Nos Amours 7 Dem Bums 0

Nats’ Patterson Is ‘Lights Out’ – The Post
WOW! What a fantastic outing for the home team, one of their best of the season. P John Patterson was an unstopable force of nature, going the distance with 13 K, only 4 hits, and no walks, all on just 116 pitches to win the rubber game of the series. A coming out party indeed. The game was even televised on Channel 20 too.

On top of that, CF Brad Wilkerson blew open the game with an 8th inning, two outs grand slam to right, the first one in Nationals history and the first at RFK since 1970 when a Baltimore player named Frank Robinson went yard with the bases loaded. Wilkerson tipped his hat to the crowd too. SS Cristian Guzman got RBIs and two hits too.

More from The Wash. Times: Taking it easy, The L.A. Times: Dodgers Low-Ball It Again, and The L.A. Daily News: Patterson strikes Dodgers down

Boxscore – ESPN.com

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Aching shoulder sidelines Guillen – The Wash. Times
RF Jose Guillen has given up on being a tough guy because his shoulder is hurting so much. Other notes:

Tony Armas, Jr. is okay and should make his next scheduled start.

Three landowners in the ballpark footprint are in U.S. District Court to argue aganist the ballpark being built at the proposed location.

MLB is expected to set the price for the Nationals at $450 million and choose among the groups that reach that goal. USA Today Sports Weekly reported on Wednesday that Jeffrey H. Smulyan, the Indianapolis based CEO of Emmis Broadcasting, is the front runner. Also, GM Jim Bowden is expected to be retained. D’oh!

The Post’s Nationals notebook reports that the team is about to lockup Viera, Fla. as their spring training home for more than 10 years. Barry Svrluga and Marc Fisher must be thrilled. One would have thought this would have been ownership’s decision.

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JIM BOWDEN: Palmeiro, McGwire need to come clean – The Wash. Examiner
Our fearless GM scolds Baltimore’s cheater, Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire. On the topic of the Nats, he says, “Memo to vets: start producing.”

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Zimmerman’s bat boosts Senators – Patriot-News
I do not normally post stuff about the minors; Brian keeps us up to date atNationals Farm Authority, but I simply had to publish this Harrisburg Senators recap. Check out this prose about Dutch Zimmerman:

That one: Zimmerman, who yesterday further tantalized the hyper-active Bowden by collecting four hits while driving in three runs as Harrisburg beat Binghamton 11-9 on steamy City Island…that Zimmerman’s .297 batting average is nearly 100 points better than that of Nationals third baseman Vinny Castilla is enough to have Bowden thinking about hurrying along the player Washington selected with the fourth pick of June’s amateur draft. That his defense already is major-league caliber also is enough to have Bowden in a Pavlovian froth.

On second thought, that might be just a bit too descriptive.

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For some reason, walteromalley.com exists. It is a biographical Web site of the former Dodgers owner/Brooklyn’s greatest villain. Since we have all been conditioned to believe the Brooklyn Dodgers were the most important team ever, it is very interesting, particularly his struggles to replace Ebbets Field. Even after he got out to the promised land of California, he had trouble getting his park built, something that resonates just a little bit in D.C. Interestingly enough, the same land in Brooklyn that he wanted to build a dome stadium for the Dodgers is now being eyed for the New Jersey Nets arena. To think had he been able to pull it off, we might have hated Dodgerturf all of these years.

You know, it’s funny, the Dodgers owner has a Web site and so does ours.