All posts filed under: Baseball

Observations from the old ball yard, especially focused on our hometown nine – the Washington Nationals

Great Week to Be a Nats Fan

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With the Washington Nationals heading into today’s game with a chance to sweep a home stand AND extend a winning streak to eight in a row,  I just couldn’t stay away from Nationals Park.  So when friends made plans to join me, it was a done deal – humidity and a hot sun notwithstanding. And am I glad I went.  Sixteen hits!  Adam Dunn’s 30th home run!  J.D. Martin’s first major league win!  Zimmerman gets 3 hits and scores 3 runs!  The offense continues to come through with timely hit after timely hit!  Happy friends and fans all around! A 9-2 romp. (How often do you get to use the words “Nats” and “romp” in the same column?) What a great week to be a Nats fan.  At the end of 25 straight games without a break, the Nats find their inner ballplayers and go on a tear.  As a vacationing bachelor this week (with Candice and the twins away), I’ve also had every opportunity to catch the games on TV and in person. You …

What’s Gotten Into Our Nats?

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On a beautiful night for baseball in the nation’s capital (81 low-humidity degrees at game time), the Washington Nationals continued their mystifying ways – by winning their 6th in a row! Our boys have been playing error-free baseball with sparkling defense since Rockville’s own Jim Riggleman took over as manager more than 20 games ago.  Combine that with a new-found timeliness with their hitting and a rebuilt and generally effective bullpen and – while we may see a bunch of bush-league politics in this town – all of a sudden we’re seeing major league baseball in the District of Columbia! With Candice and the twins in Florida visiting her family and tonight’s promise of beautiful weather, I made up my mind early to take in the Nats-Diamondbacks game.  I was worried that my presence at the ballpark would jinx them, as I’ve been to 4 or 5 games already this season…and all have been losses (if you throw out the 10-10 tie that was won about two months later).  When I barely missed a batting …

Summer Saturdays

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As summer Saturdays go, this was a pretty good one. First of all, I’m focused on moving things off my desk so that both my head AND office are cleared to begin vacation on Monday.  So I went into work this morning.  That may not sound like fun on a summer day, but if no one’s around and you can put on the Bluegrass Instrumentals playlist off the iTunes site and crank up the sound, it makes for a great setting for getting things done. I didn’t stay too long, however, as I wanted to catch the championship game of the Cal Ripken, Sr. Baseball League, featuring the Bethesda Big Train.  My colleague at work (and fellow baseball enthusiast) Dolores and her son Noah joined me at Povich Field where – after the strangest “sun downpour” (this was more than a shower) – the Big Train played a stellar game and beat the Maryland Redbirds 7-0. to cap a 31-10 season with both the regular season and playoff titles.  The Big Train pitcher had a …

Brooks, Big Train, and The Onion

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I’m not sure it is a good sign when New York Times columnists begin showing up at Bethesda Big Train wooden bat league baseball games. Tonight I was at Shirley Povich Field for the Cal Ripken, Sr. League playoff game between Big Train and the Herndon Braves when I look down my aisle to the right (of course) and there sits David Brooks, conservative voice of the Times editorial page and PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer.  Brooks is a commentator who says enough sane things (e.g., see comments about Sarah Palin) to make some believe he’s bi-partisan.  I’ll reserve judgment on that…but I usually agree with how his columns are “interpreted” by the Daily Kos Abbreviated Pundit Round-Up (e.g., David Brooks recycles another “we’re all going to die” column). Nonetheless, I’m not picking on conservatives.  Heck, I’d be concerned if it was Maureen Dowd sitting down the row in the bleachers from me.  Part of the fun of college wooden league baseball is that it really has that small town, family feel.  Kids throw out …

Modernism and baseball stadiums

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My colleague Dolores recently pointed me towards a springtime blog rant by long-time preservationist – and baseball fan – Clem Labine.  Entitled Hey Nick – Get REAL, the blog goes after New York Times architectural critic Nicolai Ouroussoff for panning the two new baseball stadiums in New York City by saying that “American stadium design has been stuck in a nostalgic funk, with sports franchises recycling the same old images year after year.”  Read it for the writing, if nothing else.  (Clem was the founder of The Old House Journal eons ago and you’ll see his way with the written word.) Camden Yards in Baltimore (photo at the top of the post) began the trend toward throwback stadiums. Having attended many a ballgame there (and in other similarly inspired parks), I agree with Clem that these ballparks work AND give the fans what they want. But my recent trip to Kansas City gave me the chance to visit one of the first of the good modernist sports venues – Kauffman Stadium.  The architects here show …

