Category Archives: Sports Fix

Essential DC, Interviews, Life in the Capital, Sports Fix, The Features
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Sports Extra: Capitals Hockey 2009-10 Season Preview

Photo courtesy of
‘Net Lit In Red’
courtesy of ‘clydeorama’

Ok DC, ready for a real sport, now that the Redskins have imploded, the United tanked and the Nats…well, they’re the Nats. Anyway, are you ready for some hockey?

The Washington Capitals open up their season tomorrow night in Boston against the Bruins, the first step in their 2009-10 quest for Lord Stanley’s Cup. Last season saw the Caps suffer the most ignominious of falls, crashing in a critical Game 7 against the eventual Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins. Even more galling to Caps fans was the fact that the Caps led that series 2-0 before running out of gas.

Will this year be any better?

It depends.

While I’m sure a few of you actually care what I think about the Caps this year, most people I’ve talked with casually about hockey are skeptical of my Capitals analysis, considering I’m a Penguins fan at heart. Never mind the fact that last year, I was only two wins off predicting their season record and correctly predicted their playoff exit. So rather than take flak again this year, I turned to ESPN’s John Buccigross for his invaluable insight. (And for the record, Bucci picked the Flyers to win the Cup this year. That’s right, Philly. But we won’t hold that against him.)

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Sports Fix, The Features
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Sports Fix: 1-2 Edition

Photo courtesy of
‘Skins vs. Rams – 09-20-2009’
courtesy of ‘carldunniii’

Redskins
Record: 1-2
Last Two Weeks: 1-1
Place: Last in the NFC East

Hooboy. What can you possibly say after the Redskins gave Detroit their first victory in 20 games? In 18 months? What can you possibly say about the squad?

Well, for one, you could say to Jim Zorn, “You’re Fired.”

Perhaps that’s what Dan Snyder will do, as he has about as much patience as your average mobster waiting for a loan to be repaid. I’m not about to make excuses for Zorn, whose playcalling has been about as atrocious as it could be, but let’s give the guy a chance to right the ship before sending him packing. Of course, a lot of the discussions overnight have been about the quote from John Riggins that ESPN 980 retweeted: “There are team specific issues 4 sure & some individual issues 4 sure but the owner ultimately is a loser and you can’t fix that”

So, where’d we go wrong this week? 100 yards in Penalties are a good place to start. Detroit very nearly had three interceptions, but as their defense has all the hands of a teenage klutz, they only managed 1, despite an opportunity for a pick-six. The lack of Red Zone determination was maddening, especially the 4th-and-1-at-the-1 where Portis just couldn’t break through.

The Skins take on Tampa next weekend, and if the Giants’ 24-0 thumping of the Bucs, this should be an easy 2nd win for the Skins. I would’ve thought that about this week, though, as well.
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Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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NFL Films Focuses on Zorn, Campbell

Photo courtesy of
‘Jason Campbell and Clinton Portis’
courtesy of ‘Keith Allison’

This weekend’s abysmal Redskins/Rams game at Fedex left the audience booing, the team bewildered and twittering stupidly, and everyone else going “Wait, is that score from Halftime?!” NFL Films had both QB Jason Campbell and Coach Jim Zorn wired for the game Sunday and have now released the product of the experiment, where we can see how Zorn and Campbell communicated throughout the game.

It’s fascinating to see how technology has altered the NFL, specifically the relationships between QB and Coach, to increase team communication in stressful situations and to help evaluate flaws in execution and planning. Really quite interesting.

News, Sports Fix, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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The Redskins may End up in the Supreme Court

Photo courtesy of
‘00205691’
courtesy of ‘Keith Allison’

The harried Redskins may have something new to contend with, on top of sucking at football.  Several American Indian activists are attempting to take their long running dispute over the Redskins’ logo to the Supreme Court.  The activists claim that Washington’s trademark is racially offensive and should be changed.  This case has been batted around the lower courts for some time, and rulings have gone back and forth through the appeals process.  Whether or not the case will actually be heard has yet to be seen.  The Supreme Court hears very few cases, despite that thousands are submitted each year.  For the time being, it seems that the Redskins are safe.

Sports Fix
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Sports Fix: Any Given Sunday Edition

Photo courtesy of
‘00205875’
courtesy of ‘Keith Allison’

Redskins
Record: 0-1
Past Two Weeks: 0-2
Place: Last in the East

Well, that was a delight. The only good play in the whole of the first half came from Hunter Smith, who managed to run in a 4th & 8 field goal decoy for a touchdown. Jason Campbell threw for 211 yards, but got sacked for a touchdown and gave up another INT, not a fine performance from the Skins QB. Losing a conference matchup on the opening Sunday is not the way you want to start your season, but the Giants are a pretty formidable foe, so this isn’t the end of the world. What do the Skins need to do before next week?

