Jacobs powers first-place Marlins past Nationals. Bergmann's seven run 5th pretty much doomed this game. So is this a hitter's park? The only hope on the horizon is Shawn Hill, Wily Mo Peña and Chad Cordero coming back.
Permalink
Afterwards, I watched the Tigers win their first game. Pudge Rodriguez also got his 2,500th hit. After that, it was over to the Cubs and Pirates in the 14th inning. Northsiders took the lead in the top of the 14th, but LaRoche hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the 14th to equalize while the Parrot appeared to pelvic thrust in his pajamas. Felix Pie put the Cubbies ahead for good in the top of the 15th.
April 8 Permalink
The Washington Post architecture columnist doesn't like Nationals Park, but the reasons are laughable, as if he's expecting a hippopotamus to fly. A ballpark that functions like a monument would be nice, but it must, first and foremost, function as a ballpark. As much as I criticize how far away the seats are, the arguments presented here are ridiculously irrelevant.
From the day the design was revealed, the stadium outside was going to look like an office building. Still, I think Nationals Park had many distinguishing features on television so you'll know exactly where you are from just a few shots. There's the vertiginous press box view of outfield fly outs and the white stone behind home plate. Inside the seating bowl, the riot of red, white and blue, remind me not so much of a cathedral, but of a Lego® construction.
April 7 Permalink
Marlins 10, Nationals 7. It should have been another one-run loss, but Rauch gave up a homer to Andino in the 9th. After last week's one-hitter, Redding got hammered tonight. Bad luck with the situational hitting tonight as the Nats ended two innings with the bases loaded.
April 6 Permalink
Cardinals 3, Nationals 0. Nats had nothing today. Kyle Lohse et. al. shut down the Washington bats as a fine performance by American Hero John Lannan was wasted.
April 5 Permalink
Today is the birthday of Lasting Milledge. Pictured is his signature moment, high-fiving fans after hitting a home run. He's already homered against the Phillies on Monday.
Permalink
Wendell Wagner and I played as a two-man team in the ICT Warm-Up. We played as Presidential Pipe Dreams. I was John Anderson. He was Dennis Kucinich.
We finished 10th with a 7-7 record and I finished fourth among individuals. Our only 30-pointer was a bonus on defunct airlines. I powered "I'm My Own Grandpa", "1999", and Baltimore Orioles managers.
Permalink
Cardinals 5, Nationals 4. Another 5-4 loss. Mediocre pitching by Chico and Nats almost came back on Johnson and Flores homers. Why is Flores headed back to the minors again?
Permalink
Watched the Numb3rs episode "Black Swan". While the FBI raid a methlab, they arrest Isaac Meechum, a suspicious character wandering nearby. He has guns, duct tab and plastic handcuffs in his truck, appearing to be attempting a kidnapping.
Meechum is connected to an anti-government whit supremacist group called the New America Front. He refuses to talk about the NAF have planned so Granger and Sinclair stake out Meechum's car, parked in front of a bar to smoke out his accomplices. They track the accomplices to a house rented by Meechum.
The FBI sets up a stakeout in a house for sale across the street and identify the two men as Joshua Quigley and Bernard Laiken, both with criminal records related to the NAF. Reeves sets up a diversion by crashing into the NAF car while the pair are outside smoking a cigarette. Granger discovers there's a third man they never saw inside.
The FBi try to figure out exactly what the third man is up to. The other two might be outside smoking because the third man has a power relationship with them, but that seems unlikely since the FBI hadn't seen him before. The deduce the third man must be building a bomb. The house is raided resulting in Laiken being shot, the third man blown up, and the Quigley escaping.
Reeves figures out that the NAF have something against the Farmer's American Bank because they put out a Suspicious Activity Report that got the group in trouble. The FBI descend on the downtown LA branch where Quigley has seven pipe bombs attached to his body. Don talks him into giving up.
I was surprised Quigley was telling the bystanders to leave the bank. I would think a fanatic would want a lot of collateral damage. In addition, they never explained what Meechum planned to do with his kidnapping equipment.
April 4 Permalink
Watched Home on the Range. Apparently this film and Brother Bear signaled the death knell of 2-D animation at Disney. I liked that movie and I liked this one. Home on the Range was just plain weird.
