The Clash

Special MLC Feature: A-Rod versus the Nationals

The Baseball Poets wax rhapsodically about the game’s balanced rhythms and timeless charm, its yin and yang, alpha and omega. Most of the time, though, that poetic effort lauds the alphas far more than the omegas.

Here in the shadows of the Nation’s Capitol, home of the original Omega Dogs, the Washington Senators, history’s ugly lessons are being ignored and repeated on a major league stage. And no, this isn’t another thinly veiled shot at the President. The Washington Nationals took the field in 2007 with one of the least competitive big league franchises in modern memory, a squad that gets sand kicked on it by the 2003 Detroit Tigers. The Washington Generals had a better chance in most of their games than do our Nats, or as Whitney calls them, "The Nots."

Other sites on the intertubes are following the Nationals’ quest for ignominy using more conventional metrics like wins, losses, and runs scored. Here at MLC, we’re going a different route, nodding to those aforementioned Poets and linking the fortunes of the least with those of the greatest. In the spirit of the 2003 Tigers Watch (lauded as the catalyst for Detroit ’s 2006 World Series run) and the 2004 Expos Watch (which led directly to Montreal migrating to DC, according to at least one expert), we bring you the Japanese horror movie, A-Rod vs. the Nationals.

Alex Rodriguez has five home runs in the Yankees’ first six games, many of them prodigious and even timely. While I’m certainly no fan of Slappy, for obvious reasons, I do think he gets a bum rap from both Yankee fans and the national media. The Nationals have one win in their first seven games, and that one was a mad scramble back from a large deficit. They have not led at any point in any of their losses – in fact, they didn’t lead in their win until after the final pitch of the game. And while I am, in fact, partial to the Nats, I think Stan Kasten’s reputation has given them an undeserved pass in the national press, though not necessarily here at home.

It says here that A-Rod will finish the 2007 season with more homers than the Nationals collect wins. And there’s a chance that it won’t really be close. We’ll be watching the Nats closely, so you don’t have to. You're welcome.