How about some hands drills? Listening to the game on the radio this afternoon, I couldn’t help but notice the Skins couldn’t hold on to the ball, either on the receiving end, or on the ground. A fumble returned for a touchdown isn’t going to win you any friends, Mr. Campbell. Not even if you buy them an Admiral TV.

Up next? Pay for slay. The Rams are coming to Washington, and that’s going to be a good old-fashioned seal-clubbing.

Nationals
Record: 50-93
Past Two Weeks: 4-8
Place: Dead Last, but First in the Bryce Harper Race…

There are just 19 games left in the 2009 season, and the Nats will need to win at least 10 of them in order to beat last year’s deeply unsuccessful record. Of course, they’re not playing so great right now, so that’s not even close to a given. The Nats are off Monday before heading to Philly for 3 (predicted 0-3) and then 3 in New York against the Mets (predicted 2-1) before they come home for a 9-game final homestand against LA, Atlanta and the Mets. Get your baseball while you can, DC. The Nationals aren’t much to watch, but at least they’re still ours, and the tickets on stubhub are cheap as can be.
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Sports Fix, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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Dinosaurs, Not WNBA Basketball

Photo courtesy of
‘The animatronics for walking with dinosaurs at the o2 is seriously impressive. 50ft fully mobile dinos’
courtesy of ‘Mr Gus’

Via the Washington Times comes this interesting, sad, and yet just a little bit hilarious note. If the Mystics make the playoffs? They can’t play their first round games at home in the Verizon Center. Why? Walking with Dinosaurs is coming to the Verizon Center that week, instead. I suppose it’s a sad note about the viability of the WNBA that they can’t even play their playoff games at their own facility, but at least they’ll be heading to the Comcast Center at University of Maryland where Marissa Coleman and Crystal Langhorne made names for themselves playing for the Terps.

Sports Fix
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Sports Fix: The Hunt Edition

Photo courtesy of
‘Head Hung Low (Nyjer Morgan)’
courtesy of ‘Kevin H.’

Nationals
Record: 46-85
Last Two Weeks: 3-10
Place: Last in MLB

The Nats returned to their old ways this week, and were dealt a couple of setbacks that may have some negative repercussions for the rest of the season. First of all, if you love sports betting, you might want to check betfred promo code new customer, you will surely get a huge amount of bonus from this website. Nyjer Morgan ended his season this week with a broken hand sliding into 2nd, which is sad on many levels, but might be the best thing to protect him for next year. Ronnie “Sugartits” Belliard got traded to the Dodgers this afternoon for a Class A pitcher Luis Garcia. This means that Justin Maxwell will start to see some play with the Nats for the rest of the season, which brings us to the important points:

1. It looks like the Nats have a decent shot at doing better than their last year’s record. The Nats would need to finish 14-17 in their last 31 games to pick up a better record, and if they play Jekyll and Hyde like they have been, that’s a fair bet.

2. But let’s not hope too hard. If the Nats finish last in MLB this year, they’ll have a good shot at Bryce Harper in the 2010 Amateur Draft. He hit the longest home run in Tropicana Field’s history at 502 feet. He did it at age 16. And he’ll most likely be in the draft this coming year, which means the Nats would have a shot at the kind of hitter you only see once or twice in a generation. Continue reading →

Sports Fix, The Features
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Sports Fix: Redskins Preview

Redskins
Redskins photo courtesy of Ben Domenech

Our Redskins Preview comes to us courtesy of Ben Domenech, editor of the New Ledger, and lifelong Redskins Fan.

Fellow fans of the Washington Redskins, I have nothing to offer you but horrible tales of impending mediocrity and inevitable despair. Oh yes – we suck again.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from 27 years of cheering for the Washington Redskins, which my mother swears began when I was still in diapers, it’s that under Joe Gibbs, the Redskins are at least a respectable franchise, and occasionally a good one. The Gibbs years of old were magnificent, yes — something I’ve appreciated all the more as I’ve gotten older. We’ve since been able to appreciate both the cheap suckitude of the flailing Norvous years of the dying squire, and the expensive, flashy suckitude of Dan Snyder’s entertaining obsession with shiny objects.