Wooden Bat League Baseball Makes the Big Time

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Our local college wooden bat league – the Cal Ripken, Sr. League – made the big time tonight when the DC/Baltimore regional sports network (MASN) carried the Wooden Bat League All Star Game between the Ripken and Valley League all stars.  Held in Waldorf, Maryland, this was a great showcase for a wonderful summer tradition. Just like last evening’s MLB All-Star game, pitching dominated, with the Ripken All Stars taking a 2-1 win in a crisply played contest.  It was great to see Staunton Braves players, from our former home in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, battling players from the Bethesda Big Train and the Silver Spring-Takoma Thunderbolts. There’s still plenty of time to catch a Wooden Bat League game in your area…whether it be DC, the Shenandoah Valley, Cape Cod, Alaska, California…you name it! More to come… DJB

As We Approach the All-Star Break…

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Regular readers know that I like good baseball writing.  So on a night when the Nationals are uncharacteristically beating up the Astros with 13 runs and 21 hits in a laugher, it was a double treat to find a great story on ESPN.com by Jayson Stark. Best, worst, and weirdest of the first half is a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of April – July 2009 in Major League Baseball.  Stark goes through his first half Cy Young winners, but he also calls out the Cy Yuk winner for the worst pitcher in each league.  Yep, you guessed it…former National Daniel Cabrera won that dubious award for the National League.  Cabrera got the boot… …from a boss so exasperated by his work that GM Mike Rizzo actually announced to the Washington Post, right out loud, that he had to dump this guy because “I was tired of watching him. There are little gems throughout, but the laugh out loud stuff comes in the “Injuries of the Year” section.  Here’s Stark’s take: …

Satchel Paige

Happy birthday, Satchel Paige

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Today would have been the 103rd birthday of Leroy “Satchel” Paige, the legendary pitcher from the old Negro Leagues.  Boston.com has a column about Paige by Larry Tye, who has written a well-received biography of the baseball star. Tye’s column contends that Paige was a subversive to the Jim Crow laws of his era: “But there is more to Satchel’s legacy than eye-popping records. While many dismissed him as a Stepin Fetchit if not an Uncle Tom, he was something else entirely – a quiet subversive, defying Uncle Tom and Jim Crow. He refused to play in a town unless it supplied lodging and food to him and his teammates, a defiance for which young civil rights workers later would get arrested.” Paige is known for many things in baseball, but most remember him because of his turn of a phrase.  The Brainy Quote website has a host of Paigeisms, including: “Age is a case of mind over matter.  If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.” “Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but …

Happy July 4th

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We’re at the end of a busy July 4th celebration here in the Brown household.  The picture at left is a photo Andrew took this evening of the fireworks on the National Mall as viewed from the grounds of the National Cathedral (with a bit of a time lapse). But I’m getting ahead of myself. Andrew and Claire returned from a pilgrimage to Northern Ireland  on Friday (pictures to come in the days ahead) which meant we jumped right in to the July 4th celebration.  They had a swim meet this morning, so Andrew and Claire left with Candice bright and early while I began to put the house together following a week’s worth of painting. One of the down sides of July 4th falling on a Saturday is that we have a swim meet and miss the annual 4th of July parade in Takoma Park.  We’ve been going for years, and love the quirky, small town sensibilities the parade provides in this unique community full of eclectic historic houses.  So I’ll post a photo …

Exploring the Empty Nester Life

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Quick test:  What do leisurely strolls through Politics & Prose bookstore, dinner in Adams Morgan, two days in a row working out together at the gym, almost no time spent in the car, naps, no early Saturday morning swim meet, dim sum, and a racing President all have in common? Answer:  Things we do when Andrew and Claire are out of town. Friday afternoon we put Andrew and Claire on a plane with a group of teenagers from church and their chaperons for a week-long pilgrimage to Northern Ireland.  (I think my high school church group went to Opryland for our pilgrimage!)  While we’re not eager to see the empty nest years arrive, this was the first extended time when Candice and I were here and the children were elsewhere.  We weren’t sure how we’d react, but we’ve taken to it nicely. After that stroll through our favorite bookstore (Candice picked up an Alice Waters cookbook while I bought the new Richard Wolffe book Renegade on Obama’s candidacy), we went to a Mexican restaurant in …