All posts tagged: Baseball

Five in a Row Too Much to Ask of Nats

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After an amazing streak where the Nats won four in a row from the big bad American League East – including a shutout against the Yankees and two walk-off wins in extra innings against the Blue Jays – they reverted to form today in losing 9-4 in front of a Father’s Day crowd that included the Browns.  Yes, Andrew and Claire sprung for Nat’s tickets for the old man (well, there’s more to the story which I’ll get to in a moment) and we all went for a day of baseball and fried food at Nationals Park. Even the Nats reverting to their old ways of bad starting pitching, bad relief pitching, and untimely disappearances at key moments by the team’s 3-4-5 hitters couldn’t put a damper on a very nice Father’s Day weekend. I saw my “celebration” of Father’s Day actually beginning on Friday, when Andrew did some community service work at the Whitman-Walker AIDS clinic and then met up with Claire for time with friends.   I picked them up on Friday evening and …

Wooden Bats and Summer Nights

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One of our joys of summer is watching and supporting college wooden bat baseball.  This is baseball for college players to help them learn to hit with wooden bats after years of hitting with aluminum bats.  (Don’t you just hate the “ping” of the aluminum bat on ball?) We’re lucky to have one of the top wooden bat leagues in the country here in the DC area – the Cal Ripken Sr. Collegiate Baseball League – with two teams within easy driving distance.  We’ve had season passes to the Bethesda Big Train for a number of years and we also catch some games of the Silver Spring-Takoma Thunderbolts. Candice helped organize a special event for her employer – Christ Episcopal School Night – at the Bethesda Big Train game on Friday.  It was great fun.  Some 80 CES parents, staff, and students came out as part of a 700+ crowd on a beautiful summer night to see the Big Train absolutely crush the Alexandria Aces.  When we left after 7 (we had children to collect), …

Tiger Stadium Going, Going…

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Yet another baseball icon may soon be history.  The City of Detroit began demolition yesterday on the last remaining – and most historic – parts of Tiger Stadium.  This in spite of the fact that the city had agreed to maintain the stadium until an appropriate adaptive reuse of the stadium or a viable new use of the site was in place.   Neither has happened.  With the city’s commencement of demolition, Detroit is moving towards having yet another vacant piece of land with no plans for redevelopment in place. A court injunction is in place this weekend, stopping the demolition for a short time.  To read the story – and find out how you can contact the City Council and Mayor’s Office in Detroit to oppose the demolition plans – visit PreservationNation’s blog. Tiger Stadium was built in the same year as Fenway Park.  While Boston figured out how to save its iconic ballpark and make it one of the most beloved places in America (except to Yankee fans), Detroit went with the allure of …

Great Day for a Ballgame

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Check one more off the list of MLB ballparks visited as I joined several friends and colleagues to take advantage of our work trip to Kansas City and catch the Royals at Kauffman Stadium on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  Barb, Dolores (pictured with DJB at left), Barb’s husband Rob, and Royce joined our hosts the Kempers for a great day at the ballpark.  Kauffman, built in 1973, is one of the earliest of the new modern baseball-only stadiums that helped turned Kansas City into a mecca for sports architects.  They just completed a major $250 million renovation before the start of this season.  The clean, modernist design has held up well and helped end the era of cookie-cutter multi-purpose stadiums. With two architects and the rest preservationists in our group, we spent a lot of time talking about the architecture.   But we primarily spent the day having a great deal of fun.  From the beginning, the Royals have come up with some great activities that make you smile.  It was Kids Day at the ballpark and kids …

It Ain’t Over…

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As I’ve written before, I love good baseball writing.  So I almost laughed out loud when reading the Baseball Prospectus’ It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over and came across this passage from a story about the 2003 National League Central pennant race between the Houston Astros and the Chicago Cubs: The Cub’s opponents going into the final four days were the Reds and Pirates, and the Astros had four games against the Brewers.  The top two teams in the NL Central would battle it out against the bottom three, and whoever beat up the eminently beatupable would advance. “Eminently beatupable.”  With language like that, you know exactly what he means. More to come… DJB

No Obama First Pitch for the Nats

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It appears that George, Tom, Abe, and Teddy will be the only presidents to appear at Nationals Park tomorrow for opening day. The current resident of the White House, President Obama, has turned down an invitation from the Washington Nationals to throw out the first pitch for the home opener tomorrow against the Philadelphia Phillies. Perhaps Obama has watched the Nats lose their first two series of the season, to begin a rousing 0-6 – MLB’s only team still without a win.   Or perhaps he has enough problems to deal with without having to take time out to watch a team that’s still not ready for prime time. Let’s hope a change in scenery and coming home will help the Nats get that elusive first win.  And we can dream about the time that Washington has a baseball team that even a basketball-loving president would want to see. More to come… DJB

Opening Day

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A few observations from around the big leagues on Opening Day: Those young Nats pitchers may be in need of a bit of seasoning.  Maybe those Baseball Prospectus writers were right.  Still we have 161 games to go! Nonetheless, it was good to see Adam Dunn hit his first Nats dinger during game 1. O’s rout the Yankees.  Way to go O’s! What did C.C. Sabathia do all winter?  Eat all the money given to him by the Yankees? New look Braves looked pretty good against the Phillies. More to come… DJB

A Night of Baseball Geekdom

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Tonight I put everything on the back burner and wallowed in a night of baseball geekdom.  Yes, it was the annual pre-season visit to Politics & Prose bookstore by the editors of Baseball Prospectus.  And it was a night of VORP (Value Over Replacement Player), BQS (Blown Quality Starts), BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) and other incomprehensible acronyms and statistics.  It was also a night for a long soliloquy by co-editor Steven Goldman on why the Yankees will be facing a huge decision in 2010 on Derek Jeter, when they predict his bad glove, age, slumping hitting, and a chase for 3,000 hits will all come together the year his contract expires.  As they note, …famous-player milestones sell tickets and merchandise, but as veterans of the Astros’ “Biggioquest ’07” can tell you, subjugating team goals to the greater glory of a fading star isn’t conducive to winning.  By 2010, Jeter’s glove won’t play in the infield and his bat won’t play anywhere else.  His 3,000th hit will have zero benefit to the winning effort. As …

New National Dunn Looking Good at the World Baseball Classic

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It is exciting to hear that new Washington National Adam Dunn has had a great start at the World Baseball Classic.  Dunn had a home run in each of the first two victories, but it was his enthusiasm that led Ted Lilly, the starting pitcher for Team USA, to say, “Adam Dunn is a lot of fun,” Lilly said…. “He’s got a lot of energy and he keeps things light. It hasn’t taken him long to kind of warm everybody up.” Dunn has homered in both United States victories here. One home run was a line drive to left-center field, and one was a towering blast pulled to right. The United States manager, Davey Johnson, compared his power to that of Willie McCovey, a Hall of Famer. “I’ve seen a lot of big guys that swing the bat hard,” Johnson said. “But he has a really good eye for a big, strong guy.” A new National compared to Stretch McCovey, one of my heroes as a young boy.  Come on opening day! Read the entire story at the …

Pitchers and Catchers Report in 14 Days

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On the weekend of the Super Hype Bowl, the Washington Nationals web site notes that we’re 14 Days and 13 Hours (as of this posting) until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel.  To celebrate, let’s check out question #1413 from Obsessed With Baseball. Which one of these Hall of Fame pitchers did NOT reach 300 career wins? A.  Mickey Welch  B.  Early Wynn  C. Robin Roberts  D. Kid Nichols And the answer is….C.  Robin Roberts Spring is around the corner. More to come… DJB