Nationals Anthems

What is the Nationals player budget? No one knows – until now. My attempt at illumination first appeared on Ben Goessling’s MASNSports blog - (soon to be name the Four-seam Fastblog, I’m sure…).

The Lerner Payroll Formula:
Take the total debt load and divide by gross attendance
Then subtract front office payroll, stamps and paperclip expenses.
Then multiply the difference by Pythagorean wins
(As of May 24th before the bullpen tailspins)
And convert this to yuan at today’s prevailing rate
Then compare to Kansas City’s budget – doesn’t ours look great?

The Shiny Object Clause:
If it’s shiny and expensive, and our fans will eat it up,
Let’s make a phantom budget, bid, then come in runner-up.

As usual, this piece first appeared as a comment on Nationals Journal. Poster dargregmag (affectionately known as dargramps) wrote, “The “Hawk” was a six tool player what was his sixth tool? the brutha looked good in his uniform.” Too good to pass up – this one’s for you, dargramps.

Andre Dawson, The World’s First And Only 7 Tool Player

Dawson has skill
And looks that kill
But really, 7 tools?
Can you list ‘em? I will:
First is Speed, Second is Glove
Third we’ll give that Arm some love
Fourth is Hitting, Fifth he’s a slugger
Sixth: looks good and is a real good hugger
Seventh – now here’s what’s so special about Dawson -
He’s just completely friggin Awesome.

I’m reposting a comment I left on The Nationals Enquirer notice of a Jackass-style BB-gun testing session featuring Adam Dunn and Ryan Zimmerman. I have my doubts about them actually being in the videos, but it was fodder for the following bit of nonsense.

Ode to Genius

Zim and Adam Dunn
Took a little BB gun
Out to a field for a drunken test run.
They loaded up the ammo
Cranked the camera and went “Blammo”,
Shot each other, laughed and said “Hey that was fun!”

Next up they snorted
PCBs but they aborted
The stunt when Dunnkeys pornstache caught aflame
Quite an anticlimax -
But the footage, filmed in IMAX,
Made the YouTube HiDef Darwin Hall of Fame!