Only we could make baseball this annoying

I should have seen it coming, I suppose.

1) The Nats play the Phillies tonight. It's the Nationals' second-game ever!

Buuuuut it's not on TV locally. Anywhere. Not even on any of those awful lascivious cable networks like "ESPN".

Oh, but guess which team you can see locally, on Comcast? The Orioles. Of course.

I'd really like to know what kind of dirt Peter Angelos has on baseball, that he was able to blackmail them into this awful TV deal. It's gotta be good.

2) D.C. can afford to pay $Texas (yes, that's Texas with a dollar sign in front of it) for a ballpark that the Nationals will profit from. But local non-profit Little League teams that want to play on city fields at night are being forced to pay $25/hour for lights under a new regulation. However, as anyone who has walked around the city at night knows, this is in keeping with D.C.'s usual anti-street light policy.

3) Any hopes that the Nationals might actually provide an escape from politics have already been dashed. The city council passed a resolution requesting "that Major League Baseball should require members of the Washington Nationals Baseball Team to wear a patch or insignia on their uniforms to bring to light the District’s lack of full voting rights in the United States Congress." And, there's a push to take over that RFK sponsorship by naming it "Taxation Without Representation Field at RFK Stadium." Sayeth their website:

Think of it. Every time we enjoy the national pastime here in DC, we'll remind America that we lack another national tradition – democracy.

Or, how about this: let's just watch baseball and forget the politics.

Do you guys really think renaming the stadium would work, anyway? What... do you think you're going to shame the House of Representatives into giving D.C. representation? Hello... they just dissolved the ethics committee, simply because it was getting in the way of Tom DeLay finishing his new travel guide, See Europe on $50,000 A Day Provided By Mysterious Companies from the Bahamas Whose Names Look Suspiciously Like Anagrams: A Naftasib Publication. They don't feel shame!

Now, the good news: the Nats will debut their top-secret mascot on Sunday, April 17th, and I'll be there in person to witness it. I am, actually, looking forward to that. Speculation is running rampant.