The Kemperor’s New Clothes: Clippard Can’t See Dodger Uniforms After Surrendering Home Run

When Zimmerman returned the ball to Lannan, it read, simply, “I wish you were someone else.”

Final Scores: Nationals 3, Dodgers 1; Dodgers 7, Nationals 6.

Dame of the Games: Jordan Zimmermann: 6 IP, 1 ER, 6 H, 2 BB, 4 K. After a number of bad starts recently, Jordan was back to his old tricks. And I don’t mean that trick he used to play on his mother where he would fake his own death. That was mean.

Shame of the Games: John Lannan. 3.2 IP, 6 ER, 8 H, 2 BB, 3 K.. It’s not John Lannan’s fault that he’s such a bad pitcher, really. He, like most people on this earth, is destined to an existence of never truly excelling in his field of choice. Can we really fault him for simply performing at the same level most of us do?

Yes. Hypocrisy’s never stopped me before.

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Every time I hear the word “doubleheader,” naturally the first thing I think of is two baseball games in the same day. But the second thing I think of is some kind of creature that has two heads. Any such creature could, of course, be described as a double-header.

Double-headers can be good, bad, or neutral. My feelings about yesterday’s doubleheader between the Nats and the Dodgers can thus be chronicled in terms of pictures of creatures with two heads that I deem either good, bad, or neutral. Makes sense, right?

For instance. Yesterday’s doubleheader was a single admission doubleheader (I picture a double-headed creature who has only ever admitted guilt to a single horrible crime in his life), so my ticket to the nightcap could have gotten me into both games. But due to Other Commitments, I only arrived at Nats Park after the first game had ended. At that point, the doubleheader was going quite well. The Nats had won the first game 3-1. It looked something like this:

I Left My Steroids in San Francisco: Nats Are Going Home To City Not By a Bay With a Win

Time Lincecum would have had to hold his glove up a little higher to effectively hide the fact that he was sleeping. Also, he would have had to not be the starting pitcher of an ongoing baseball game.  (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Final Score: Nationals 6, Giants 4

Dame of the Game:

Danny Espinosa: 2-4, HR, 2B, 2 RBI, R, 2 K. Once upon a time, Danny Epinosa was having a horrible season. Now he’s having a league average season. And he lived average-happiness-level-ly ever after.

Shame of the Game:

Melky Cabrera. While he was not technically in this game, this is retroactive to all previous games he played against the Nats when he was cheating. No one cheats against the Nats and gets away with it. No one except the people who haven’t gotten caught, that is.

——–

It shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise that so many Giants take steroids. Barry Bonds, Guillermo Mota (#s 2 and 1 in historical importance to the franchise, respectively) and now Melky Cabrera. It’s been right under our noses this whole time. Right there in the name, in fact. What is a giant if not a man using a ton of steroids? How do you think all the famous giants of myth and legend got so big?

Did Atlas just wake up one day and realize he could lift the entire planet? No, he obviously pumped himself full of man-power-juice, then did some crazy workouts Paul Ryan-style, then grabbed the earth and put it on his shoulders. How did Polyphemus become enormous and mutate himself into only having one eye? A strict diet of pure testosterone, raw vegetables, and raw sheep. Duh. And the Big Friendly Giant? Not so friendly when the roid rage hits.

Which is all by way of saying that of course the Giants are on steroids. Melky was caught, but I have little doubt that the rest of them have some kind of unnatural substances swimming around their veins. Or else they would have changed their team name already.

2012 Nationals Player Profile: Brad Lidge

Pride cometh before the Fall Classic

Hubris. It has been the ruin of many of humanity’s greatest figures. Odysseus, defying Poseidon and shouting his true name to the cyclops Polyphemus. Napoleon, leading the grand armée into a wintry death in Russia. Davey Johnson, drinking one non-alcoholic beer too many on his 43rd birthday. On October 17, 2005, a new name was added to this ignominious list: Brad Lidge.

In 2004 and 2005, Brad Lidge was homerically good, posting ERA+s of 230 and 185, respectively. In the second of those years, his Houston Astros made it to the NLCS, where they took a commanding 3-1 series lead over the St. Louis Cardinals. With the Astros up 4-2 with two outs it the ninth, Lidge was one strike away from sending his team to the World Series. Lidge instead decided, presumably for the sake of extra drama, that he would allow two baserunners to bring Albert Pujols to the plate as the go-ahead run. After getting a first pitch strike, Lidge used his intra-baseball-player-telepathy that all baseball players have to talk to Albert Pujols: