Caveat Emptor

30 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures, Go Sox

Tags

American League, Anthony Rendon, Bosox, Boston Red Sox, Bryce Harper, Caveat Emptor, Fenway Park, Juan Soto, Lerner Family, Let the Buyer Beware, Max Scherzer, Minnesota Twins, Montreal Expos, National League, Nats, Nats Stadium, Orlando, RFK Stadium, Season Ticket Holder, Sox, Ted Lerner, Tinker Field, Trey Turner, Washington Nationals

Today, after 18 years as a full season ticket holder of the Washington Nationals, I informed the Nats that I am terminating my annual contract with the team and its owners.

Let me explain.

I love baseball.

Ever since my wonderful grandfather took me to Fenway Park and introduced me to the game, it’s been an important part of my life, including playing it in the street in front of our house and then moving on to Little League, listening to games on the radio, then watching on TV, and of course attending as many games as I could. (I use to gather baseballs hit over the fence at Tinker Field in Orlando, FL so I could turn them in for free entrance to Minnesota Twins Spring Training games.)

I’ll spare the reader any of the many baseball related stories with which I’ve burdened my children, my wife, and my friends over the years. Suffice it to say, as my favorite T-Shirt proclaims, “Any Team Can Have a Bad Century.”

In 2005 when the Montreal Expos were relocated to DC and became the Washington Nationals, I quickly teamed up with some friends to get season tickets to RFK Stadium (where they played until moving to their new stadium in 2008). So it’s been 18 years that I’ve been attending Nats’ games – and enriching its owners – largely because I simply love what baseball offers, even if it’s not watching the Red Sox. (In fact, attending Nats’ games is sometimes more relaxing than watching the Red Sox, where I am on edge on every pitch, etc.)

So why my decision to abandon my season ticket status?

Primarily, I do not want to continue to support a franchise that consistently refuses to keep players like Bryce Harper (not my favorite guy), Anthony Rendon, Trey Turner, Max Scherzer, and Juan Soto. The ownership’s model of largely acquiring outstanding players when they are young and relatively inexpensive and getting rid of them when they are reaching free agency and have become expensive may be financially smart for the owner, but is terrible for the fans. (My Bosox did that with Mookie Betts, and while I have still not forgiven them for that, at least they have not made it a way of continually ‘doing business’ as have the Nats.)

Try explaining to my perfect three eldest grandchildren**, one who ‘loved’ Bryce Harper, one who ‘loved’ Trey Turner, and one who ‘loved’ Juan Soto, why none of these players are still playing for the Nats. Although it’s not the only reason, none of these grandchildren have kept up interest in baseball, while they continue to be fans of other sports, particularly football.

The Lerner family paid $450 million to purchase the Nats. They are now in the process of considering offers to sell them, likely for perhaps as much $2,000,000,000 or more. Yes. two billion dollars.

The team has been decimated and is “rebuilding” for the future. But not with the help of my three ticket, full season income.

I will no doubt attend a few games next year, largely because I still love baseball. I enjoy going with others for an afternoon or evening at the park, and with the new schedule of every team playing every other team starting in 2023, there is the opportunity to see any team or player in either the American or National League.

I don’t think I’m the only baseball fan that is choosing to terminate their season plan or to reduce the number of games they will attend.

Caveat Emptor – Let the Buyer (of the Nats) Beware.

**My two youngest perfect granddaughters, six and five, perhaps wisely have chosen to live 1,055 miles away from DC, and so I have only just begun to work on their full baseball indoctrination. Unfortunately, on a recent trip to Kansas City where we attended a game together, the lowly Royals creamed the Sox 13-7. But then, as I learned from experience with my own daughters, it’s probably better not to instill too high expectations concerning my Bosox heroes.

Some Days Are Better Than Others

26 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by Richard in Go Sox

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

baseball, Boston Red Sox, Bryce Harper, Chris Heisey, Nats, Orioles, Royals, Sox, Washington Nationals, Yankees

Hats

Sometimes it’s a particularly good day for Sox and Nats fans…and not so good for Yankee and Orioles’ fans.

Sunday was one of those days.

We were at a Nats’ afternoon game that was mostly without excitement for the first eight or nine innings. Strasburg pitched well, except for one pitch (isn’t that often the case for pitchers?) where, although he struck out 10 batters over 7.1 innings, he gave up a three-run homer that broke up a tie game and put the Nats in a 4-1 hole.

Mostly the game was a pitchers’ duel (I enjoy those, but my wife, a fair weather fan — she only goes to games if the weather is fair — prefers more ‘action’). Then the Nats scored two in the 8^th to come within one run of tying the game. In the 9^th, boy wonder Bryce Harper, who was being given a day of rest (really necessary for a youngster like him?), pinch hit and of course slammed one out of the park to deepest center.

