Archive for the 'baseball' CategoryPage 3 of 3

Too many irons in the fire?

Published
by
Dave
on March 29, 2006
in baseball, language, midlife and podcasting
. 1 Comment

I don’t know whether any of the four of you who read this blog have wondered where I am, but I’m assuming perhaps so.

As the title of this post suggests, I’m feeling that I have too many irons in the fire. This English idiom implies that I have too many projects going on at once, and one source suggests it has to do with blacksmithing. In any event, it means you’re trying to do too damn many things at one time.

That’s how I feel lately. I’ve been podcasting like crazy, keeping on with The Word Nerds week after week. We don’t have any sponsorship or advertising revenue yet, but we are hopeful that we may start making gasoline money soon. We have not missed a week since March 21, 2005, so we recently celebrated our first anniversary as a podcast. And we are happy to have a nice-sized worldwide audience.

I’m also teaching like crazy–three schools, three different administrations, three different sets of faculty meetings, and so on.

And the baseball season is about to start. There is an exhibition game in two days between the Washington Nationals, my hometown team, and the Baltimore Orioles, our rivals from the other league, 45 minutes up the road from Washington. The Orioles have a storied history, having won the World Series in 1983, and having fielded a number of successful teams until recently.

Luckily for the hapless Nationals, the Orioles have fallen on hard times, and even in spring training games, the Nats have beaten the O’s several times. After an unexpectedly strong first season in Washington, chances are pretty good that the Nats will suffer and bounce around the bottom of the division standings this year. No matter. I have good seats behind home plate.

I have a ticket for the Battle of the Beltways (Washington and Baltimore) on Friday of this week. And I got an email this morning telling me my season tickets for the Nats are on the way! They even gave me a tracking number! Life is good! Spring has sprung!

Categories: , , ,

Yes! There will be baseball!

Published
by
Dave
on March 5, 2006
in Washington DC and baseball
. 2 Comments

The Washington Post and the AP report on this lovely Sunday evening (when the Oscars are on the TV upstairs) that Major League Baseball has signed the lease passed last month by the DC City Council.

There will be baseball in town for a long time!

Those of you in non-baseball countries might not get this, but baseball is the national pastime of the United States. It was created at about the time of the Civil War, in the 19th century, shortly after this little experiment in republican democracy nearly failed forever.

The capital of the United States had been without a team for 34 years before last summer. Then the Montreal Expos were moved from Montreal (where nobody went to their games) to Washington (where 2.7 million people went to their games).

Thanks to Maury Brown of Baseball Journals for keeping all us Ballpark Guys up-to-date on the status of this ordeal throughout the winter. Now I can buy a new Nationals cap that fits properly, without fear of its becoming obsolete in a year.

Categories: ,

And still no word about the stadium

Published
by
Dave
on March 1, 2006
in Washington DC and baseball
. 0 Comments

Well, the Washington Nationals are in spring training. I have bought a mini-plan of tickets, with wonderful seats right behind home plate, and I have even found another family with which to share the plan, so we’ll be going to 10 games this summer (which is about the right number for us to fit into our schedules).

I am ready for baseball.

And the Nationals are getting ready for baseball, too. There are daily reports from spring training: Alfonso Soriano, the star second baseman we acquired several weeks ago, might not agree to playing outfield. (He was acquired for his bat, after all.) We got a new pitcher, Pedro Astacio, who may or may not be ready to go when the season starts. My two favorite players, Brian Schneider and Chad Cordero, are playing in the World Baseball Classic.

Yet the status of our team remains somewhat in limbo, because Major League Baseball has not yet decided whether to accept the DC Council’s lease agreement. MLB has to know that this is the best they will get from this city council in this, the most attractive market that had no baseball team before 2005. Yet they drag their feet.

It drives me crazy. Well, at least I’ll see 10 games from section 417 this summer.

Categories: ,

Patience, baseball fans!

Published
by
Dave
on February 9, 2006
in Washington DC and baseball
. 1 Comment

Well, yes, maybe it is too early to get excited about the new stadium. But maybe not.

In the Washington Post this morning, a report by David Nakamura and Thomas Heath says that Major League Baseball is “very concerned” about the lease deal. Skeptics and pessimists probably read that as a gloom-and-doom scenario. And a piece by Dave Sheinin points out that much of the Nationals operation remains on hold, basically, because the owners and administrators are all still the same lame duck caretakers who ran the team last year.

However, on the BallPark Guys discussion forum (the best forum I’ve found for talking about the Nationals), the general feeling is that MLB is really just making the DC Council sweat it out for a few days before they, the team owners of MLB, give the only reasonable answer they can to the new deal: yes, we’ll go ahead.

Fact is, MLB doesn’t have a better town than Washington for this team, and they probably won’t get a better deal than what the Council coughed up in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

But I’m not yet breathing easy about the stadium and the team. Only when both sides have said yes, will I rejoice.

Categories: ,

A baseball stadium for Washington, DC?

Published
by
Dave
on February 8, 2006
in Washington DC and baseball
. 1 Comment

Is it a done deal? Am I jinxing the whole thing by even writing a blog entry on it?

The Associated Press reports that the DC City Council approved a revised lease deal for a new baseball stadium in Washington. We’re waiting to see what Major League Baseball has to say about the revisions. In the Washington Post, Thomas Boswell has weighed in with a column. The local report is by David Nakamura.

It looks like there might actually be a deal for a new stadium, and then soon that there might be a sale of the team from Major League Baseball to a real ownership group.

I am not a huge sports fan, but I’ve always been a baseball fan. When my children were small and we all lived in Nashville, one of our favorite summertime outings was to see the Nashville Sounds play at Greer Stadium.

Before my wife and I lived in Nashville, we were in New York City, and I got to sit in the cheap seats of Yankee Stadium watching the Yanks in the legendary late-1970s/early-1980s phase of the team. I’d take the subway from the west 70s in Manhattan up to the South Bronx and be in baseball heaven for a few hours.

The inaugural season of the Washington Nationals last summer was a lot of fun; and the month of June, when the Nats were in first place for several weeks, was baseball nirvana. They’ll not be as good this summer, probably, but I’ll still attend 10-12 games and love every minute of it.

Can it be that we really do get to keep this team permanently? Can we allow ourselves to truly cherish our very own Nats?

Categories: ,