The Best Fan In Baseball

Five in a row!? Why does everyone else get to see the good games? I've been to about 15 games this year, and I think I'm something like 3-12 on the season, including the single worst game in professional baseball history.

Despite what most of you who read regularly may think, I DO think that this team can be fun to watch, and tonight's a good reason why. When they're humming along, they play good, crisp baseball. And over the last two weeks, they've hit for power, fielded mostly crisply, and pitched the bejeesus out of the ball. (No coincidence that that coincides with the disappearance of ol' man Simo, huh?)

There's reason for some optimism, especially as players like Kearns, Zimmerman and Lopez regress (progress?) to the mean, given their terribly unswift starts. Dmitri -- for whatever personal faults I have with him -- is a fun player to watch, whose passion for what he does is contagious, not to mention my continued amazement at his ability to put EACH pitch in exactly the right spot for where it's pitched to him. It's away, he slaps it down the line. It's in, he turns on it. He's just locked in, spraying hits like the poor, fat man's Edgar Martinez. (Seems like he's put a bunch of weight back on, though, doesn't it?)

I've been frustrated with some of the pushing of the non-star players on this team, and disappointed by the team's inability to take a losing season to find answers about some of these players. But at the end of the day, we're finding out that Jose Flores is a keeper; Matt Chico's going to be a solid #3 starter some day, and maybe we're finding out that Joel Hanrahan can do it.

He wasn't spectacular tonight, but he misses enough bats to indicate that he could have some success. He still needs to command a bit better, but he's been good enough, so far.

But the real joy for the people who went tonight was watching Ryan Zimmerman pile up two long distance homers.

Here's video of the first one, an upper decker to left field.

Take a look at it, and you'll see one of my favorite fans of all time. It looks like the ball bounces and some lucky fan snares it while sitting. After nabbing it, he holds it up in one hand triumphantly. But look at the jerkwad in the red jersey behind him, bending over and trying to snatch it out of his hand! What a putz! Watch it a few times. The jolly ol' guy is smiling, standing there admiring the blast before his attention turns to the guy with the ball in front of him. He waits a beat or two and you can almost hear the hamster scrambling on the rusty wheel in his brain. Then he lunges forward and tries to steal it like a complete AHole!

Them's our fans!