Tie game.

Extra innings.

We had to leave the park for grandparent duties but listened on the radio (still a wonderful way to follow baseball if the announcers are good) and later followed the action on our smart phones. The game went 16 innings before a mostly unknown player, Chris Heisey, who had replaced Harper after the 9^th, hit a game ending home run, almost six hours after the 1:35 PM game had started.

GoNats.

As if that wasn’t enough baseball for one day, after we got home, I checked in on the Sox who were playing a Sunday night game. And that was almost a repeat of what happened with the Nats, tho the Sox game only went 12 innings and lasted a mere five hours.

The Sox were ahead 5-1, then 5-3, which they held from the end of the third until the bottom of the 9^th, when their new, expensive, and highly touted closer, Craig Kimbrel, got two outs before giving up a double and then a home run.

Another tie game.

More extra innings.

Finally, in the bottom of the 12^th, Sox back up catcher Ryan Hannigan had a 13-pitch at bat/walk before Jackie Bradley drove in Hanley Ramirez for the Sox lead. (Hannigan scored an insurance run when he then made it home on a wild pitch.) Sox used an unheralded reliever, Heath Hembree, and held in the bottom of the 12.^th

Sox win.

Now it was just after 1 AM (I had moved from the bedroom to the study around midnight in order not to cause my fair weather wife any more loss of sleep and to preserve what was left of my marriage), and I was a bit hyped up. So of course I checked in on the Evil Empire Yankees and was pleased to see they had lost 8-1 and were now in last place. Plus, although A-Rod drove in the Yunkee’s one lowly run, he was now hitting a mere .148.

Then I checked on the current AL East surprise league leaders, the Orioles, and was delighted to see they had lost to the Royals, 6-1.

All in all, about 12+ hours of baseball, and all good.

Some days are simply better than others for obsessed baseball fans.

Bryce Harper: “Baseball…It’s a tired sport…”

10 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by Richard in Go Sox

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

"Old School Thinking", 2015 NL MVP, Bryce Harper, ESPN The Magazine, The Code, Tim Keown, Unwritten Rules

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In an interview published today with Tim Keown, ESPN the Magazine, Bryce Harper, the 2015 NL MVP player, had some things to say about the state of baseball. Take a look at some excerpts from the article quoted below and see what he has to say (if you want to read the entire article, go to Sorry Not Sorry).

Baseball’s tired. It’s a tired sport because you can’t express yourself. You can’t do what people in other sports do. I’m not saying baseball is you know boring or anything like that, but it’s the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair. If that’s Matt Harvey or Jacob deGrom or Manny Machado or Joe Pederson or Andrew McCutchen or Yasiel Puig — there’s so many guys in the game now who are so much fun.

Jose Fernandez is a great example. Jose Fernande will strike you out and stare you down into the dugout and pump his fist, And if you hit a home and pimp? He doesn’t care. Because you got him. That’s part of the game. It’s not the old feeling — hoorah –if you pimp a homer. I’m going to hit you right in the teeth. No. If a guy pimps a homer for a game-winning shot…I mean — sorry.

If a guy pumps his fist at me on the mound, I’m going to go, ‘Yeah, you got me. Good for you. Hopefully I get you next time.’ That’s what makes the game fun. You want kids to play the game, right? What are kids playing these days? Football,, baseketball. Look at those players — Steph Curry, LeBron James. It’s exciting to see those players in those sports. Cam New Newtown — I love the way Cam goes about it. He smiles, he laughs. It’s that flair. The dramatic.

According to the article, Harper’s talking about “baseball’s old-school thinking — the unwritten rule, The Code, a century and a half of shut-up-and-play,” and calling for “a game in which players respect each other and retain the right to express themselves fully without fear of a fastball to the ear hole.”

So what do you think?

Is Harper on to something, or should baseball stay as it has been?

Leave your thoughts in the Comment section.

What’s Going on in Baseball?

