshold and frown. After fueling up, our trip continued North …Err South toward Richmond. We had left early in an attempt to make it before game time, but also to have enough time to grab a bite to eat a local eat ‘em up joint. Upon our arrival to Richmond, the BS,W staff realized that our travel agent had incorrectly booked the game time start. It was in fact a 2:05 P.M. start and not a 1:05 P.M. start, but the beauty of this is that I was able to sit back without feeling rushed and enjoy a fine brew at a place called Bottom’s Up Pizza. For the record, I definitely recommend checking this place out in Richmond. It is kind of hidden away, but the pizza was excellent and it was a nice laid back atmosphere.
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Huzzard | David Huzzard | 
May 19, 2012 4:50 pm | 
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