The Washington Nationals came into MLB in 2005, replacing the Montreal Expos. There hasn’t been a lot of achievements for the Nationals, but if there is one memorible thing about the Nationals is their mistakes. Here is the top five Washington Nationals fails.

#5 is, obviously, the misspelling of the word Nationals on the jersey. Apperantly, the people who makes the jerseys screwed up and spelled “Natinals” instead of  ”Nationals”. Ryan Zimmerman and Adam Dunn, who were wearing the jerseys in a home game versus the Marlins, had to have those jerseys replaced during the third inning. Shame on you, Majestic Atheletic.

Video belongs to ginosniper492

#4. I don’t have any video or pictures for this fail, but here’s how it went.  The Nationals ball girl tried to field a FAIR ball, thinking it was a foul ball. She actually posted a video about the incident, but she took it down from YouTube.

#3

Photo from wahingtonpost.com

That what was on MASN2 during a nail-biter. The Nationals were about to make a comeback and Senator Tom Coburn came up on MASN2 while the game was in progress.  Things were screwed up as people, who had Comcast and Cox, turned into MASN2 all of a sudden see Senator Coburn talking on C-Span 2. Now, to be fair, this wasn’t really a fail on the Nats. This was more of a fail on MASN2’s part, however, don’t make fun of me.

#2. This fail is actually a fail on the grounds crew. These guys were trained to put the tarp over the field in ANY weather. The grounds crew tried to put the tarp over the field during a home game against the Phillies and FAILED COMPLETELY. They fail was so bad that, they had to bring in the fans and help them out. To be fair, there wasn’t enough people in the grounds crew. As a result, they had to bring the last ten fans in the stands to help them out. It’s bad enough that the fans had to watch the Nationals, but now they had to do physical labor because the people who were supposed to do that failed completely? Weird.

#1 shows the Nationals mascot, Screech, busting a few moves to Micheal Jackson’s “Thriller”. On ESPN Zone in D.C. on March 2, 2009, his dances to “Thriller” in his re-introduction. The fail is, he is a bad Micheal Jackson impersonator. I admit, I couldn’t do any better than that, but it was just a huge fail. It doesn’t end there, however, at around 1:15 into the video, he starts dancing to “Canned Heat” (the song Napoleon Dynamite danced to) and the most he did was jump around and moves his hands (not dancing). Then at 2:25 into the video, he dances to “Single Ladies”. I don’t want to bore you with the details. Here’s the video. The BIGGEST Washington Nationals fail.

Video belongs to nationalspride (The Nationals had pride in this?!?)

Alright, its speculation time.  Peter Gammons is leaving Espn after the winter meetings.  Here is a USA Today article.  The weird thing is that in every article I can find there is no mention of retirement.  Here are some guesses:

Top Prospects

• MLB Network:  The MLB needs a huge 2nd year and getting Peter Gammons and Harold Reynolds back together would basically be giving them Baseball Tonight plus Peter could drive people to MLB.com for high quality stories
• NESN:  Takes a pay cut and stays home
• AOL: Tim Armstrong has been very aggressively acquiring writers and after the IPO spinoff he will have plenty of money

Runner Ups

• Yahoo Sports:  They are more like SI.  They develop talent or higher undervalued writers.  Can’t see them giving him a raise that would get him away from ESPN
• Retire:  Just because he hasn’t announced his retirement doesn’t mean he won’t do it
• Radio Show:  Same route as Dan Patrick went

Outside Shot:

• FoxSports:  Unlikely as they seem to be trying to scale back salary
• SI:  Pretty unlikely as they tend to develop talent and not pay top price
• Start his own site:  Very difficult to do and he would likely make more money with any of these options

Long Shot

• Takes a year off and then launches website with Bill Simmons in 2011
• SB Nation:  This is a real stretch but Peter gave validity to reading sports on ESPN.  Now he can give validity by writing columns on SB Nation and promoting their bloggers.  He could then freelance on TV.  SB Nation could give him stock and paying him a solid salary.

