Another Fox Sports presentation, so no visual. Not that it matters. Today was domestication Saturday. First stop, San Francisco Dancewear for dance shoes that it turned out she didn’t need. Then to Goodwill for dresses.

I watched, on gameday at the thrift store, Gio blow a 3-0 lead via a complete meltdown in the b4. Forty pitches. Yesterday Stras, and today Gio. Our two aces letting us down.

Fortunately, Harper, LaRoche, and Desmond came through with the long ball to keep the Nats on top of Gio’s … uh … descent to normalcy. Stammen coming through with two scoreless, striking out five of six batters restored my faith a bit.

Harper had another two homer day, so being banned from viewing kept me, mercifully, from having to view today’s stat on the number of multiple homer games prior to a player’s 21st birthday.

Comodification of the phenom troupe.

And oh. It’s 420. I wonder if Timmy’s pitching today.

Who turned the world upside down?  The Nats, even when they sucked, tended to handle the Braves and the Mets well, while getting owned by the Phillies and Marlins.

This season, they are, so far, 5-1 against Miami and 0-3 against the Braves.

It’s early, and I seem to remember similar feelings cropping up last season around this time, as the offense proved anemic, and Carp would say every night that such and such a pitcher was dominating the line up.

It doesn’t help that Desmond and Zimmerman had really bad fielding weeks and now lead the majors in errors.

Strasburg, the guy who is supposed to be carrying us to the pennant couldn’t get past one of those Desi errors.

Only half paying attention.  On a bit of a roll at work.

But, the boys pulled it together.

Beating-on-the-team-that’s-had-our-number troupe.  It’s nice to be beating a team that clobbered us time and tome again.  We’re up 5-1 against the fish.  I remember watching the boys run down one after the other by Noralsco for the last two years. Not a problem tonight.

Survivor-guilt troupe.

Someone-has-to-win-someone-has-to-lose-in-a-world-where-I-strive-for-equity troupe.

Bryce Harper went 4 – 5 with the flu, and I got retweeted by F.P. himself tonight. I’m saddened that I consider that an accomplishment.

Lombardozi held his own nicely.  Second-string troupe. 

Zimmerman’s arm seemed back to it’s gold glove self.

Yay.

All the time waiting for the season to start. All the anticipation. And suddenly, we’re 14 games into it. Very quickly. And equally quickly, the dream and the promise threaten to fade. Four miserable losses I’m the last five games. It’s early. It’s early. I keep telling myself it’s early. Caught some of Dan Haran’s second disappointment (new guy distrust troupe) and Ryan Zimmerman’s deteriorating defense (last year’s flavor troupe) from the phone at the office. Those are the times I can watch the game and chat with twitter Nats fans (no real friends troupe) at the same time. Zim error cost a run, then Haran gave up a few more, so by the time SMHRod gave up another run (power v accuracy troupe), I didn’t care that mlbtv stopped working. I caught the last play from Charlie and Dave as I pulled out of the Trader Joe’s parking lot after stocking up on the night’s forget-me juice, coming up with a story to explain my daughter’s recent dip in grades.

“Tomorrow’s always another day”, is one of the things baseball teaches us, as the Nats bounced back from their shellacking over the weekend.

It was also the Boston Marathon bombing.

And tax day. I learned of one while doing the other.

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Shutouts out of the dead land.
Mixing memory [painful memory of 2008] and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring training.
Winter kept us hopeful, covering
ah… screw it…

We got our butts handed to us by the Barves this series.

I caught most of it on the phone from Pacifica. 9-0. I took Austin down to the beach and watched Gio struggle in the first few innings while tossing the tennis ball to the little Q-tip.

As we advanced farther into the game, it brought back memories of July 20, last year, when the Nats blew a 9-0 lead, to end up losing the game (I watched that one from a bar).

That didn’t happen today.

It’s April, and that’s the take away today. It’s April, and we don’t get upset about bad stuff that happens this early in the season.

Still.

Hate this.

Today’s game was broadcast by Fox Sports instead Midatlantic Sports Network. Every Saturday, Fox pays for the rights to show a handful of games regionally. The agreement with mlbtv is to black these games out. For no good reason. I don’t have a television. And even if I did, my local, San Francisco, Fox affiliate would be showing a different game. So the life troupe playing out today is helplessness ground in stupidity. I did my part in attempting to publicly shame Fox Sports for their myopia via Twitter, but no explanation forthcame. Why not show me the fox broadcast? Why not show me the same commercials I would have seen had I been watching on a TV? Fox Sports AND mlb could have been making money off me, but instead I got my feed from Charlie, Dave, and my Twitter friends (at times, the only good friends I have, but more on that later).

Wouldn’t you know it, we walk into a bar and the game is on the TV. Mlb network was showing it, which is why an SF bar had it on. Sometimes, I’ll find a place that has the package, but I’ve yet to enter such an establishment where somebody other than I has requested a Nationals game. Unfortunately, the game being on was the only positive thing about the night, except, of course, for Angel’s dance. She was awesome. The rest of the night sucked. Including the game itself, wherein the Nats bullpen blew a two run lead in the top of the 9th and the game in the tenth. I spent innings three through six being told how badly my car smelled. Seven walking from the Palace of Fine Arts being berated for something else, and eight and nine in the bar being reminded how much pain my enjoyment of the Nationals causes her. Today sucked donkey dong.

Tonight it’s Angel’s dress rehearsal for her hip hop dance performance tomorrow. So, I’m trying to catch what I can the road.  I’m hoping for an hour once the doors open.

Presently it’s 1-1 t3.  New kid on the block potential new weak link Dan Haran is on the mound.  I’m nervous about this guy.

I got used to last year’s rotation, and I was sorry to see John Lannan go.

And the to of the fourth ends with Haran giving up two runs on four hits. The final out being made by Adam Dunn, who just went 0-3. Bad feelings all around.

Meanwhile my battery threatens to drain while the toddlers dance to supercalifragalisticexpialidocio

Two of my favorite things. A pitcher hits Double, and

Life calls, making it tough to watch this game all the way through.  Caught the tail innings on my phone while eating dinner with the family. 
It’s always nice to see Werth contribute.  He holds a special place in my consciousness because of the sheer magnitude of his ridiculous contract.  So I’m harsher on him when he doesn’t perform. Even if his off days are statistically valid.  
Speaking of statistics, super human Ian Desmond hit two doubles and a triple tonight. This is his fifth game with multiple base hits. The statistical probability that it happens again weakens exponentially each day.
Baseball is a game of statistics, and like life, when a string of good things happen, you calculate that it’s only a matter of time before the bad stuff starts up again.
Tell me I’m wrong.
Please.