“Congratulations to the Washington Nationals for not being the first to lose 100 games this year.” Those are the paraphrased words that can be found in in my colleague Patrick’s recent season wrapup for the Nats. Now the team is faced with an important off-season during which they will have to rebuild. There are some important things I’d like to note about the coming off-season. Please feel free to weigh in.

• The Nationals MUST re-sign Odalis Perez (SP). Though he did not win as many games as was expected (7-12), he is cheap, and most importantly he wants to be here. Not many clubs in the situation of the Nationals can boast a veteran pitcher who wants to stay despite the lack of contention. His influence on young pitchers has been phenomenal. Re-sign him now!

• The Nats must let go of Aaron Boone. As a recent transplant from the New York area, I can sympathize with Boone. He gave me, along with millions of others, one of baseball’s greatest moments. But it is difficult to ignore the fact that he gets hurt an awful lot, and does not regularly make it through the season. His veteran influence will be missed, but there are others who can fill his shoes.

• First draft pick this year goes to the Washington Nationals. Think about how similar the Nats of today are to the Devil Rays of the not-so-distant past. The youth movement is alive and well in DC.

• A look at the Nationals depth chart reveals a strong set of position players, especially when you consider what guys like Lastings Milledge, Elijah Dukes, Emilio Bonifacio, Ryan Zimmerman, and even Nick Johnson will contribute in the near future- they are headed into their prime. There are several faces that need to go, though I’m not sure it will happen in this off-season. Outfielders Willie Harris and Ryan Langerhans are heading into their thirties, and neither have made the transition to the major leagues. The Red Sox ruined Wily Mo Pena by benching him for two years, and he doesn’t fit in DC anyway. Dmitri Young is (unfortunately) locked in through next season, but Nick Johnson is the present and the future. Young’s career is in a nose-dive.

• Pitching is a much more difficult scenario. Though Perez should stay, he is not an ace. Tim Redding is washed up, and he must go. The rest of the staff is very young, and very under-prepared. It is likely that many of them would only be getting spot starts on just about any other major league team. But keep them, and keep them in the majors. They will mature as players, and some may become exceptional. In the meantime, sign two front end pitchers- not necessarily CC Sabathia type aces, but winners.

• I have faith in the Nationals bullpen. They have been shaky, but not horrible as a whole, and the combo of Chad Cordero and Joel Hanrahan promises to be impressive in years to come.

• So here’s my free-agent shopping list for the Washington Nationals this year:

1. Odalis Perez (SP): Resign him.
2. Ivan Rodriguez (C): He is not needed by the Yankees anymore since Jorge Posada will be back. Though Pudge is experiencing a downturn in career numbers, he has a tremendous talent for working with the young pitchers who make up the vast majority of the Nationals staff. He will contribute by getting on base, and he has always performed best on teams outside of the spotlight. He will also come at a bargain price after his mediocre performance in Pinstripes.
3. Adam Dunn (LF): I rarely disagree with Tim Dierkes, but I simply do not believe the Nationals are at the beginning of a “long rebuilding process.” I think that they are nearing the end of one. Nats GM Jim Bowden likes Dunn (they were both Reds at one point) and wants to inject the team with power. That is exactly what the Nationals need. Dunn will drive in a ton of runs, create the kind of adrenaline and fan involvement that only a home-run hitter can, and he will help the Nationals grow into its big market. I don’t really know what there is not to like about Dunn in DC.
4. Freddy Garcia (SP): Now is the perfect time for a club like the Nats to make a move on Garcia. He recently recovered from an injury and pitched fairly well for the Tigers in three games. He will be a major bargain given his time on the DL, but there will be teams after him, especially Detroit. If the Nationals make a bold move and outbid the bargain-hunters, promising Garcia the ace slot, he can be won. Remember, this is a guy with a world series ring who has won between 14 and 18 games five times. Go get him!
5. Oliver Perez (SP): He has not yet mastered consistency, but he is still young- young enough to live up to the tremendous potential that this 180 strikeout season represents, but also old enough to help guide the younger pitchers. Perez will thrive where he can be a leader, as well as a student. He will also have a lot to learn if the Nationals can manage to pair him up with Pudge Rodriguez.

There are very few people who are willing to watch an atrocious baseball team. The Rays, Nats, and Royals can all attest to that. But Washington DC has the potential to be a massive market, particularly with the ease of travel that the Metro system offers. All that is required is some wise money spent along with continuous nurturing of the phenomenal youth movement taking place in the Nationals organization.

And in case anyone is interested, my prediction is Red Sox vs. Dodgers, Dodgers in 6.

As G. and I drove back into DC late on Sunday night, I commented that “there’s nothing like a weekend in New York City to make you feel like you live in a backwater town.”  The lack of cars! The empty sidewalks!  The open sky!  DC was so… peaceful after the jam-packed-24-hour-ness of NYC.

Okay, so their Chinatown trumps ours.  But a brief comparison between the Union Square Farmer’s Market and the Dupont Circle Farmer’s Market revealed similar pricing for at least the basics we looked over.  And we didn’t see anything there we don’t get here, so perhaps our lower population density isn’t always a disadvantage.

“Muddy” Ruel tags out a Philadelphia Athletics player at Home Plate in 1925.  These Senators went 96-55 to win the American League and make their second straight World Series.  A far cry from today’s Nats.

So in the height of Redskins football madness, you may have missed that the Washington Nationals ended their season with the same whimper of loss that could be heard through most of their games- 102 games in fact.  Along with the distinction of being this year’s worst team in baseball (not the only 100 game loser, but the only team to not break 60 wins) comes the dismal news of 6 coaches getting fired and the continued beating the team takes over having disappointing numbers in attendance and ratings.   

Everyone seems to have lost hope for the Nats-even our very own Patrick.

But not me.  Call me nutty.  Call me an optimist.  Call me completely out of touch with the real world and how baseball works.  All three do apply-but I do think there are good things to take away from this season.

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To the public, major mortgage companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had mixed records. On one hand, the past few months have been marred with reports that reckless lending to unqualified borrowers has left the company in shambles, with all borrowers and investors affected.

And on the other hand, Washington, DC knows first hand that the mortgagors were involved in a great deal of charity work, perhaps despite their inability to afford it in the last couple months. According to an NBC 4 story, the women’s homeless shelter N Street Village is now worried that their donations could end now that their biggest supporter, Fannie Mae, is controlled by the federal government.

Their concerns are legitimate. The federal government has already said that the investors are out of luck, that dividends will no longer be paid, so where is room for charity? Maybe the Feds will feel bad and put N Street Village on “welfare.” But it is a real shame that the government did not let events with Fannie Mae play out.

Without a government takeover of Fannie Mae, the company would have been forced to make some really difficult decisions- they would have had no choice but to slash their mortgage load to disinclude unqualified borrowers. They would have had no choice but to tell the world that borrowing does not make you rich enough to buy a McMansion, it makes you poorer.

If unable to fix their horrendous business mistakes, they would have gone out of business, and new entrepreneurs would have filled their gap in the market, likely with a better game plan, and the need to reach out to the community with charity like Fannie Mae.

But instead, look what has happened. Our federal government has grown by leaps and bounds, with mortgaging soon to be as poorly run as DMV. Instead, every charity that Fannie Mae supported may be out of luck. And instead, all the taxpayers and not the businessmen at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will be financially responsible for almost $5 trillion in faulty mortgages.

baby tomatoes @ dupont farmer’s market
Originally uploaded by gingher

Discouraged by the slim pickings at your local Safeway and Giant? Worried about FDA warnings about Salmonella contamination of fruits and vegetables? Don’t want to spend more than $1 per orange at Whole Foods?

Support local growers and buy your produce at one of DC’s many farmer’s markets this weekend.

Saturday 8:00 am - 2:00 pm
Adam’s Morgan
18th Street and Columbia Road, NW

Saturday 9:00 am - 1:00 pm
Chevy Chase
Broad Road and Northampton Street, NW

Saturday 9:00 am - 1:00 pm
Heritage Park
Division Avenue and Foote Streets, NE

Saturday 9:00 am - 1:00 pm
U Street
14th and U Streets, NW

Saturday 9:00 am - 1:00 pm
Mount Pleasant
Lamont Park

Saturday and Sunday 7:00 am - 4:00 pm
Eastern Market
7th and C Streets, SE

Sunday 9:00 am - 1:00 pm
Dupont Circle
20th Street and Massachusetts Avenue, NW

I actually took this picture a few weeks ago when out in Chantilly to have dinner with a friend, but the Washington Post got around to writing about the pro-life pharmacy before I did. [and let me assure you, we were at a nice little Indian place a few doors over, not at any of the crap chain restaurants mentioned in the above story]

