June 10, 2011 [LINK / comment]

Nats hold their own vs. the Giants

The Washington Nationals surprised nearly everyone by winning three out of four games against the World Champion San Francisco Giants at the end of April and early May. But could they do it again? The Nats actually did pretty well in the Monday night game, taking a 4-1 lead lead thanks to the red-hot Michael Morse, who homered and doubled, getting three RBIs. But the Giants scored three runs in the bottom of the eighth inning, and the game went into "overtime," a virtual repeat of how things transpired the day before in Arizona. But whereas the Nats prevailed against the Diamondbacks, this time they failed to capitalize on run-scoring opportunities in extra innings, and the Giants finally put it away in the 13th inning, winning 5-4. Here on the East Coast, it was 2:45 A.M. One could regard that as a very disheartening loss, but considering it was against the Giants, and they overcame both starting pitcher Tim Lincecum and closer Brian Wilson, I'd say they deserve to be proud of themselves. Indeed, the Nationals showed they still had their fighting spirit the next day, winning 2-1, but the Giants won the final game of the series, 3-1.

There was little to commend in last night's 7-3 loss to the Padres, however. The Nats are now 27-36 for the year, nine games below .500, and 3.5 games behind the fourth-place Mets in the NL East. They gotta do better than that.

Nats' pitcher Jason Marquis has been given a five-game suspension and was fined an undisclosed amount for hitting a batter with a pitch in Arizona last Sunday. See MLB.com.That is just not fair.

Major baseball page upgrades

Among other things, I've been busy revamping many of the Baseball pages on this Web site, starting with the Chronologies Web pages:

• General baseball (key events, etc.)
• Stadiums by decade
• Stadiums, annually

The information content on those pages is more or less up to date now, and I have also incorporated a new technique to display column headings in a fixed position while the rest of the table scrolls up and down. I think this will yield more consistent displays across various browser platforms than was the case before, but you never know. If anyone has a hard time viewing those pages, please let me know.

I am also in the midst of making some long-overdue stylistic changes, aiming for easier readability and less contrast. The most obvious difference is that column headings are now forest green rather than maroon in color, and table rows are a pale cream color rather than light orange.

Ballpark anniversaries

While redoing the RFK Stadium diagrams last month, it occurred to me that this October will be the 50th anniversary of its formal dedication. Imagine that: a half century! It served as home of the Washington Redskins for the remainder of the 1961 season, and then became the home of the Washington Senators as well the following spring.

Facebook friend Rex Hamann would like everyone to know that April 14 was the 58th anniversary of the opening of Milwaukee County Stadium as the home of the National League's Milwaukee Braves. (I'm still getting caught up with news, as you can see.) That would be in 1953, and what a joyous occasion it was in Milwaukee.

The Sporting News recently had a cover story on the upcoming centennial (!) of Fenway Park, ten months from now. That momentous event coincided with the opening of Navin Field (later called "Briggs Stadium" and finally "Tiger Stadium"), preceding the sinking of the Titanic by just a few days. 1912 also marked the electoral victory of Woodrow Wilson as president of the United States.

Needless to say, I've got a lot of other e-mail inquiries to get to...