CONTENT WARNING: THIS BLOG POSTING WILL BE OF INTEREST ONLY TO MY FELLOW BASEBALL FANS. IF YOU'RE THE SORT WHO JUST DOESN'T CARE THAT THIS YEAR THE CHICAGO CUBS MIGHT BE IN THEIR FIRST WORLD SERIES SINCE 1945, OR THAT YANKEE STADIUM JUST CLOSED AFTER 85 YEARS, OR THAT C.C. SABATHIA JUST MIGHT BE THE HOTTEST THING SINCE BOB FELLER, YOU'RE EXCUSED.
Well, here we are again. Today is September 22. Autumn officially begins at 11:44 this morning.
And not a moment too soon, if you ask me. My wife Valerie and I were out at Nationals Park here in Washington, D.C. yesterday watching two-thirds of the Three Stooges of baseball whack each other with custard pies. The hometown Washington Nationals and my hometown San Diego Padres were duking it out to see which team would be the first to board the bus for Palookaville.
The Padres won the game 6-2, actually sweeping the Nationals in a three-game series of Slapstick September Fun. Decision: the Friars get to hold the bus door while the Nats get settled in for the ride. But as soon as they've stowed their gear, they'll be next. Then it's off to Seattle to pick up the even-more pathetic Mariners, and Larry, Moe and Curly are off into the sunset for this year.
How yucko has it been? At the beginning of the game, the two teams had nearly identical win-loss records for the season: 58-97 for the Nats, 60-95 for the Padres. That's baseball's equivalent of driving past an open sewer. As of this bright, cool Monday morning when the hint of fall is just beginning to insinuate itself, the Nationals are 30 games out in the National League eastern division, in dead last place. The Padres are 20 games out in the National League western division, likewise in dead-last place.
This was like watching a war between Burkina Faso and Gabon, two countries that would probably have to float a loan to buy bullets.
The Nats and Padres will both be spending the winter trying to buy bullets, bet on it. But they'll be trying to get them cheap, which has been both teams' problem in recent seasons. The Padres need one thing more than any other: a reliable power hitter. They went shopping for one last winter, but decided all the power hitters were too expensive and acquired more pitching instead, which, with Jake Peavy, Chris Young and company, they already had plenty of. (Picture me pointing my index finger at my temple, a German gesture meaning "MORON(S).")
The result of such parsimony has been on display all season, and nowhere more than at Nationals Park yesterday. The Padres struck out no less than 15 times during the game, mostly against the excellent pitching of Washington's Odalis Perez, whom I was fortunate enough to see last week pitching seven innings of shutout ball against the New York Mets. I had two buddies from out of town, Doug Parker and Jay Arnold, visiting me last week, and we went to the ballpark to see that game. Doug, Jay and I, like all right-thinking people, hate all New York sports teams, and we cheered, if less than lustily, the Nats' 1-0 victory over the Mets. (The best part of watching either the Mets or the Yankees lose is not so much what you get to see as what you get to hear: their obnoxious, loudmouth-gorilla fans growing quieter and quieter as each inning goes by, until there's nothing left but slack jaws and blank, sheepish stares. You gotta love that.)
Yesterday's game put one in mind of two prizefighters trying to slug it out with the lights in the arena shut off. Kevin Kouzmanoff hit a two-run double in the first, then there was no offensive action on either side until Adrian Gonzales' solo homer in the sixth. Ryan Zimmerman, the only National with anything close to a dependable bat, replied with a solo shot of his own in the bottom of the sixth. The Padres scored three more runs in the eighth when Zimmerman committed an error, then Adrian Gonzales walked on a full count, sending Edgar Gonzales to second. There followed a flurry of hits that brought in both Gonzaleses and Kouzmanoff. Zimmerman struck again in the eighth with a single that scored Ryan Langerhans.
There was some grumbling among Nationals fans in our section when umpire Paul Emmel clearly blew a call, ruling Edgar Gonzales safe at first on a play when it was clear, even from where we were sitting along left field, that Aaron Boone had applied the tag before Gonzales stepped on first. But if you ask me, that's a little bit like the crew of the Titanic complaining that they weren't getting paid overtime. One blown call does not a game make, and in this case, on the 21st of September, with your team 30 games out of first place, well, let's just say that it doesn't make much difference whether you drown in 80 feet of water or 90 feet of water. Either way you've drowned. I was astonished two weeks ago to read that one of the Padres' players, I forget who, had told a sportswriter that he was a little disappointed now that the team had been numerically eliminated from postseason contention.
Excuse me. Did I miss something here? I thought this team was out of contention back in May.
But I'm a fan. We fans regard the role of sore loser as an entitlement, and we tend to be bitter.
Anabasis -- Greek for "not quite at the bottom" and the title of Xenophon's inspiring story of the march of the lost patrol of 10,000 Greeks who had to get back to their own territory after an engagement with the Persians. Washington's Anabasis moment this offseason could be getting the No. 1 pick in next summer's draft, an honor baseball awards each season's stinkiest team as a consolation prize. But lo and behold, the Seattle Mariners, over in the other league, who are at this moment playing .368 ball to the Nat's .372 and are 39 games out in their division, just might beat out Washington even for the title of Miss Congeniality.
But there is poetry even in misfortune. Word is that if the Nationals DO get the first draft pick next summer, they might select Stephen Strasburg, a right-handed pitcher from my own alma mater: San Diego State. So the Padres managed to play just rotten enough ball this season to avoid getting to select a hot young prospect from their own backyard. Geeze.
Oh, well. As I said before, it's power hitting the Padres really need, not more pitching. That goes double when they're playing at home, since Petco Park in San Diego has an outfield roughly the size of Wyoming. So I'll be holding my breath during the days of the hot stove league this winter to see if someone manages to persuade Padre ownership to get out a crowbar and pry open its coin purse and try to acquire just one reliable bat.
How many more seasons in Zimmerman's contract, by the way?
It's times like this I wish I liked football.
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