Back in March and April of this year I was counting up my favorite baseball teams on Facebook in anticipation of The Real National Hot Dog Day. I thought that it might be a good idea to keep them here for posterity. Here are the third group of teams along with the FB introductions.
18.
Hey, if you enjoy one of the characters from "The Facts of Life", maybe you'll be tricked into enjoying this little essay on NatsTown!
Also, I'm not sorry for putting the "Facts of Life" theme song in your head. Ha, ha, ha, ha!
We are 18 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Dick Clark style, my favorite baseball teams.
A lot of years passed and there was no baseball in Washington DC--actually in 1973, the Padres almost moved to DC, but they got cold feet and stayed in San Diego--and it always seemed strange to me. Baseball was purportedly America's Pastime, how could it not be played in the shadow of the White House*?
* Interesting fact, from 1973-1991, the sports that both are closely associated with their countries, baseball and hockey, were not played professionally in their capital cities. That was remedied for our neighbors to the north when the Senators (full circle-ish, huh?) began skating in Ottawa.
DC wouldn't get their third (THIRD?!?!) chance until 2005 when the Expos moved out of Montreal and relocated to DC. You know the story, but basically the Expos were the hardest hit by the 1994 strike. It destroyed the best team the franchise ever had and Canadian fans weren't too keen on forgiving them. The entire operation tanked and during it's last few years in Montreal, they were wards of MLB and also played a bunch of games in San Juan, PR.
For a long time, the Nats were as bad as the late century Expos. They continued the tradition of the previous DC iterations and stumbled through season after season losing more than they won. It didn't appear that they'd ever get better, but they did!
Washington drafted Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper in consecutive years. Made some smart, franchise altering free agent signing (Jayson Werth was a big one that seemed to be the catalyst) and built up their club so that they became contenders.
It all looked as if this was going to go up in flames when Harper spurned the Nat's offer to keep him in DC and signed with the Phillies. But buoyed by Strasburg and Harper replacement Juan Soto, they went out and won the whole damn thing in 2019.
Was this going to be a Nat-aissance with a new Nat-ittude? Only if by renaissance you mean the team would revert back to being shitty. And if by attitude you mean people would ignore them again, then yes. Strasburg got hurt. Players got old. And they finally traded Soto last year to the Padres (I guess either way Soto was destined for this franchise).
Are the Nats going to be better this year? Probably not. Does it matter? Forget it Jake, it's Natstown.
Whatever, I don't care. I just like that baseball is a stone's throw from the Potomac River. I feel as if there is order in the world (even though there absolutely isn't).
17.
Yo. Cheating is okay gang, it really is. Find out why I think it is and stick around to the end where I offer my thoughts on my old elementary school art teacher's (Mrs. Gillis -- name checks out, she was, in fact, not a fish and did not have gills) fashion choice during a student/teacher softball game.
Intrigued? You damn right you are.
We are 17 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Dick Clark style, my favorite baseball teams.
Confession two: when it comes to cheating in professional sports, I don't really give a shit. Like at all. I used to care. A lot actually. Whenever a sports team was exposed for cheating, I would get very offended, my honor would be besmirched, I would cry to the heavens.
I thought that this was a problem of modern sports teams and that the pressures of winning was too great and that money and greed and other influences was ruining the pristine games that I loved. Athletes weren't cheaters, it was the uncontrollable modern factors around them that was making them cheat!
But then I read a lot of books about teams from different generations and you know what? They all cheated. It didn't matter if it was Cap Anson, Rogers Hornsby, Bobby Thompson, Mickey Mantle or Reggie Jackson. Every team, every athlete would use any sort of edge to their advantage.
Why? Because it sucks to lose. Because if the opportunity to win is there, you take it. Because there's no such thing as the moral athlete.
The greatest home run in baseball history was the aforementioned Thompson taking Brooklyn Dodger Ralph Branca over the fence and putting the New York Giants into the World Series. Remember "THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!" Guess what? Those Giants had a system where they knew which pitches were coming, a signal was relayed from a window in centerfield (look at the Polo Ground to see what I mean) and the batter would know what pitch was on its way. It's one of the main reasons why the Giants made up 14 games in two months.
