Bad Ideas

I just wanted to say congratulations to the Washington Mystics for closing out the season as the number one seed in their conference this year for the first time in their history. I know and care very little about basketball, especially women's basketball, and could not name one player on the Mystics. However, I can definatively tell you exactly how they won the President's Cup of their conference in the WNBA. Ted Leonsis finally took down those idiotic WNBA attendance banners that had plagued MCI/Verizon Center for way too long. For years Caps fans took crap from visiting fans for having those stupid banners waving around flaunting the malaise that has plagued the sports in this town of late. Fortunately, all of the bandwagon visiting fans no longer come down to see their teams lose to the overtalented Caps anymore, and as long as Leonsis is the owner, no one will ever see those banners again.


So I was thinking of other things that could dispel the bad voodoo that has befallen the sports teams in the area. Sticking with Verizon, lets get rid of the Capstronaut. He is as new as he is irrelevant, and the logistics of sitting behind him infuriate me even when I am sitting across the arena from him. Furthermore, I think he is the definative symbol of an unnecesary schism that now exists between Caps fans. There is this attitude that now prevails around Caps circles where anyone who has not followed the Caps past a few years ago is somehow not a Caps fan. For years Caps fans have screamed that no one pays attention to their sport, and now that all eyes are on OV and company and tickets are a little harder to come by and people are upset. This needs to stop immediately, starting with the Capstronaut. Also in Verizon; the players introduction before the home playoffs this year with Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" and pictures of the Stanley Cup needs not be played until we win the Stanley Cup. This was as bad as Crosby handling the Wales trophy; the league doesn't hand out Cups for bad taste and dumb moves here like they do for Pittsburgh. Speaking of which, the final thing needed to be shed from Verizon is the biased refs.


Moving onto Nats Park I think there is one thing we can all agree on getting rid of and thats Rob Dibble. Going after Strasburg's manhood is career suicide. I have never berated the guy like most Nationals blogs have but the guy's time has come. I am pretty sure Lou Pinella is not doing anything next year, and I think he would make a great addition to MASN.


I'll even help other town's ballparks. The statue of Selig just went up today at Miller Park and I hope somone tears it right back down. Maybe you can ignore that he has presided over the steroids age, helped put MLB through the worst labor stoppage in the league's history, and let salaries and ticket prices spiral out of control across the country. But you can never forget how hard he tried to keep baseball out of DC. Blocking other teams from moving here, never awarding us an expansion team, considering putting a team in Vegas first (some pro team will be there one day but baseball should definately not lead the pack,) and trying to retract teams until finally having nowhere to dump the Expos but here. There is a tradition involving the statue of Civil War General Phillip Henry Sheridan and his horse on Sheridan and Belmont in Chicago. The horse's testicles are quite prominent, and all National League rookies have to paint them their team's colors the first time they visit Cubs. Well with the Selig statue we can put a big red X over that part of his anatomy to represent the steroid era, big green dollar signs in his eyeballs to represent the league's greed under his watch, and put a Nattos hat on his head just to rub it in.


Finally, what could we change at Fedex? Thats like asking what would you change about the Taliban's views on women. We could start with Snyder and end it there, but that guy is going to be one long nightmare. I don't buy the new act, it is temporary, the guy let it be known within Redskin circles that he wanted to draft Clausen, Allen wanted Berry, and Shanahan wanted Williams. Shanahan won and is in charge for the time being, but the ghost of the big oversized Snyder ego still haunts Fedex and will strike again in the future. We could get rid of the phony ticket wait list. I appreciate that young Snyder wants to keep up the appearance that the place is sold out in that 90,000 plus seat monstrosity because none of the Skins games are blacked out. But Boise State and VA Tech are two top ten teams, one of whom will compete for the National Title, and they have only sold 67,000 seats thus far for their matchup that is less than two weeks away. The fact of the matter is that the Skins could liquidate their entire "waiting list" for season ticket holders, but Snyder prefers to be the owner of the club with the line around the block even when the club is half full. Maybe its the traffic. Or the prices. Or the Tom Cruise. Maybe just scrap the place and start over.