What do you have at the end of all those years, with great players and terrible players come and gone? A team that will beat teams they should, lose to teams they should, and still, somehow, command your pocketbook like none other. Continue reading →

Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Nats Offer Dollar Ball, First Look at Strasburg on Friday

Photo courtesy of
‘Batter up’
courtesy of ‘afagen’

The Nationals are offering $1 seats in the lower bowl for Friday’s game against the Brewers, and also offering a look at pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg’s first press conference at Nats Park at 2pm on Friday. The conference will be followed with a Q&A with various Nationals players and front office staff in a Town Hall format that, for once, won’t feature the words “Health Care”, “Nazis” and “Barney Frank“. We’re also pretty sure no one will be outside this Town Hall with AR-15s.

If you missed the parcel of tickets that went on sale for $1 today, there’s another set of 1,000 seats that go on sale on Friday at noon, so get your clicking fingers ready, Nats fans!

Life in the Capital, Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Kastles To Receive Key to the City


2009 WTT Champions by Max Cook

To honor the 2009 World TeamTennis Champion Washington Kastles, Mayor Fenty will be presenting the team with the Key to the City next Thursday, August 27th at 11am.  The ceremony will be held on the steps of the Wilson Building at 1350 Pennsylvania Ave NW.  The first 300 fans will receive a free Kastles WTT Championship t-shirt so be sure to get there early if you’re in the market for free stuff.  The entire Kastles team will be there including Murphy Jensen, Leander Paes, Rennae Stubbs, Scott Oudsema, and Olga Puchkova.  After the ceremony there will be a fan appreciation event across the street at Freedom Plaza with food and drinks, giving you a chance to catch up with the players and to give them high fives and such.  Can I get a “whooooaaaa Kastles”?!

News, Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Nationals Sign Strasburg for $15.067M

Photo courtesy of
‘Stephen Strasburg’
courtesy of ‘jpangan3’

Congratulations to Stephen Strasburg, who just became the highest paid amateur draftee in the history of Major League Baseball. The #1 draft pick has been paid $15.067M for his services, as broken by Nationals Farm Authority this evening. We’re still waiting for how the deal breaks out, but it will be a 4-year deal, for a total of $15.067M in salary, approximately 50% more than the landmark contract Mark Prior received in 2001 for his signing with the Cubs.

Is it worth it? We’ll see. I’m pleased to see the Nats sign Strasburg for less than $20M, which was the magic number in my head for his first four years. No idea where he’ll end up first, or how quickly he’ll be there, but a good bet would be the Potomac Nationals in the next week or two. Here’s hoping this is money well spent.

Sports Fix
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Sports Fix: Tough Losses Edition

Photo courtesy of
‘DSC_2527’
courtesy of ‘Brad’s Pix’

Redskins
Records: 0-1 (Pre-season)
Place: N/A
Last Two Weeks: 0-1

23-0 is no way to start the pre-season, but these are games that don’t mean much, so keep that in mind as you see all of the rancor over the pre-season opener. But, really, let’s not talk about that just yet, because there are a few things we should really deal with first. For example, the Redskins Twitter policy: “Reporters no longer are permitted to tweet or blog from the field during practice. We were allowed to blog on the first 10 minutes of practice from the field last season, but now we’ll have to leave the field and risk missing something”

You have got to be kidding me, right? This gets crazier, though, because now you can add Chris Cooley to your iPhone. This is crazy-talk. Chris Cooley doesn’t need to be building iPhone apps in the off-season, he needs to be working on catching the football and increasing his speed. But, hey, if you’ve got an iPhone app, I suppose that makes dropping the ball okay.

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Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Redskins Pre-Season Game Tonight!


Redskins Band courtesy of Littlerottenrobin

The Redskins start off their pre-season run tonight against the Baltimore Ravens up at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. While the game doesn’t start until after 7pm, pre-game coverage is alive and well on Comcast Sportsnet. It’ll be fun to see how the Skins recover from their off-season experiences, and more so to see how the critical offensive line behaves under fire for the first time this season.

My bet? Ravens by a TD. We’ll see.

Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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New Goaltending Coach for Caps

Photo courtesy of
‘arturs irbe playing for dynamo riga’
courtesy of ‘Uncleweed’

The Washington Capitals have announced they’ve hired Arturs Irbe as the team’s new goaltending coach. Dave Prior, the former coach, resigned recently after 12 years in that position in order to spend more time with his family.

Irbe is a 13-year veteran of the NHL, serving time with San Jose, Dallas, Vancouver and Carolina, as well as the goalie for the Latvian national team in the 2002 and 2006 Olympics. His last season in the NHL was 2003-04; he finished his career with a 2.83 GAA and a .899 save percentage.