02 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by Richard in Go Sox

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

baseball, Beantown, Betts, Bradley, Bryce Harper, Castillo, Cherrington, Dombrowski, Don Orsillo, Hanley Ramirez, Jerry Remy, Mets, MillersTime Baseball Contests, MLB, Nats, NESN, New Rules, Orioles, Red Sox, Son Orsillo, Sox, Yankees, Yunkees

In no particular order, here are some comments, thoughts, observations, and perhaps even an occasional insight at this point in the 2015 baseball season: ** For those of you who can remember back to preseason, I wrote about the new baseball rules for shortening games and predicted they’d work (see: It’s Gonna Work – Betcha). At the All Star break this year, roughly the halfway mark of the season, the average length of the games was down almost exactly 10 minutes. The rule about batters having to keep one foot in the batter’s box accounted for half of the reduction in game time. Calling for a play challenge from the dugout and limiting the time between innings, probably make up the other half. Recently, however, the game time has crept up a bit. (It seems to me that batters are staying out of the box more now than they did at the beginning of the season, perhaps because MLB and the Players Union agreed not to use the financial penalties that were supposed to kick in in May?) ** If you think there are more no-hitters this year than last, you’re right (six already versus five for all of last year). And there were 33 no ‘hitters’ thru 6 innings (better than all of last year), 17 through 7 innings and 10 through 8 innings. But pitchers on the whole are doing worse than last year. The ERA of all the Major League teams is up over 2014, from 3.74 (full season) to 3.82 (thru 8/31/15). Batters are doing better (makes sense if ERA is up) in all categories: Ave. – 254/.251, OBP – .315/.314, SLG. – .402/.386, and OPS – .718/.700. Fielding PCT is virtually unchanged (.985/.984). ** What’s up with the Sox? They have been out of it for most of the season, largely because of weak pitching and weak hitting. (Outgoing GM Cherrington should’ve listened to me when I said stay away from Hanley Ramirez). They have done well over the past several weeks as they have settled into what is likely to be an outstanding outfield — Bradley, Betts, and Castillo (photo below) — for next year and beyond, tho it’s not clear yet which position each will play in that outfield. Their hitting is up and so is their starting pitching; relief pitching, however, has worsened, especially with the loss of Uehara for the remainder of the season. They have a modest chance of avoiding last place if they continue at their present pace. Everyone is on their toes trying to prove to their new president of baseball operations Dombrowski that they deserve to play next year.

-BOSTON-RED-SOX-AT-CHICAGO-WHITE-SOX Caylor Arnold/USA Today Sports

A Winner

27 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by Richard in Go Sox

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bryce Harper, Justin Stoyer, Mike Trout, MillersTime Baseball Contests

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MillersTime 2015 Baseball Contest # 5: Predict who will lead the AL and who will lead the NL in getting the most All Star votes in 2015. Which of the two will receive more votes?

No one got this contest exactly right.

Abby ‘Clarifies’ What Really Happened

27 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by Richard in Family and Friends

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Bryce Harper, Dear Eli, Granddaughter, Grandson, Home Plate Umpire, MillersTime.net, Vampire, Washington Nationals

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A few days ago, knowing that my grandson Eli was not yet reading MillersTime.net religiously, I read him my post about his 22-year-old hero Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals.

Little did I realize that four-year-old granddaughter Abby was also listening to the story of Harper’s ejection by the home plate umpire.

Later that night I got a text message from their mother.

It read:

Abby tells me that Harper got in a fight with the vampire and got kicked out of the game.

And that clarifies everything.

Dear Eli: Good News/Bad News

21 Thursday May 2015

Posted by Richard in Family and Friends, Go Sox

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

"Player of the Week", baseball, Bryce Harper, Matt Williams, Nats, Washington Nationals, Worst to First, Yankees

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Dear Eli,

I know I haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks. I’ve been traveling a bit and was with your Auntie Elizabeth in California, Oregon, and Washington. We got to see three Red Sox games, and they won two of the three. Not too bad.

Then when I returned, your Washington Nationals were playing two games against that *#!^x* Yankee team. So, of course, I had to go to those two games, Tuesday night and Wednesday night. The Nats won both games by close scores (4-3 and 3-2).

In fact, the Nats are playing really well and with the victories over the Yankees they are now in first place in their Division.

That’s pretty good because in their first 20 games, they only won 7 and lost 13 and were in last place. Then, in their next 21 games they won 17 and only lost 4. So they have gone from last place to first place.

And your favorite player, Bryce Harper, has been a big part of both their losing at the beginning of the season and winning now. In fact, he is now doing so well he has been named “Player of the Week” two weeks in a row. That rarely happens. But he’s been “on fire”, hitting lots of home runs, knocking in runs, and getting on base with a lot of walks.

But that’s where there’s a bit of bad news too.

You Gotta Stay ‘Til the End

06 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by Richard in Go Sox

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Bryce Harper, Nats, Walk Off Wins, Washington Nationals

NY Magazine Photo

It didn’t look or feel as if it would be a 4 hour and 15 minute game.

In fact, the first seven innings were played in less than two hours.

I looked at the clock on the scoreboard and thought, “I oughta be home by 10 PM, beat my curfew, and probably be asleep shortly thereafter, as is my usual custom.”