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Off-the-Field Recap: Recidivism

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The “dog days” of August are stupid, mostly because they are misleading and provide no extra dogs for petting or looking at on the feeds of Nationals players’ instagrams. What I’m trying to say is the Nats were relatively quiet this week on social media, but there was lots of on-ish, but technically off, field stuff to takes its place. Max Scherzer protested Jayson Werth’s freedom, Mark Melancon discovered GIFs, and Shawn Kelley became a campaign manager.

1. Mark Melancon’s first action as the Nationals new official Cupcake Made of Sunshine who is too Good for this World, was to tweet a bunch of pure and simple GIFs applauding the Nationals starting pitchers’ efforts. That in itself is a long way from Johnny Jonathan’s idea of fun. But a further review of Melancon’s Likes reveals that his primary use of Twitter is favoriting stats and tweets about his teammates.

Like I said: cupcake, sunshine, too pure for world.

2. It was a week like any other week. Max Scherzer was pitching eight innings of two-hit ball, Dusty Baker was probably somewhere commenting on Trea Turner’s butt, and FP Santangelo was laughing about Blake Treinen and Tanner Roark dancing in Lederhosen. The Nationals had released a promotional towards the end of August for the Nats inaugural Oktoberfest Night (being held on September 10). It was just sheer luck and an act of the universe smiling upon us that the promotional included Roark and Treinen participating to the fullest extent.

The whole pitching staff enjoys the promotional. They all join together, laughing in what can only be jealousy and awe to watch as it’s played at Nats Park.

3. As the attendance at Citizens Bank Park has slowly diminished, the longing for 2009 and Jayson Werth can almost be heard amongst the boos thrown his way. Among those booing is Werth’s own teammate, Max Scherzer. Jayson had already hit one homer in Monday’s game and had been received in the dugout to boos that rivaled those of the opposing fans and one loud “cut your hair!” from an unidentified player. Scherzer continued this on Thursday, when Werth was up to bat, yelling “go back to jail,” just before Werth murdered a baseball and buried it 453 ft. away, not helping his case.

4. In a Leslie Knope-esque display of democracy and dedicated campaigning, Shawn Kelley debuted his “Tanner Roark for Gold Glove” t-shirt on Monday, just in time for the beginning of a new news cycle to get his candidate much deserved media coverage. Roark has been stellar this season, he’s pitched seven (or more) shutout innings eight times this season, the most in the Majors. So get the man a spray painted glove, dammit.

5. On Wednesday, the premiere of the Zimmerman’s episode of Playhouse Masters aired, and Ryan Zimmerman surprised his two-year-old Mackenzie with a luxury castle playhouse. Mackenzie is living her best life, and everyone who’s ever been on Tiny House Hunters is probably jealous.

6. Without doing any real research, it’s obvious to me that the overlap between baseball fans and Disney fans is huge. Wilson Ramos is essentially Robin Hood, taking hits from the rich and giving bat flips to the poor. The Nationals capitalized on this Sunday against the Rockies, debuting the new Simba Cam. This enhances your baseball experience by giving you infinitely more babies being held up above head-level.

Last and least, the Tweets (other good things that happened) of the Week:

This isn’t from this week, but it is a Mike Rizzo talking to a baby, so it qualifies:

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Mina Dunn

I watched the Orioles until I was ten when I realized that (most) fans at RFK didn’t shout letters during the National Anthem. I’m a Public Relations and Economics major at VCU, the associate managing editor at TNB, and a sports columnist for a student newspaper. Be my friend on Twitter dot com: @maddc8.

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