When Meatheads Blog

If the Nats won as many games as cliches that Rob Dibble managed to cram into one blog entry, I'd be a happy boy.

In another couple of weeks the Nats will start Spring Training for the 2010 season.

Woohoo!

What you, as loyal fans, really want to know is how is this team going to play?

Yes! Please enlighten us, Mr. Analyst!

Well, me too!

Nuts. Thanks for nuttin', buddy. You know how you could make it up to us, Rob? Spout some cliches!

What I will tell you first, is that everyone, from the Lerner family to Drew Storen and Danny Espinosa, care very much about what is going on in DC on and off the field.

If there's one person I've been waiting to hear from all winter, it's Danny Espinosa. I guess that Eury Perez was unavailable for comment?

Note: three-tenths of today's readers are impressed at my restraint at the opportunity to make a Lerner joke.

As I and the players - Zimm, Dunn, Willingham, Morgan, Lannan, Stammen, and Clippard, to name a few, as well as manager Jim Riggleman, GM Mike Rizzo and team President Stan Kasten and new arrivals like Jason Marquis, Matt Capps, Brian Bruney, and Ivan Rodriguez - made the rounds from local health care hospitals [ed: as opposed to what other kinds of hospitals?], to The USO at Fort Belvoir, to a local Children's Hospital, one thing was perfectly clear:

That nobody in public knows who the hell most of these people are?

Brian Bruney: "Hi, I'm Brian Bruney!"
Sick Kid: "..."
Bruney: "You know, from the Washington Nationals!"
Sick Kid: "..."
Bruney: "We're a baseball team."
Sick Kid: "Can you dunk?"

This group of men and women mean business!

DING! goes the clicheometer!

It does raise the question: Who's the woman in the group?

They want to WIN baseball games

DING! I'm trying to recall a player (Besides Hal Chase) who didn't want to win.

but more importantly, they want to do it while being present in the community.

That's gonna make road games a bitch.

Really, why does that matter?

Why would that matter, you might ask?

Hey!

They need to know who they are playing for and what effect winning will have on the local and loyal fans.

So knowing that they're playing for a bunch of dopey looking pasty white guys will affect their performance?

I must've missed Chase Utley's "This one's for you, Vinny!" speech.

The players are hungry

He must've been hanging out with Bruney. Oh, and DING!

even angry

except for Zimmerman. He looks like he's about to doze off.

and most of the new players have World Series rings

Brian Bruney: "Kid, let me tell you a tale about this ring."
Sick Kid: "Do you know Shaq?"
Bruney: "No, but I did hang on Derek Jeter's coattails."
Sick Kid: "..."

The team looks better on paper

As it did each of the last three years.

but to steal Jim Riggleman's line, "We may look good on paper, but we still have to play out every game."

Which beats Manny's strategy of "Boys, PECOTA says we're going to win 75, now let's go out there and rest on our laurels."

Not one player, fan, team rep, owner, or broadcaster [ed: Does not apply to Dave Shea; he's rooting for failure], wants this year's team to fail.

DING!

OK, so what? Did they want the team to fail last year? I bet that shady Dave Jageler was rooting to call another 100-loss season.

We are all in it to win it!

DING DING DING!!!!

Almost broke the bell there.

OK, so what does the broadcaster contribute to winning?

Winning a Championship will not come easy

DING!

Especially for these guys.

and the other 29 teams are not just going to hand over the trophy.

When did the other 28 get it from the Yankees?

But with total commitment all the way from ownership to the last fan, we can prevail - I've seen it happen before!

So is he sorta saying we didn't have a total commitment from ownership? Or is he blaming the fans?

Is it my fault? It's my fault isn't it. Goddammit. I'm so sorry, guys. :-( How can I make it up to you?

There's another DING or two in there, right? I lost count.