Unreal

Those D.C. politicians never cease to amaze me. From Marc Fisher's discussion yesterday:

Most amazingly, council member and mayoral candidate Vincent Orange showed up and proceeded to try to take credit for the presence of black and Hispanic partners in the Lerner ownership group. Orange actually told me that had he and Marion Barry not held their sad little press conference on Tuesday to slam the Lerners for not being black enough in their group's ownership bid, the Lerners might not have had this many minority participants in their group. Wow.

Nay to the other D.C. pols who botched, sabotaged and otherwise mishandled the baseball mess from day one to this week. Even those stalwart supporters of the mayor's initiative, council members Jack Evans and Vincent Orange, showed their nasty sides this week when they ripped the Lerner group before they'd even met the new owners. As for the others, well, it was nothing less than jaw-droppingly galling to see Linda Cropp cheering from the stage this morning, as if she hadn't done everything she could think of to sabotage the baseball deal to further her own mayoral ambitions. And the District's non-voting delegate to Congress showed up and pretended to have had something to do with baseball coming here, when she was actually about as much a factor in all this as was Paris Hilton.

Unbelievable. I guess I shouldn't be surprised though.

Marc also took a question from the crowd:

Crystal City, Va.: Um, what exactly is "the great victory" Marion Barry is now claiming to have won with the election of the Lerner group as the Nats new owners?

Marc Fisher: The mayor for life and his new buddy, Vincent Orange, are really, truly trying to take credit for having pushed the Lerners into granting the black partners in their ownership group a larger role. The fact that this is utterly absurd--the minority partners were signed up and leaked well before the council members entered the controversy--has no bearing on the words or actions of the politicians.

I can't believe that Barry and Orange can actually say this with a straight face. I dearly wish someone would question them about it- I'd love to hear their answer on this topic. They'd probably avoid the question or give a non-answer. And that Linda Cropp is just as bad. Cheering from the stage?!? I heartily booed her at Opening Day last year and wish I had been there yesterday to boo her again. Tony Williams is the only person who should rightfully be applauded out of the whole crew.

From another discussion this week, bad news for a favorite publication featured at the Nats games:

Washington, D.C.: What happened to the special Express editions that were available at Nationals games? I really miss those.

Michael Grass: You're talking about HomeStand, the special edition available at RFK Stadium that was very popular with readers. We know that many people miss it. Although it was a hit with those in the stands, advertisers didn't catch on. We do appreciate the interest. If you have a big pile of cash sitting around and would like to finance it for all the Nats fans out there, maybe you can talk to someone in advertising.

I liked them too. We were looking for them on Opening Day this year and were disappointed not to see them. Good to know that we shouldn't waste our time wondering where they are anymore, but it sucks that the paper won't be back. That was a nice feature- full of fluff, yes, but helpful to the many casual fans who didn't know much about the team or about baseball. My favorite story in that paper was the one about how Screech came to be (a late-night rendezvous between Slapshot, the Caps mascot, and Talon, the DC United mascot). And the interviews with the players were nice too. Damn.