But it happened so long ago that people call it gamesmanship and give a little chuckle.
From greenies to steroids (lots of drugs) to corking bats (remember that?) to slathered baseballs (Gaylord Perry is in the Hall of Fame) to SpyGate DeflateGate to (any other Patriots gates?) whatever, I don't care. BTW I don't think I'm alone here. The only people who really seem to care are sportswriters and I think that they care because it gives them an easy 74,000 columns that they can write about it.
Which leads us to the pariahs known as the Houston Astros. Did the Astros cheat in the late 10s to win a bunch of games, including an ALCS over the Yankees (HA HA!) and the World Series against the Dodgers? Yup, they certainly did. Did they get busted for it? Yup again. Do I care? No.
I'm not normally a might-makes-right type of guy, but the Astros thought of a decent idea, used it to great success and won. It was kinda shitty, but it was fine. Your favorite team is doing something similar too, I can guarantee it. It either hasn't worked well enough or they're lucky not to get caught.
When I was younger, the Astros played in the Astrodome on Astroturf (which I guess now has been proven to give you brain cancer--at least in Philadelphia) and I thought that it was kind of neat to play inside. The Astros, like their Texas brethren the Rangers, never seem to win. That was because unlike the Rangers they had guys who could pitch, but no one (aside from Glenn Davis) who could hit for power. Playing in that dome was like playing in a black hole, nothing ever escaped it.
So they weren't great for a long time. They were just kinda fine. Then they moved out of the Astrodome and into MinuteMaid Park and have turned themselves into a bit of a dynasty (after some very lean years). The organization has done a lot of things right over the last decade, though removing the hill and flag pole in centerfield absolutely sucks, and they've turned themselves into a model team.
And now that Dusty Baker has won his World Series, I can go back to not giving a shit about the Astros. So last year was truly a win-win for everyone (most of all me and Dusty).
As far as the logo goes, I would love to see them go back to this but Houston won't because they don't play in that building anymore--BTW, as of ten years ago, the Astrodome is still standing, I saw it with my own eyes. But even though I didn't care about the Stros too much*, as a kid I loved the little detail of the baseballs as neutrons orbiting the dome. Their tequila sunrise uniforms were wild too**.
* The Astros in the Amesbury PONY League were the best team in the league. I think that we were okay, but they used to kick the shit out of us all the time. That intensified my anti-Astros takes.
** About the only thing I remember from Elementary School is that my art teacher, Mrs. Gillis, wore one of those multi-striped, multi-colored Astros shirts to a teacher-student softball game. I thought that it was awesome and years later I was shocked to find out Houston actually played in them. I thought it was something that a hippie art teacher wore when forced to play softball.
16.
You know what the Braves' tomahawk reminds me of? Hot dogs. It's red, the laces are yellow like mustard? Don't you want to just throw that in a bun and wash it down with some cold Miller Lite?
Just me?
Okay. How about you just read this essay on the Braves and get your butts to the grocery store and buy what you need for the Real National Hot Dog Day. It's coming up, kids! April 3, 2023 is around the corner. Don't delay!
We are 16 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Dick Clark style, my favorite baseball teams.
In 1950 the Braves promoted an African American player by the name of Sam "the Jet" Jethroe to the Major League team. He kicked ass, won Rookie of the Year, had a good year his second year before tapering off in 1952. He was also 33 when he debuted and that's the way things went back then when it came to Black stars and their careers.
In 1952 the Boston Braves signed an 18-year-old infielder from the Indianapolis Clowns by the name of Henry Aaron. He wouldn't debut until 1954, after the team moved to Milwaukee. Can you imagine the amount of awesome baseball one could have watched in the Hub where you could see Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews (the only player BTW to play for the Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves) slam dingers in one park and then go see Ted Williams and later Carl Yastrzemski do the same thing down the street?
Fenway Park and Braves Field were separated by a mile.
Too bad it never happened. The Braves moved to Suds City in 1953, hung out there for a few years and
then moved to Atlanta for the 1966 season. Until their dominance in the 1990s, the Braves were never very good (two World Series Championships) and their tenure in Atlanta continued that. They were god awful for years and years and year, but they were popular as hell because they were one of the first baseball teams to be on a superstation.