So last night Rotoinfo.com released a rumored steroid list and theropolitans ran with it.   They give a hat tip to this blog but lets face it no one is reading Rotoinfo or J Schil’s blog.  TheRopolitans is at least getting 20k visitors a month.  The interesting thing about this is that normally when something like this comes out every blog is writing about.  But nowhere else do I see any major blog writing about this.  Personally I believe this is due to the whole MidwestSportsFans fiasco and I don’t think anyone wants to touch it so they don’t get any hate mail.  Blogs write about stuff like this all the time and now I wonder if things are going to change because of what happen with the Midwest Sports Fans situation.

The one thing I can’t stand is how Rotoinfo posted this list.  This is all they posted before the list “Rumored 2003 Steroid list leaks out? at on June 29, 2009 Rumored steroid list (UNCONFIRMED)”

That’s it.  I mean at least give a back story on it.  Like a friend of a friend knows someone who used to work for the MLB or something.  Did Rotoinfo make this up to get new readers?  Maybe?  Should TheRopolitans have published the list?  Who knows, but they can do whatever they want to as they are beholden to no one.  Does this deserver an Outside the Lines Story?  No.  All it is fans talking about people taking steroids.  If some dumb fans want to take this as fact, then that is their problem.  For those of you that haven’t seen the list, here you go:

  Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a picture of Kobe Bryant watching the Dodgers/Angles game with his dad.  Happy Father’s day to to all the fathers. 

On another note thanks to the SF Giants for letting all the fathers and their children run the bases.

Barry Zito’s Twitter Account

By no means do I agree with Manny Ramirez taking PEDs but this is really the first time a star baseball player has been suspended for his use.  

Here is a list of players that were suspended by Majore League Baseball since they instituted the Steroid Policy(Thanks Wikipedia):

The most notable player on this list is Rafael Palmeiro and he really wasn’t a star.  Now we know about all the rumors of star players like Arod and Clemens testing positive and the MLB sweeping it under the rug.  I think its pretty easy to realize someone like Manny Ramirez would be a perfect target.  He is a star but no one really likes him except Dodgers fans and people that have him on their fantasy team.

To be honest though I can’t believe Manny would be dumb enough to test positive but then again he is Manny.  Supposedly his defense will be that he was given medication prescribed by a doctor which is usually everyones defense.  You would think the doctors/scientists he would hire would be way ahead of the curve then any MLB testing standard but I guess not.

This morning a friend called me and told me to bet the Giants to win the West.  With their staff pitching the way it is and the Dodgers losing Manny it may not be a bad idea.  It may take the odds a few days to adjust.  The Giants are right there and the Dodgers are obviously not going to continue to go undefeated at home.

Written by Ryan Lesters, LestersLegends.com

Some reasonably available players to assist you in the Strikeouts category.  Realize that some of these will come with high ERAs & WHIPs because if a Pitcher has low numbers in those categories and a good K total, they’re already spoken for.

Scott Richmond, Toronto Blue Jays – Scott had a great week for the Jays going 2-0 with 13 Ks, a 2.08 ERA, and 1.23 WHIP.  His K/9 ratio was 9.0 and his K/BB ratio was 2.6.  Scott is 3-0 on the year with 20 Ks,  a 2.70 ERA and 1.29 WHIP.  He’s one of baseball’s best kept secrets as he’s owned in just 4.8% of ESPN, 34% of Yahoo, and 44% of CBS Sportsline leagues.

Doug Davis, Arizona Diamondbacks - Doug Davis also had a strong week going 1-1 with 12Ks, a 3.45 ERA and a 1.15 WHIP.  His K/9 ratio was 8.3 and his K/BB ratio was 3.0.  On the season he’s been a little snake-bitten (pun intended) with a 2-3 record, 27 Ks, a 2.91 ERA, and a 1.18 WHIP.   He’s owned in 5.4% of ESPN, 24% of Yahoo, and 31% of CBS Sportsline leagues.

