Tonight's The Night

It's Time.

Way back in October 2004, I started writing the blog, not really knowing what to expect, and certainly not expecting that it would get to be as big (relatively speaking) as it is, nor would it have given me some of the opportunities it has.
I started for two simple reasons.

First, I wanted an outlet for my writing. My day job has me doing lots of godawful writing. Heretofores. Whereases. Convoluted clauses that wrap around themselves. It's not a particularly fun type of writing, and I wanted something that I'd enjoy more. Something a bit more conversational. I didn't want to be stuck writing that boring way for the rest of my life. I wanted an outlet.

Second, I didn't want to bore my girlfriend to tears. I didn't know a heck of a lot about the Expos. Writing about them would help me to learn, to help me discover the team. As I learn things, I want to share them. Rather than boring her with details about Brad Wilkerson and TJ Tucker, I wrote about them here.

But things change. I've done plenty of writing these last few years. Lord knows how many books I've essentially written. And finding new things to say is tough. (I'd say 'interesting' things, too, but that'd imply that half my posts were!)

It's time to move on.

Thanks to everyone for reading. Thanks for all the comments -- even the stupid ones! And a special thanks to the friends I've made along the way, something I certainly didn't expect when I put fingers to keyboard three-and-a-half years ago. But that's definitely been the most rewarding thing.

I'll still be at the game, eating my chili nachos. I'll still be reading and watching obsessively. I'll still be yelling at the wins, and yelling louder at the losses -- oh, the losses! Let's just hope that, in the future, those become increasingly less common!

Boz Fails Economics

For fark's sake, Boz. Get your head out of your ass!

First, when is this guy going to stop writing about the goddamn stadium? We get it. We've seen it. We've read the same farkin' column for the last fourteen weeks.

But here he is, swallowing the Stan Kasten Kool Aid. Kasten's at the funnel, pouring gallon after gallon of Purplesaurus Rex, while the tube is shoved so far down Boz' gullet that it almost comes out his backside.

The Nats have 3,100 seats (including 1,200 in suites) that average about $180 a game. The impact of such seats is enormous. For $180, a normal fan could buy five good seats: one each in the box seats, the club level, the mezzanine, the gallery and the terrace -- all the basic sections of Nationals Park.

When you see someone in a Presidential Seat -- like Treasury Secretary Henry J. Paulson last week, sitting with friends in an otherwise empty section -- remember that every such seat generates the same cash as five seats at RFK. That's one reason more than 10,000 upper deck tickets at Nationals Park are reasonably priced.

Oy.

Those seats aren't priced $300 so that the Nats can have a few sections of $5 seats. and the Nats don't have $5 seats because they have $300 seats.

It's supply and farkin demand!

If Kasten (mistakenly, as it turned out) didn't think he could get $300 for those seats, he wouldn't have charged it. And we'll see them readjust prices in the next year or two to better reflect the demand for seats. Although the team probably has some ultimate seat revenue goals in mind, they don't jigger around the prices to meet those, they jigger around the prices to get our fat asses in the seats.

Boz even has the answer earlier in his column:

"The Presidential and Diamond seats will get filled over time. Supply and demand will fix it. Maybe prices come down. Maybe we win and those are the hot seats," one Nats executive said. But it doesn't look good, does it? "Not now."

If the prices for the Prez' seats come down, by Boz' logic, the cheap seats will have to go up (substantially even). They wont -- at least for that reason. Kasten will charge what the market will give him. (Insert your own pocketing the revenues joke here)

What A Happy Ending!

Nats Enquirer points to the good news! On his big day with his bobblehead (though with Pittsburgh in town, it could pass for a Jerome Bettis one), Dmitri has found the miracle cure for that aching back: a masseuse!

"I was stunned," Bowden said. "All of a sudden, he has instant relief. She found the spot.... and his hips went through it."

What a happy ending!

Now he's on to Viera to start swinging the bat, and if he's ever feeling back pain again, he knows he can pick up a copy of the city paper and peruse the ads in the back for his next miracle cure!

No Shoulder To Cry On

So Chad Cordero's out. It's an acute tear of the latissimus dorsi muscle.

What's that mean? His shoulder hurts. The lat is a big muscle that covers a good chunk of your back and side. Here's a handy picture, and you can pretty easily see why a tear there would make a pitcher cry. If you remember last night, when the trainer came out, that's right about where Chad pointed: the area under the armpit. If you look at the bottom picture there, you can see what that particular muscle is important: it helps move the ol' arm, connecting to not-so humerus.

Now, there's no surgery required. And it's described as acute, which means basically small/short in a medical context. So, in one way of looking at it, it's just a realllllly bad strain.

So what about other guys who've had the same injury? What's the prognosis? Well, pretty good, actually.

I broke out the ol' google-fu and tried to see what I could find. First, I couldn't really find any other MLB pitchers who've been diagnosed with a full tear. Doesn't mean it hasn't happened I just didn't find it.

But I've found quite a few other pitchers who've dealt with strains, and quite a few other pitchers who came back relatively normal.

The most prominent example is Ben Sheets. (Alarm bells ringing now? Don't worry!) Sheets went down with a strain late in '05, and missed the final month or two of the year. Sheets was ready the next spring, although he didn't pitch particularly well before succumbing to croup, gout, dropsy, scabies or whatever old-tyme maladies befall him on a weekly basis.

Pedro Martinez missed a month in May '03 with a strain. He ended up with 180+ innings of 2.22 ERA ball. Sign me up!

Rich Harden has battled it (among other things) off and on for basically ever. Put him under the Sheets Alarm Bell category.

Brian Fuentes lost his job as the Rockies closer last year as a mid-season bout with a lat problem cost him velocity and movement (hey, that sound familiar!). He pitched beautifully down the stretch last year and is pleasing those people who were smart enough to pick him up off the waiver wire in their roto league this year -- especially those stupid people who paid waaaaaaay tooooo much for Chad Cordero on their stupid feckin' team!!! Sorry... got carried away there.

Curt Schilling missed a few starts late in '03. I think he's done pretty well since!

Jake Peavy had a bunch of problems attributable (but not actually diagnosed, that I could find) to a lat strain in '05; he finished with 30 starts and a 2.88 ERA.

Closer to home, Micah Bowie went down last year with it, only to never be seen again. (Anyone checked behind the barn?)

So a death sentence? Not apparently.

The only cause for concern is whether the lat strain was caused by him compensating for a different part of his shoulder barking. I noticed that his arm angle was dropping quite a bit in that final game. Is that because the lat was bugging him, or was he compensating for a different injury. If it's the different injury will the time off help that recover too? And will he be able to do those strengthening exercises Dr. Andrews gave him for the shoulder tendinitis if his lat won't let him move? Damned if I know.

But I don't feel quite as bad as I did when I first saw the story this afternoon.