Team owner Ted Turner was one of those dudes who loved to be rich, buy shit and promote synergy across his purchases. He bought the Braves, already owned WTBS and decided that he was going to take his channel nationwide via cable and that the Braves were going to be his bedrock. All programming would revolve around the Braves' schedule. Want to watch Andy Griffith? Don't tune in at 6:30, you tune in 6:35 because the Braves game begins at 7:05.
And it worked. Even though they were really shitty, people watched the Braves. There are people I know who were old time Boston Braves fans who were ecstatic that they could watch the Braves again. It might be THEIR Braves, but it was THE Braves and that was good enough for them.
So when the Braves started kicking ass in the 90s, it was weird. For my entire life the Braves were bad and now they're good? And free agents want to play there? And they have a ton of crazy fans? And they actually win (just not the World Series)? It must've been like NFL fans when the Patriots got really good all of a sudden.
For the better part of 20 years, the Braves were a machine. And then they weren't. They didn't bottom all the way out, but they got pretty low. They left the Launching Pad (Fulton County Stadium) in 1997 for Turner Field which was not a bad place to catch a game. But for some reason (there's a bunch and a lot of them ain't good) the Braves decided that they needed a new place to play so they opened Truist Park in 2017.
Since then, the Braves have been really good again. A young team that revolves around solid hitting and defense, it's a little different from the 90s version of the club (which was led by three Hall of Fame pitchers) but it gets the job done.
I feel strongly that human beings shouldn't be used as mascots, especially if they've asked the team not to do so. And double especially if those people were systematically wiped out by ancestors of the people that are "honoring" you. It's a stupid look and it's disgusting.
Having said that, I think that the Braves uniforms are awesome. I pretty much love everything about them. They seemed to move the team/city name up a few inches on the jersey, which I'm not wild about, but that's a small nit to pick. They're legit great.
Also if they were to change their name, how about the Hammers? You can honor Hank Aaron, you can change the tomahawk to a hammer and keep the colors. Plus they could turn the "Tomahawk Chop" into "Hammer Time" or something and do a similar move with a few modifications without, you know, being totally racist.
I don't know. We've taken a lot from the Native Americans, maybe we should return their dignity.
15.
Number 15 on my list of lists is the Philadelphia Phillies. In this essay we talk about anonymity due to falling behind the times, this dope-ass logo and Veteran's Stadium turf being the cause of brain cancer.
It's heavy one, but I think that you're ready for it.
We are 15 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Dick Clark style, my favorite baseball teams.
For a large, East Coast city, the Phillies have been practically anonymous to the country at large (aside from greater Philadelphia of course) until the 1970s. Aside from a Grover Cleveland Alexander here or a Chuck Klein there or a Whiz Kids or a Gene Mauch led collapse, the Phillies haven't had much.
I'm not sure why this is true. Aside from a few years in a truly dumpy Baker Bowl, the played in Shibe/Connie Mack Park which looked like an elegant place to play. They had to share Philadelphia with the Athletics until 1955, but the A's were mostly even worse than the Phillies; so it's not like that club was siphoning off fans.
Maybe it goes back to the fact that the Phils were one of the last clubs to integrate, so while the Dodgers and Giants and Pirates and Cubs and Braves were scouring the Negro and Caribbean Leagues for the next big star, the Phillies* were sitting on their collective asses. You could sorta do that in the American League, but it was franchise suicide to try that in the NL.
* The Phils were also among the worst of the teams that were pretty shitty to Jackie Robinson. But, really, all the teams were super shitty to Jackie Robinson.
In the late 50s/early 60s the Phils got the memo that having Black players on your team was actually a good thing and things started to pick up. They weren't great until the 70s, but the club started to come together as they became the class of the NL East. Their only issue was that they couldn't beat the Reds and when the Big Red Machine broke down, the Phils made the World Series in 1980 (they WON!) and 1983 (they loss).
From then they were an up-and-down franchise, who (probably) won more than the loss. I always dug the Phillies look and when they went away from the logo picture below to the one that they have now, I was happy because I liked the retro modern look. But over the years I came back to loving those old Veteran Stadium logos--that sort of weird, 70s vaguely futuristic font with the baseball inside the P.
