Winter’s Dream For A Baseball Fan

Photo Credit: Michele S. Twitter @aNatsFan

In our minds is an image that has been nurtured by the cold, dark evenings of an interminable winter.  Our young men bound out of the dugout wearing bridal veil white uniforms into the blinding sunshine set against impossibly green grass and an azure sky.  While this is the staple of myriad games to come this one instance marks a threshold.  It’s Opening Day.  There will be special games in the offing, to be sure.  But, there won’t be one of these for another year.

We divide our calendar year neatly into four equal segments.  While this is wonderfully symmetrical in organization it doesn’t reflect the realities of either the climate or our life experiences.  The year actually divides along two unevenly divided digital hemispheres.  It’s shorts or slacks, open-toed footwear or shoes, air-conditioning or wood stove. The list goes on ad-infinitum.  Add one more to the list:

Baseball is here or baseball is gone.

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Washington Nationals: 2017 Predictions; Let’s see what you have! Plus bonus news!

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Navy hosts an exhibition game for the Red Sox and Nationals in Annapolis

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The Window To Win is Open #Nats

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Is Anthony Rendon’s injury going to force a stint on the DL?

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It had been 115 days in limbo of not knowing who the new #Nats closer would be…

For 115 days, it has been the daily ‘Who’s the closer’ commentary in Washington, D.C. once it became official on December 5th of 2016 that the Washington Nationals would need to name a new closer as their most recent closer, Mark Melancon, had signed a free agent deal with another team. Today it became official that Blake Treinen would be the new Nationals closer. We wrote this piece on December 20th why Blake Treinen made the most sense to us then, and this new article carries over many of those thoughts including commentary on closers of the past. This will also be the subject for our next Podcast.

The off-season was a rollercoaster in a search for the closer. When Melancon signed elsewhere, Mike Rizzo then set his sights on signing free agent Kenley Jansen, but that did not work out despite the fact that Jansen’s agent at the Wasserman Media Agency confirmed the Nationals made the largest bid for Jansen which was rumored to be $85 million. News broke in mid-December that Jansen had agreed to a $80 million deal to stay with the Dodgers.
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Updated: Treinen named the closer; Today marks the end of the Grapefruit League schedule for the #Nats

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Donald Trump and the Ceremonial First Pitch

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Opening Day for some teams is on Sunday; The new MLB rule changes

As I’m sure y’all have heard, MLB officially announced the 2017 rule changes. This is the next step in commissioner Rob Manfred’s never ending quest to reduce dead time and increase action in games.

MLB is officially instating the automatic intentional walk, where just a signal from the dugout is needed to send a man to 1st base, and we can do away with the mind numbing, long, drawn out process of throwing four balls (did the sarcasm come through strongly enough on that?). In addition to that, some mild tweaks were made to replay, and managers now have only 30 seconds to decide if they want to challenge a call. Should a call be challenged, New York now only has 2 minutes to complete their review process and send a ruling back to the umps. There are, of course, exceptions to this 2-minute rule, and it really seems like more of a guideline than an actual rule. Additionally, if a manager is out of challenges, he can’t ask nicely for the umps to review a call on their own until the 8th (they could previously do this starting in the 7th). Continue reading

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Jeremy Guthrie is the last long-man standing; Stephen Strasburg gets his last tune-up before Opening Day

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