Is this the piece the team needs to stabilize their goalie situation? Possibly. Though I’m fairly certain the team needs more stability IN the net, not necessarily in supervising it.

News, Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Jordan Zimmermann to Miss 18 Months

Photo courtesy of
‘Nats pitcher Jordan Zimmerman’
courtesy of ‘afagen’

Even when things are good, it’s hard to be a National. Pitcher Jordan Zimmermann will missing approximately 18 months with what looks, to the dismay of everyone, like a ligament tear in his elbow. The Nationals will seek a third opinion, but if that confirms the diagnosis, it’s likely he will have Tommy John Surgery, where they remove a ligament from somewhere else on your body (usually a foot, forearm or leg) and replace the torn ligament in your elbow.

It’s not a death sentence, but any stretch of the imagination, as more than 83 percent of athletes recover to their previous strength, but it’s still a huge blow for the Nationals to lose one of their best pitchers this early in his career.

The worst of this is the timing. Not just for the Nats in the middle of an 8-game winning stretch, but because there are just five days left before the deadline to sign Stephen Strasburg before the window closes for a year and it’s likely he heads to Japan. This could go either way: Either Boras has the Nats right where he wants them, and is able to get $50M, or the Nats say to Boras, “We just saw one of our best prospects tear a ligament randomly. You get $18M and you like it, or you take your chances with Japan.”

We’ll see how the Lerners play it in a few days.

Music, Sports Fix, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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Nationals Host Best National Anthem Of All Time

glenndonnelian.png

Anyone who’s ever been to a Nats game with me knows that I have a thing for the National Anthem. I’ve been known to sing along, even audition to use my undergrad degree in Vocal Performance, and I’ve got pretty exacting standards for what it takes. Usually, I’m an anthem purist, but Glenn Donnellan from the National Symphony moved me with his Saturday performance. Donnellan, a violinist, constructed an electric violin out of a baseball bat and brought that out to Nats Park on Saturday and absolutely nailed the National Anthem. Usually I don’t go in for flourishes and extra ornaments, as they tend to be out of character for what is nominally a drinking song set to a poem about war. But Donnellan’s electric performance defies all rules about character and elevates it to something that even Sam the Eagle would find touching.

Bravo, Glenn, and Bravo to the Nationals for hosting him.

Sports Fix
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Friday’s Action at The Legg Mason


Fernando Gonzalez by Max Cook

Contributed by Veronica Jackson

While walking from the grassy parking lot, where they line up cars very tightly in neat rows at the Legg Mason Tennis Tournament on Friday, I met a fine young gentleman parked next to me who said, “I have no idea about this sport.” He was attending the daytime matches because a work colleague had given him tickets and the day was “too beautiful to pass up.” I gave him my brief rundown of why I love this game. It’s such a mental sport. One can be incredibly physically fit and have great technique, but if you don’t believe in your abilities and that you can beat your opponent, one can lose matches. I also assured him that it was an easy game to follow and he would enjoy himself. Besides, sitting anywhere in the Stadium at 1 PM on a sunny afternoon is a beautiful way to get a tan. We continued to walk towards the entrance. He went to Will Call as I bade him good luck and I continued through the entrance gates.

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Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Legg Mason Heating Up


Scott Oudsema by Max Cook

Contributed by Paula Schumann

Qualifying rounds at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic whet my appetite for what promises to be an exciting tournament.  Lots of big names are attending this year, among them Lleyton Hewitt, John Isner, Tommy Robredo, Tommy Haas, Robin Solderling, and of course, Andy Roddick, a Legg Mason favorite.  Andy is having an exceptional summer, coming off the astonishing final match with Roger Federer at Wimbledon.

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Sports Fix
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Sports Fix: Dog Days! Edition

Photo courtesy of
‘Three points taken’
courtesy of ‘BehindTheBadge.com’

D.C. United
Record: 6-4-10 (28 points)
Last Two Weeks: 0-1-2
Place: 3rd in the East

A loss and a draw for United has cost them a place in the East, dropping to third behind Columbus (33 points) and Chicago (32 points). Another draw in the CONCACAF Champions League against L.A. Firpo has brought us a rough patch for the squad. Houston put the screws to United this past Saturday in the high-scoring 4-3 match, despite nearly blowing a 3-goal lead.

What’s next for United? Get out your passports. Tuesday is a CONCACAF rematch against L.A. Firpo, but this time in El Salvador, and then a trip to Toronto next weekend for a run against Toronto F.C. Then, finally, look forward to the return of the LA Galaxy on the 22nd.

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