Well, I’ve not been here. I notice that the last post I wrote was right after the Blacksburg shooting. Since then, my daughter has matriculated at Virginia Tech, my house has undergone a major renovation, and I saw a lot of baseball games.
Nothing much that many people will be interested in, I guess–but plenty has gone on. Baseball has consumed a lot of my attention this summer. The Washington Nationals had a much, MUCH better season than anybody predicted, finishing with a record of 73-89. That doesn’t sound so good, unless you consider that the major sports press predicted before the season that the Nationals would be “historically bad.” For example, Gary Graves in USA Today compared the Nats with the 1962 Mets. Continue reading ‘Hey, where ya been??’
Two weeks ago, I walked around the neighborhood of the new Nationals Park with Bob Wright of the Baseball History Podcast. I posted a few pictures back then that I took without knowing much about what I was seeing.
Today Jacqueline Dupree, the pre-eminent documenter of the development of Near Southeast DC, led a walking tour of the stadium neighborhood for anybody who showed up.
Although it was very windy and temperatures were in the 30s, the front of 20 M Street SW, a building owned by Lerner Enterprises, showed a temperature of 58 degrees.
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Continue reading ‘Nationals Stadium Tour #2′
I’m not an official Baseball Blogger (see the navigation column at the right for some good ones), so I have to get my information from those other guys and gals.
Today the Nats released a wonderful animated video tour of the new baseball stadium. NBC4 has it posted on their website. (Sorry about the possible commercial right before it; they’re a commercial TV station, after all.)
Thanks to the generosity of the contractor who did some work on our house, I got to see the Nats play the Baltimore Orioles from the club level of Oriole Park at Camden Yards last June. The club level in this video (with the nice bar, opening out to the picnic-table seating) is very similar to the one in Baltimore. Nice!
The most reliable reason to go to a Washington Nationals game the past two years has been the chance to see Ryan Zimmerman play. He’s truly the star of the team, the face of the franchise. Because he has less than three years of major league service, the Nationals own him the way every team used to own every player before free agency.
The Nats had until March 11 (tomorrow) to sign him. He was the only player on the team still unsigned. Zim and his agent have been in negotiations with the Nats for weeks, with the possibility of a multi-year contract looming. The Nationals could have offered big bucks, or could have simply renewed last year’s contract with no change–or anywhere in between. Continue reading ‘Ryan Zimmerman still a National’
Prompted, I am quite sure, by the stunning photos posted on Dave’s Midlife Blog two days ago, NBC4, the local NBC owned-and-operated TV station, took a crew into the stadium site to photograph its progress.
I have to admit they got better pics than I did. But then, they were allowed to crawl all over the upper deck, while I had to peer in from outside.
I just got back from meeting my podcast buddy Bob Wright, producer of the Baseball History Podcast. He’s in DC for a conference, and we met (for the first time face-to-face) and went down to the new stadium neighborhood, where I took some pictures. Here’s “your game announcer Bob Wright” Continue reading ‘Stadium tour with Bob Wright’
Well, actually, my first baseball junk mail of the year is what arrived in my mailbox today. A sporting-goods chain sent me their baseball catalog. I guess because I bought a bunch of Nationals clothes and stuff there last summer, I’m probably qualified on their mailing list as, maybe, a youth baseball coach or something.
Or maybe it’s because as an aging boomer, I’m supposed to stay forever young. Who knows? I was a terrible baseball player as a kid, so I’d be no better as a 53-year-old guy.
Ryan Zimmerman has reached the stage of budding stardom where a recognizable picture of him is the background of the first inside page. No team logo on his cap, though. So he’s not a generic National, but rather Ryan of all baseball. (I think I can also recognize the Orioles’ Miguel Tejada behind some text, but Zim’s the one who is recognizable and looking right into the camera.)
An adult-sized Louisville Slugger bat sells for $90.00. Next time I see six or seven bats broken during a big-league game, I’ll bear that in mind.
Today, the first day I went back to the classroom after the great Washington Ice of 2007, I almost busted my butt taking out the garbage in the morning. A relatively warm rain had fallen through the night, landing on the solid ice in which our neighborhood is encrusted. It, of course, refroze instantly, causing a slick glaze onto which my shoes could not hold. Continue reading ‘Harbingers of spring?’
The sign is from Monument Realty, the company developing the area closest to the new stadium. It’s going to turn a grungy neighborhood street into a snazzy retail-and-restaurant strip.
This Metro station is at Half and M Streets, SE, in Washington, DC.
As I write this, the station is actually closed for expansion, to accommodate the thousands of baseball fans who will come through it in 2008.
The stadium is one block ahead of you, at Half and N Streets.
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