Mike O'Connell

Mike Rizzo has got to be the most popular president in D.C. right now. Currently team president (and general manager) of the Washington Nationals, I say Rizzo moves his office up the street from the Navy Yard to Pennsylvania Avenue immediately. Let last night’s ballgame be Exhibit A.

Starting pitcher Tanner Roark leaves the game after six passable innings, unfortunately on the wrong side of a 2-0 game. Washington scores two in the bottom of the sixth, getting Roark off the hook, then the beleaguered and much-maligned bullpen shuts down the opposition for the next three innings, during which time the Nats tack on the winning run. We have Messrs. Kintzler, Madson, and Doolittle to thank, none of whom were on the team but a few weeks ago. That’s good GM-ing, especially considering none of those guys was an overpriced free agent and/or obvious rental player.

An even greater bargain, of course, may be the game’s offensive star, Mr. Goodwin, who scored two runs and knocked in two, including a home run to provide the aforementioned go-ahead run. Let us recall that Brian Goodwin was drafted by the Nats in the first round of the 2011 MLB Draft, the same draft in which the Nats picked up Anthony Rendon. This was the draft after the Nats picked up a certain Mr. Harper (2010) and a certain Mr. Strasburg (2009). Know who became GM in 2009?

President Rizzo.

Gotta hand it to Bill Nye, kid show science guy from 20 years ago somehow still relevant, and more than just in a has-been, nostalgic-y kind of way (though there is an element of that).

It helps that “environmentalism” writ large has become an increasingly discussed topic the past few decades, especially now among hipster millennials just aching for a real problem to solve in a world in which everything else comes pretty easily. Bill Nye’s in one of those enviable positions in which one’s public crusade is also somehow profitable, and allows one to hobnob with other celebrities, etc.

Bill’s our go-to guy for “science,” out Al Gore-ing even Al Gore these days. This week’s Parade magazine (the thing that shows up in your Sunday paper) features Nye and a couple “science” kids talking about the upcoming solar eclipse (coming to a planet near you on August 21). Yup, if there’s going to be an eclipse the man you want to interview about it is Bill Nye.

Bill’s also featured in this month’s issue of Playboy, becoming I believe the first person to appear simultaneously in those two legendary publications. In case you’re wondering, Bill is fully clothed, including his trademark bow tie, of which he claims to own 500.

Five hundred bow ties? Sounds like someone preparing for the Apocalypse.

Wait… Apocalypse? There’s an apocalypse approaching?

We’d better check this out.

Someone call Bill Nye.

Step #1: Stake best pitcher in baseball to a 6-0 lead.

Step #2: Have best pitcher in baseball leave game after one inning due to some kind of bizarre neck spasm. (Apparently he slept on it funny. Or something like that.)

Step #3: Have MASN put graphic on board showing how great the new-and-improved bullpen has been since acquiring Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle.

Step #4: Don’t have either one of those guys pitch.

Step #5: Watch said bullpen blow lead and lose game 7-6.

Step #6: #smh

There’s an old baseball expression about seeing something you’ve never seen before. Four home runs in a row? Five in an inning? Eight in a game? Watching TV with a beach in the background

Yeah, I’m still on vacation.

For the Nats’ sake I think I’m going to do this more often.

Whoever came up with the idea for “Shark Week” was a genius. (Wikipedia tells me it was someone named Tom Golden.)

Whoever came up with the idea to have swimming legend Michael Phelps race a shark during Shark Week… super duper double genius.

Seriously, who hasn’t been talking about Phelps vs. Shark the past month or so? This thing got more hype than the actual Olympics where Mr. Phelps made his bones.

I was curious to see how, if nothing else, Discovery Channel would be able to fill an hour (actually 66 minutes) with something that obviously was going to take about 30 seconds. Well, they did, and I was riveted from the word go. Spoiler alert: the shark wins, but seriously, how exactly did you think the race was going to turn out?

And thus we commence another Shark Week, the Discovery Channel equivalent of Christmas at the North Pole. I was unaware until last night that there are a couple more Phelps-shark episodes in the can, including something called “Sharkopedia.”

How about Rematch-opedia?

Hmm?

My wife tells me this blog is often too political, so at the risk of showing my human bias and offending any shark fans out there, let me simply say nice race, shark. Way to represent.