Adam Eaton, Baltimore Orioles – Eaton falls into the category of helping in Ks and not much else.  Last week he went 1-1 with 11 Ks, a 4.72 ERA and 1.20 WHIP.  His K/9 ratio was 7.4 and his K/BB ratio was 2.75.  On the season he’s 1-3 with 21 Ks, a 7.17 ERA, and 1.73 WHIP.  He is owned in 0.5% of ESPN, 1% of Yahoo, and 1% of CBS Sportsline leagues.  I recommend you leave it that way

Koji Uehara, Baltimore Orioles – Eaton’s teammate Uehara is a little more attractive.  He went 0-1 with 11 Ks, a 3.46 ERA, and a 0.85 WHIP.  His K/9 ratio was 7.6 and he did not issue a Walk.  On the year he’s 2-2 with 19 Ks, a 4.50 ERA, and 1.13 WHIP.  He’s owned in 5.9% of ESPN, 20% of Yahoo, and 49% of CBS Sporsline leagues.  He got hit with a liner in last night’s start so I caution you that he could miss a start or two.

Scott Olsen, Washington Nationals - Scott pitched much better this past week going 1-1 with 10 Ks, a 2.31 ERA, and 1.63 WHIP.  His K/9 ratio is 7.7 and his K/BB ratio is 2.5.  On the year he’s 1-3 with 20 Ks, a 6.08 ERA, and 1.73 WHIP.  Even when he pitches well, that WHIP is killer, which probably justifies leaving him in the free agent pool.  Speaking of which, he is owned in 0.8% of ESPN, 3% of Yahoo, and 17% of CBS Sportsline leagues.

Dave Bush, Milwaukee Brewers – Bush was solid last week going 1-0 with 9 Ks, a 3.55 ERA, and 0.95 WHIP.  His K/9 ratio was 6.4 and his K/BB ratio was 2.25.  On the year he’s 1-0 with 18 Ks, a 4.50 ERA, and a 1.27 WHIP.  He is owned in 3.8% of ESPN, 22% of Yahoo, and 49% of CBS Sportsline leagues.

Today on Espn Peter Gammons will interview Alex Rodriguez.  You can view a sneak peak at Deadspin.  By looking at the sneak peek it looks like ARod is taking the honest route which I think is a good idea.  He could have always stuck to his guns and said the test must have not been right and everyone would have known he was lying.

It’s interesting he chose Peter Gammons and ESPN when it was SI that broke the story.  Personally, I think he chose ESPN because he can get the interview on his terms and we all know that ESPN is here to report the news they choose to and not report everything.  I mean how can they come out and ask ARod the really hard questions if they have a multi million dollar deal to televise their games.

Anyone think someone at ESPN had the ARod story and chose not to break it because they knew another news outlet would do it?

Obviously right now Barry Bonds is the most hated player in baseball history.  Now that Arod has tested positive for steroids, this could change.  Here are a few things that could make ARod hated more:

1. He plays for the NY Yankees!
2. If anyone thought there was a top player that was clean, we thought it was ARod.  He has done a great job tricking us.  Everyone new Barry was guilty.
3. He is not clutch and his all time numbers will probably be some of the best ever.  Personally, that makes me hate him more then Barry.
4. He was the first 100 million dollar man.  He will probably make double what Barry made during his career.
5. He is a baby
6. Joe Torre, someone you can’t help but like, called ARod “A-Fraud” in his new book.
7. The famous swatting glove incident against the Red Sox.
8. The possibility that he cheated on his hot wife with Madonna.  Has anyone seen Madonna lately?  She looks terrible.

What else am I missing?

Last night the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series and it was great to see a National League team win a World Series.  It was a also a great story to see Brad Lidge dominate and get back to his original form after blowing a save to go to the World Series a few years ago.

The game was over and the celebration ensued.  You have to love the dogpiles.  Since these things happen every time a team makes the playoffs and moves on each round someone should start keeping tracking of the record for the number of players in the dogpile.  Obviously the one last night was pretty good.

Back to the one thing I hate about Sports.  Just because you win the World Series it does not give your dumb phans the excuse to riot.  It is pretty much uncalled for.  I can’t tell you how much I hate it.  If my team won the World Series and I was there I would probably be one of the drunkest people there but rioting is a whole another story.  Here is video of a car that was flipped over by Phillies’ Phans.   While its hilarious to watch I still hate it.

Do you consider yourself a rioter if your team won a championship?  Let me know in the comments.

P.S. The DH is also something I hate pretty bad too so I am glad the Phillies won for pretty much that reason alone.