Blog post

January 13, 2006 [LINK]

Hail to the Redskins AND Nationals!

Many people rightly give credit to Coach Joe Gibbs for the fact that the Washington Redskins are in the NFL playoffs for the first time since the 1999-2000 season. What about the possibility that competition with the new Washington Nationals team for the loyalty of D.C.-area sports fans might have been just the kick in the rear that the Redskins needed? Such competition was believed by many people (including me) to have spurred the Orioles to take first place in the AL East early last season.

The Redskins will be playing against the Seahawks (a non-existent bird species) tomorrow in Seattle, where it has been raining for 40 days and 40 nights, more or less. I had thought that Qwest Field had a retractable roof, like next-door Safeco Field, but I recently learned that that huge roof with the arch suspension is actually fixed. It covers 70 percent of the seats, so most of the fans will stay relatively dry even if the rain does continue. It's sort of like Texas Stadium, home of the Cowboys. Otherwise, most stadiums designed for football have little if any roof. Toronto's old Exhibition Stadium would be one big exception. People occasionally ask me if I intend to cover football stadiums in the same way I cover baseball stadiums. I seriously doubt it, but I would be glad to collaborate with someone who wants to take on such a project. There is already one such site: Stadiums of NFL, but from what I can tell, it's not updated very often.

D.C. baseball timeline

The chronology section of the Baseball in D.C. page has been updated for the first time in several months. There is still a gap from July to early October.

UPDATE: That page also includes the likelihood of voting "yes" on the stadium funding bill for each of the 13 council members. Of course, that would depend on the precise terms, so my "guesstimates" don't mean very much.

Movie: The Slugger's Wife

TBS recently broadcast the 1985 movie The Slugger's Wife, which I had not seen before. It starred Michael O'Keefe and Rebecca De Mornay, better known for her roles in Risky Business (1983) and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992). Frankly, she was not terribly impressive in the role of a pop singer from the South. I noticed from the credits on the Internet Movie Database Web page that oddball singer Loudon Wainwright III ["Dead Skunk"]* made an apprearance, but I didn't notice him. Quite a few of the game scenes were filmed in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, and both that page and the Civic Religion page have been updated accordingly.

* CORRECTION: I had originally put "Werewolves of London," but was just told by David Peck that the singer-songwriter who created that classic from the '70s was the (late) Warren Zevon, who also wrote "Lawyers, Guns, and Money," often cited by Prof. Herman Schwartz at U.Va. (I checked the Apple Music Store just to make sure.) Thanks, Dave!