It's kitschy and reminds me of being a kid and trying to figure out who's good on the Phils besides Mike Schmidt. Charlie Hudson? Rick Schu? Former Methuen high and Northern Essex Community College and 1987 Cy Young Award winner Steve Bedrosian?
Speaking of those 1980s Phillies, after the team tore down Connie Mack Stadium, but before they moved into BankOne Ballpark, the Phils (and Eagles) played at Veteran's Stadium. It was one of those 1970s, cookie cutter, multi-purpose, Astroturfed stadium that was all the rage a generation ago. I was serious when I mentioned that the turf had a bunch of carcinogens that gave brain cancer.
Apparently a bunch of Phillies died of brain cancer over the last decade or so and so some enterprising journalists saw a trend and wanted to see a connection. They found some old samples of the turf on eBay, won the bid and had them tested. Sure enough, the samples were found to have the chemicals (I am not even going to attempt to spell them, but Google is your friend) that are the leading causes of brain cancer. And they're also chemicals that don't just dissipate in the air, they stick around forever. Literally. For-fucking-ever.
So if you played for the Phillies during the 70s, 80s or 90s and you're reading this, thank you for your service and get thee to a doctor.
14.
Would you look at this: two days in a row with teams that were/are known as the Blue Jays! Bet you didn't know that the Phillies rebranded themselves as the Blue Jays during World War II. It didn't stick. But the name stuck in Toronto!
While you're doing that, you'll bump into a metaphor I made about the Jays, the Mariners and the characters from "Reality Bites". Intrigued? I bet you are!
We are 14 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Dick Clark style, my favorite baseball teams.
When I became a baseball fan in the mid 80s, the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays were the most recent clubs added to the American League. I considered them the "new teams" back then and to a certain extent, I still do.
But new franchises are never the same. The Mariners stunk and continued to stink from their inception until plugging Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez, Alex Rodriguez and Jay Buhner into their lineup and trading for Randy Johnson. That was the mid 90s.
By that time, their expansion brothers had already won their division a handful of times and made the World Series twice, winning both appearances in back-to-back years. While the Mariners were cooler in the 90s--most things from Seattle was during that time--the Blue Jays were way more successful.
It was a lot like "Reality Bites" where the M's were Ethan Hawke (full of promise, short on results) and the Jays were Ben Stiller (hardworking, successful and sorta dorky). MLB fans were Winona Ryder and I have no idea who Steve Zahn or Janeane Garofalo is in this metaphor. As Ryder who should you cheer for/end up with? Readers, I'll leave that decision to you.
Give me a break, this was a solid metaphor and I was inspired.
The Jays weren't always good but they were a frisky team. In the 80s, they had the best outfield with George Bell, Lloyd Mosby and Jesse Barfield. They had a better-than-decent left side of the infield with Kelly Gruber at third and Tony Fernandez at short. Newly minted Hall of Famer Fred McGriff manned first and their pitching staff had Dave Stieb*, Jimmy Key and Jim Clancy.
* Dave Stieb should be in the Hall of Fame. He was really, really, really excellent, you guys. Way better than Jack Morris. This is going to sound insane, but I watched a four-hour YouTube documentary on him (part one: https://youtu.be/ZlviajJlctQ) and it was incredible. You should watch it. Honestly.
In the 90s the Jays got better. Like I said they won the World Series twice, moved into the futuristic SkyDome (there's a hotel in the park! And there are rooms that look onto the field!) and the Jays were just rolling along. Then the strike hit, the World Series team got old, players got traded and the Jays have sorta muddled along since then.
They've had some really good teams (Jose Batista is one of my all-time favorite non Red Sox players ever) and, to borrow a phrase, Toronto has been "sneaky good" for a few years. But they've never captured that dominance that they had in the early 90s. They never got their Ben-Stiller-taking-a-call-in-his-Porsche-when-no-one-did-that mojo back.
The Blue Jays are Canada's only baseball team and they're owned by the Rogers Corporation. They are a sleeping giant and if they wanted to, they could absolutely ravage the lower 48 if they ever wanted to put their financial muscle to the test.
