All posts tagged: Baseball

Babe Ruth and the creation of the modern celebrity

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In the coming weeks, if we are able as individuals to stay healthy, we may all be looking at books in our “to be read” pile to fill up this time of coronavirus. For very good reasons sports leagues and tournaments are shutting down. Opera houses and theatres are going dark. Schools are closing. Restaurants may be next on the list. Watching cable news is just too damn depressing (and not always very informative). As I was writing this, Major League Baseball cancelled the rest of spring training and has pushed back opening day at least two weeks. If you are looking for a good sports book to fill up your hours, I wish I could send you to Jane Leavy’s 2018 The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created with more enthusiasm. Those who know my reading habits are aware that I always read a baseball book as part of my personal spring training. (The other part of the regimen is watching Bull Durham, the best baseball movie ever.) In 2020, The Big Fella was the …

View of the Capitol

And now we dance!

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Scenes from today’s Washington Nationals World Series Championship Parade through downtown DC. N-A-T-S Nats! Nats! Nats! Woo! We ended up watching the parade from some steps along 6th Street, N.W., where it intersects Constitution Avenue at the National Gallery of Art. The souvenir vendors were out in force, including with the Baby Shark pin. After every Nationals home run from about June 1st on, the team would gather around the batter who hit the dinger and they would have a dugout dance party. Invariably, announcer F.P. Santangelo would say, “And now we dance!” Today was a home run to beat all home runs…and we all danced! A great way to end the most exciting year, and the most amazing month, of baseball in Washington, D.C. Congratulations to the World Series Champion Washington Nationals! More to come… DJB

Finish the Fight

They finished the fight!

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Washington Nationals! World Series Champions!! Unbelievable!!! What an incredible run through the entire playoffs, ending with four road wins in Houston against the mighty Astros. I’m so happy for the only original National, Ryan Zimmerman. Stephen Strasburg as the World Series MVP is so deserving. Love all the “Los Viejos” (the Old Men)! And love all the kids as well! What a season. If you had asked me on Memorial Day… I could not have imagined that the Washington Nationals would make the playoffs, much less the World Series. I could not have imagined a kids song, some goofy sunglasses, and a home-run dance party serving as tools to loosen up a perpetually high-strung, under-achieving team and its Type-A personality fan base. I could not have imagined that the Washington Nationals would be described by one columnist as the only “likeable” team of the four left in the hunt during the League Championship Series. Does he know he’s talking about Washington, D.C., the city the country loves to hate? I could not have imagined manager …

World Series Game - October 25, 2019

Should I wash my socks now?

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This morning, an interesting question popped up on my wife’s Facebook feed. “Now that the Nationals 8-game winning streak has ended, should I wash my Curly W socks that I’ve worn throughout the streak?” Baseball fever has swept Washington, even if the Nationals will not sweep the Astros in the World Series after last night’s 4-1 loss in Game 3. Superstition is a big part of the game, so the question was a serious one. My answer? Yes! Once a streak is ended, you need to shift to new gear so that the momentum can swing back your way. Luckily, I have enough Nats caps, t-shirts, hoodies, and jackets (at least two of each and more in some instances) to make the change easily. For all things streak related, I first turn to the best baseball movie ever, Bull Durham. There’s a famous scene about “respecting the streak” where Kevin Costner’s Crash Davis makes the point to Susan Sarandon’s Annie Savoy that players have to respect a streak…and should not change whatever they think is causing their …

Bumpy roads often lead to beautiful places

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When much-maligned Washington Nationals manager Dave Martinez was asked how he felt after his ballclub just completed an improbable four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship Series (NLCS), he went back to something his mother told him: “Often bumpy roads lead to beautiful places.” Then, in light of earning the franchise’s first trip to the World Series, he added, “And this is a beautiful place.” Oh, is it ever! NLCS Most Valuable Player Howie Kendrick—one of 18 resident “Los Viejos” (the Old Men) on the Nats playoff roster over the age of 30—said, “I can truly say this is the best time of my career, the best moment of my career this year.” I can add that in my 55 years of being enthralled by baseball—beginning as a nine-year-old with a 1964 trip to Wrigley Field on a family vacation to see the Cubs play Bob Gibson and the St. Louis Cardinals; to following Willie Mays and the San Francisco Giants from afar, as a kid growing up in Middle …

Now That Was Exciting!

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I was there for Game 5 of the 2012 National League Division Series, camera up and ready to capture Drew Storen throwing the division-winning strike that never came. Two years later I was in the stands when rookie manager Matt Williams walked to the mound in the top of the 9th. There stood Jordan Zimmermann, just one out away from completing two of the most amazing back-to-back games with a potential win in Game 2 of the 2014 National League Division Series following his no-hitter to end the season. Only Williams never gives him the chance. Williams pulls Zimm from the game and puts in . . . yes . . . Drew Storen. Who in this instance quickly gave up two hits and one run and the Nats went on to lose the game in an excruciating 18 innings. And there was more in 2014, 2016, and 2017. Yes, there’s a pattern here. So the bottom of the 8th and the top of the 9th in last night’s National League Wild Card game was …

Citi Field

Ballpark

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The latest stop on my quest to visit all 30 Major League ballparks* found me, earlier this week, with a friend at the front gate of Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. It had taken almost an hour by train during the height of the evening commute to get from midtown Manhattan to Flushing. After stepping off the subway, I was disappointed to find the ballpark — home to one of two major league baseball teams in the nation’s largest city — in what was essentially a suburban setting, surrounded by parking lots. The game had just begun so we stopped only briefly to take in the entry rotunda, yet even that short pause made me think of the gateway to Ebbets Field, the famous home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was only later that I discovered that the ballpark was in its unfortunate location thanks to that old enemy of urbanism, Robert Moses. And yes, the owners of the Mets had appropriated the Brooklyn Dodgers and the “New York City history of …

A Weird Night at the Ballpark

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Maybe it was the full harvest moon over a packed Nationals Park on Friday the 13th.* Perhaps it was the insertion of Jason—the villain with the hockey mask from the Friday the 13th movies—into the President’s Race. (He favored Teddy for some reason unbeknownst to me.) Who knows for sure . . . but it was a weird night at the ballpark. Beginning with the national anthem. Did I mention that Washington was highlighting National Truck Driver Appreciation Week? Well, the singer of the Star Spangled Banner was a trucker who brought his guitar to the stadium. After strumming the opening chord, he sang an enthusiastic—if not exactly on-key—version, which would have been okay if he had dropped the idea of bringing the guitar back into play while still singing. Suffice it to say, our friend did not quite match the pitch of the guitar at the end of the anthem, which I could see coming. It was a “don’t give up your day job” moment. While it was a Friday night in September, it was …

Ted's wine

It gets late early out here

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A couple — friends since our years in Staunton in the 1980s — came to visit this weekend. We spent most of our time over the past three days cooking, drinking wine, eating, playing guitars, and talking. But mostly talking. No matter if it has been a decade since college and you’re meeting with your former classmates at a wedding, or almost four decades since you moved to a new town and established lasting relationships, when you gather with long-time friends the stories pick up where you last left off and weekends can turn magical. The legendary New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra once noted that towards the end of his career he played a good number of games in left field. When World Series games were still played in the daylight, left field in old Yankees Stadium could be difficult to navigate because of the deep, autumn shadows. Berra was asked about playing that position and he said, “It gets late early out here.” People laughed, but Berra recalled that someone told him that …