I watched some of the Nationals game, a 10-2 rout over the Mets,this afternoon and thought I would share some observations:
Dutch! looked good, fielding well and making a habit of getting on base.
Wiki Gonzales had a strong outing as well.
The camera angles were not great
It was hard to remember much about Tom Paciorek as an analyst from his days with the White Sox because I always disliked his partner Hawk Harrelson and tried to ignore them on the chance I was watching a ChiSox game. One thing that I did remember was he was quite proud of his Polish heritage; he once shared with viewers the proper pronunciation of Andy Stankiewicz’s last name. Today he provided translation of the name Gryboski (mushroom) as in P Kevin Gryboski and mentioned he was excited by the potential of back-to-back (Gary Majewski) Polish relief pitchers. He will be bringing his Polish dictionary to the booth from now on.
Bob Carpenter did nothing to distinguish himself as the play-by-play voice.
It makes me mad to see someone other than Brad Wilkerson wear #7. Stupid, stupid, incompetent Jim Bowden.
In addition to have ghastly spring training uniforms, the Mets have two tone next-generation batting helmets. They are a crime against baseball and possibly humanity. UniWatch’s Paul Lukas of ESPN Page 2 agrees with me on this one. It makes the Mets easier to hate though because the new style helmets remind me of Michigan Wolverines.
The new ad campaign is pretty good. The slogan (if I recall correctly) “Make Yourself at Home” is so much better than “Let Yourself Go!” One thing though, one ad about ballpark food mentions you can get ice cream in a batting helmet. Where? I thought all you could get at RFK was the much maligned Dippin’ Dots. Also, the commercial was clearly not shot at RFK.
I have said it before and I will say it again, the Nats vs. Baltimore series should be called the “Battle of Beltways.” Baltimore has their own beltway too.
Boxscore from nationals.com