I don’t know that I have a lot to say about the matter, other than it being somewhat interesting that this kind of thing crops up wayyyyyy out in the burbs rather than in the city. I wonder who their market is, or what their necessary purpose might be. After all, if you don’t approve of Plan B, you’re just as able to not get a prescription for it filled at CVS as you are at DMC Pharmacy. Is it that important to be able to fill your prescription for penicillin somewhere that there’s no condoms on the rack, tempting you?

Perhaps it’ll all a way to get a job for a friend or family member who is a pharmacist who finds himself unemployable at the majors because he won’t dispense birth control pills. Beyond that I’m hard pressed to understand the need for this business - when you open an alternative to Outback you don’t serve everything BUT meat, you have an entirely different set of offerings. What’s DMC Pharmacy going to bring to the table other than… what it doesn’t put out on the table?

Yesterday morning, the three of us who split a full share at Great Country Farms in Bluemont hopped in the car and headed for the farm to do some picking, and to retrieve our CSA boxes. Last week’s trip had been in the middle of the pre-summer heat wave that had the mercury pegged in most folks’ thermometers, and had us sweating a ton as we picked strawberries. This week’s trip turned out to be a more pleasant pastoral affair.

We hit the fields at about 10:30 in the morning, when it was only just in the mid-70s and the breeze made it mighty pleasant. We ended up with about 8 pints of strawberries between us, plus our farm boxes which had asparagus, lettuce, more strawberries, spring onions and a small cilantro plant. Farmer Ray showed us where the peach orchard was, as well, and showed us the fruit that was setting in the branches already. He says about three weeks ’til the peaches are ready. Judging by the heavy-laden blackberry vines, we’ll be in blackberries next week or the week after. After that, it was off on an adventure.

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…is the Farmer’s Markets this weekend. With salmonella warnings out there for pretty much every kind of store-bought tomatoes, why not head out the farmers market so you can get some disease-free tomatoes, and meet the people involved in growing them? The Post has a great listing of DC area Farmers’ Markets, and also an interactive Google Maps Mashup with markets separated out by days of the week.

I’ll be at the Courthouse market in the morning tomorrow getting tomatoes for Insalata Caprese with fresh basil. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Just when I think DC Cabbies have cornered the market on assholatry, I meet somebody like this Friendly cab. Coming home from an install tonight, I watched as this guy leaned on his horn when the car in front of me took the merge on to the on-ramp of I-66 at a speed that was not to his satisfaction, only to swerve across a lane of traffic to build up speed to cut him off (passing both of us in the meanwhile) and giving us the finger.

Wow. I guess Arlington “Friendly” Cabs aren’t quite as friendly as we’d all like to think.

"Friendly" my ass. — Originally uploaded by tbridge

If you’ve been shopping this week you might have noticed a big hole where the tomatoes should be, or perhaps any eatery you’ve been in has had signs up stating they’re only serving cherry tomatoes and citing the FDA warning. While they work on figuring out exactly where the problem originated so they can tell you what is safe to eat from your local supermarket, you might want to try your farmer’s market.

Your farmer’s market tomatoes were never included in this interdiction because they’re not part of the same ’system’ as what the grocery stocks, and therefor there’s no way they came from the same currently unknown source that has shipped out salmonella-laced tomatoes. Whether or not they’re immune to the problem in general is a matter for some debate, and you might read this posting here at the excellently written and disquietingly-named BarfBlog. Professor Powell takes the scientific view that there’s no evidence that sustainable and local is any safer, but observes that at least with the farmer’s market you may have the opportunity to ask directly about production methods.

He’s welcome to his opinion, but I personally will always feel more confident overall in produce and meat that comes out of a family-style farm using traditional practices than what comes from ‘industrial’ food.

On a side note about the tomato outbreak, this recent crop (sorry) of tomato safety issues comes as no surprise at all, and the eastern shore of Virgina has been implicated before.

Picture courtesy of AHMED.