When they were really good, I really disliked the Jays. But now that they're finally out of the desert, are on the rise and still an underdog, I like the Blue Jays a bunch.
13.
You might be having a devil of a time trying to find hot dogs (it's like the few weeks before Christmas) so in the mean time check out this entry on the Angels.
There's a nice Tom Yawkey slam buried in there.
We are 13 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Ryan Seacrest style, my favorite baseball teams.
It's not a surprise that the Angels have been a bit of a mess as a franchise. When they began in 1961, they were known as the Los Angeles Angels. Then they moved from LA's Wrigley Field (where the awesome old TV show "Home Run Derby" was taped) to Anaheim and became the California Angels. They then turned into the Anaheim Angels for a few years when Disney bought them (SYNERGY! The name on the front of their uniforms are the same as where DisneyLand is located).
After being bought from Disney, new owner Arte Moreno wanted to incorporate LA more, but the city wouldn't let him (the city paid to fix up the Big A and one of the stipulations was that the team had to be called the Anaheim Angels) so he changed the name to the ridiculously sounding Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Once the contract expired, Moreno dropped the "of Anaheim" and the Angels were back where they started from.
The existence of this franchise is just as schizophrenic as it's name changes. They've had stars, but they never can seem to win. They're not doormats, but they don't really rise to the occasion. They've blown postseason leads (to the Brewers in 1982 and to the Red Sox in 1986) they blown regular season leads (1995 to the Mariners) but they've also come back when it mattered most--during their only World Series appearance where they were down big in the seventh inning of Game Six where they stormed back against the Giants shocking Dusty Baker and Barry Bonds. They rolled over SF the next night behind rookie John Lackey and captured their first championship.
I know how this sounds coming from a Red Sox fan, but the Angels also seem to lead the league in pity. As in every time you find LA/California/Anaheim/LAofA/LA in the playoffs, it's always "I hope they win it for ..." The list is long: Gene Autry, Gene Mauch, Mike Trout, Ohtani, etc. It never seems to be about the fans like it is/was in Boston*, Chicago, Cleveland and other woebegone towns.
* Though Boston had a few years where people were pulling for the Sox to win it for racist owner Tom Yawkey. Now that they've won it (four times!) I can say, fuck that guy; I'm glad he went to his grave thinking he was a loser. And that goes double for his wife too.
The Angels play in the second largest market in the country and while they have to share the spotlight with the National League team to the north (Dodgers) and now need to make room for the NL team to the south (Padres), I don't think that the Angels have to play the little brother or underdog role.
Having said all of that, I do like the Angels a bunch. I like their whole Southern California, it's always sunny here, no matter what vibe. I've always wanted to live in Southern California and I think I'd spend a lot of time watching Angels and Dodgers baseball. Especially if I moved there pre-MLBNetwork.
The Angels usually have a fun team to watch. Ohtani and Trout are worth price of admission alone. They've always had stars from Nolan Ryan to the four former MVP teams of the early 80s (Reggie, Fred Lynn, Don Baylor and Rod Carew) to the mid 80s squad to the farm-build teams of the 90s and 00s to now, the Angels at least give it the old college try. And that's all you want as a fan, you want your team to try and win.
Sure, they strike out on a bunch of free agent signings (Anthony Rendon, Josh Hamilton, Mo Vaughn, CJ Wilson, Vernon Wells, Gary Matthews Jr. and a bunch of other jabronis*) but they at least make the attempt. They put themselves out there. They spend the money. They don't spend it wisely but if someone in the front office ever got a clue and used that in conjunction with Moreno's checkbook, they could be dangerous.
* I didn't include Albert Pujols because his contract was going to be a complete shitshow in his last few years and it was. He did pretty well for LA when he was there, not as great as he did in St. Louis, but did anyone think he'd really put up those numbers? BTW if Mo Vaughn didn't get hurt (and then fat), who knows if he would have put up big numbers in Cali. But he didn't, so he's there.
While their free agent signings are uniformly bad, their uniforms and logos (aside from the Disney years -- Woof) are all really good--just look at that chunky stitching on the ball in the logo at the top of this entry. It's glorious. Go through any of the logos or the uniforms and you'd be happy to buy a bunch of overpriced crap and root for that laundry.