The opening song (You Ain't) Home on the Range had terrific lyrics. I noted that Maggie was pulled behind a covered wagon that was pulled by an oxen, which is more historically accurate than the horses you frequently see in Westerns. And the rustler villain lures cows by hypnotic yodeling! Whitlock immediately recognized which character was voiced by Steve Buscemi.
Permalink
Cardinals 5, Nationals 4. Another one-run loss. It was typical Nats game with the offense rallying against the opponent's bullpen. Unfortunately, FLop and Harris couldn't keep the 7th going. Chief went on the DL to make room for Lannan to start on Sunday.
April 3 Permalink
Phils rally from five runs down, win it in 10th against Nationals. The winning streak wouldn't last forever and we shouldn't get too messed-up by an extra-inning loss. Still, the Nats pitching staff shouldn't break down like Bergmann, Rivera and King did in the 6th.
April 2 Permalink
Redding's strong mound effort carries Nats to 3-0. The last 1-0 one-hitter out of Washington was by Dick Bosman on August 13, 1970 against the Twins. All the scoring was provided by yet another Zimmerman game-winning homer.
April 1 Permalink
Watched Barnyard. I was surprised they let a character die in an animated movie. There was open acceptance of adopting unrelated sons. Otherwise, it was pretty predictable irresponsible young cow has to prove himself by protecting his fellow farm animals. I was also disturbed that the male cows had visible udders.
March 31 Permalink
Nationals win late again, knock off Phils with five-run ninth. This game went back and forth. The Phillies sarted 2-0 and the Nats fought back to a 6-2 lead. Hanrahan and King blew the lead in the 7th. The Nats finally won pounding Tom Gordon. Johnson drove in Milledge with the go-ahead run as Milledge danced around Carlos Ruiz at the plate.
March 30 Permalink
Somebody on the Yudachat said that Chipper Jones would hit the first homer at Nationals Park. Darn if that didn't happen. Somebody else thought Zimmerman would hit the first Nats homer. Beyond that happening as well, I remember a promotional video of a virtual tour of Nationals Park narrated by Dave Jageler. On every television, whether in a luxury suite, in one of the restaurant clubs or on the huge screen, showed Zimmerman hitting the walk-off home run against the Yankees. And just like the video, the first game ends on a Zimmerman walk-off homer.
March 29 Permalink
Down Half Street, there weren't many street vendors selling food or souvenirs. I suppose the District of Columbia government would like to put a Taxation Without Representation banner over the garage walls on the left.
The streetlights around the stadium are draped with Nats actions shots flanking them. John Rauch's banner is by the sign for the Unit Block of N Street. It's an interesting juxtaposition since Rauch beat out Randy "The Big Unit" Johnson as the tallest player ever in baseball.
Looking North on South Capitol Street, you can see the Capitol, but it may take the telephoto lens or blowing up a corner of the frame.
On the Southwest corner is a wedge-shaped building housing Nationals offices that pays homage to the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art. The walkway leading to the Home Plate Gate has large numbers on the ground representing significant years in Washington baseball history. To the right are short pylons with the year and an explanation of what happened in that year.
I entered by the First Base Gate where my seats are located, but I continued to walk around the concourse. This morning, Phil Wood said the Opening Night program would not be available other than Opening Night. Well, that wasn't right as they were selling plenty at the concession stands. I also picked up a pin commemorating Opening Night (although it says Opening Day) for my ticket lanyard. I have pins for tomorrow night and Opening Night in 2005, but I wasn't at that game and I won't be there tomorrow night either. You can see the Capitol peeking through the buildings lining Half Street.
While the original Hall of Stars banner remains at RFK for DC United, there's a new banner at Nationals Park which is still missing Sam Rice. The American League and National League Logos are supposed to be in alphabetical order, but it gets sketchy when city/state/region names start with the same letter. On the Anacostia, a tugboat sprayed water.
On the concourse behind home plate, there are four banners telling the history of baseball in Washington from 1859 to the the present. The posts are decorated with pictures of Hall of Famers, except for Frank Howard. Given this is Washington, Bucky Harris, Sam Rice and Joe Cronin ought to be represented as well. Perhaps there should be additional pictures of Ted Williams and Frank Robinson as Washington managers.
