April 11, 2005 [LINK]

Dueling pitchers

Poor John Smoltz! He threw fifteen strikeouts against the Mets yesterday, and he still lost the game! Not a very auspicious start of the season for his return to the role of starting pitcher for the Braves. New Met Pedro Martinez certainly showed his stuff, after getting roughed up in Cincinnati last week. So the Mets finally won a game!

Meanwhile, the Nationals again got shellacked by the Marlins (or Josh Beckett, more precisely) yesterday. They are now 3 and 3, and will at least have a solid record behind them as they prepare for the glorious Opening Day at RFK Stadium on Thursday. The Nats will appear, as guests of the Braves, on a nationwide broadcast for the first time tonight, courtesy of TBS. WTTG FOX-5 in Washington may broadcast some Nats' games instead of WDCA Channel 20 (WB) after all, but nothing is official.

Hiram Bithorn

Just in time for the long-awaited inaugural home game of the Washington Nationals, I've added a page for the "home away from home" in which they played during their last two years as the Montreal Expos: Hiram Bithorn Stadium.

UPDATE: The MLB Franchises page has been updated to include the relocation of Montreal to Washington, with new data on the age of stadiums into which the teams moved. RFK (at 44 years) turns out not to have been the oldest stadium into which a relocated team ever moved; that honor goes to Memorial Coliseum, which was 45 years old when the Los Angeles Dodgers first played there in 1958.