So, how do my seats compare with RFK? See for yourself.
As discussed before, I listed six sections in order of preference and didn't even get my sixth choice. I'm paying twice as much for seats that are both further away from the field and further away from the action in the infield. This is not an improvement.
I also asked to be under cover. Directly overhead is sky. I'm sitting in the only place in the back of the lower deck where the upper deck doesn't provide shade and shelter. Meanwhile, the PNC Diamond Seats and Presidents Club seats, the best seats in the house, were sparsely occupied. Apparently PNC stands for People Not Coming.
I'm strangely unimpressed by the huge HD board, especially given that I don't have an HDTV. Both batting orders should be shown along with the positions of the players. When a DH is used, as was the case tonight, the pitcher should be listed as well. I'd prefer interesting information about the batter on the board rather than standard regurgitations from the media guide. Most of the time this would be mean stats, but personal trivia could also be posted. There seems to be great difficulty in transmitting changes quickly to the press, especially with multiple switches and non-obvious batting order substitutions. Why can't the homep late umpires have a walkie-talkie or cellphone to directly call the public address announcer? That line could also go directly to the scoreboard operators and the home PR head who makes announcements to the pressbox who would merely listen in. That way, changes could be transmitted quickly and correctly to everyone.
The out-of-town scoreboard on the right field fence was a riot of color with no useful information. Tonight, they should have been showing updates from the NCAA mens basketball tournament. When it's up and running, I would expect an up-to-the minute summary of every MLB game providing what we never hear from Charlie Slowes. There should be a textual section for each game with room for one piece of fantasy information. As many games as possible should be shown on this board. Since they won't all fit, they should be changed and rotated between every pitch. The fantasy highlights for each game should also be rotated so that you're likely to see something different the next time a particular game comes back. Between innings, the scoreboard should be showing scores from other sports. In other words, I expect that board to be a veritable ticker for fans.
The good news was that I could hear the trivia questions and see and hear the King of Menacing quite clearly. The bad news was that I could see and hear the King of Menacing quite clearly.
There's an auxillary scoreboard behind home plate that me forever to figure out. The word "inning" was there with numbers that turned out to be the score, but they never bothered to put the team names with the numbers. There are also auxillary scoreboards behind the bullpensthat showed what players did the last time, but was otherwise blank. Every inch of scoreboard space should be used for actual information or advertising.
Randy Brunk and his son David saw the game with me. They parked at RFK and said that the shuttle was a breeze. They went three times for food and was successful twice. The first time the lines were too long. I noticed a line stretching the width of the entire concourse at Ben's Chili Bowl. I just had a bag of Cracker Jacks and didn't get hungry anymore.
On the field, the Nats won 3-0, which was a hopeful sign along with the fact that no home runs were hit. I want a pitcher's park.
On the way out, the main Navy Yard entrance was packed so instead of going to the other Navy Yard entrance, I followed a bunch of folks to the Waterfront Station.
The good things were the history - the walkway outside with the dates and the banners with Washington baseball history. I don't know if there's room for more banners, but I'd like to see Hall of Fame-like biographies of great players. I didn't get to the main center field team store, but the home plate store wasn't much. Still I was able to get the program and the pin at a tent near the playground. The smaller souvenir stands should have display cases for counters so people can window shop before they're ready to buy. Right the counters are just forbidding opaque blocks.
I was disappointed with my seats and that's pretty much all I care about. I'm sure the food is better, but I always ate at Union Station on weeknights and bought from the street vendors for weekend day games. I didn't see too many street vendors and I hope the Lerners don't oust them completely. You can see the game from all around the concourse, but I prefer to be in my seat when watching a game. And I wish my seat was closer. For what really matters to me, Nationals Park is a disappointment.
Permalink
I got home in time to watch some of the game between the Red Sox and the Dodgers at the LA Coliseum. There really weren't any dugouts, so it looked like a little league game, or a game at the Elysian Fields in 1845. Even when RFK hosted exhibition games with a 250-foot left field, there were real dugouts.
