The Washington Nationals are withholding stadium rent from the city because, they say, the stadium isn't finished. Well! I've been to a couple games, and I see a fully-functioning stadium. And it costs $11.50 for a beer and a bag of peanuts!

Fellow D.C. taxpayers, listen to my plan: So long as the Nationals withhold money from the city, I'm going to withhold money from the Nationals. The stadium allows outside food. So next time I'm offered a free ticket (which happens weirdly often), I'm going to smuggle all the beer I need by hiding it in a bag along with peanuts and other legitimate items. I predict that this will have no effect whatsoever on the franchise's deadbeat doings, but I will enjoy myself righteously. Join me!

Much chatter this afternoon about a Sports Business Journal report that Washington Nationals games on TV attract an average of 9,000 households---a number that, ironically enough, matches the number of Nats players that Manny Acta has had to place on the disabled list this season. Even Alan Thicke didn't have it so bad---and he got his ass kicked by golf highlights.

Dan Steinberg jumped on this early, but the folks at Big League Stew get a good joke in:

Nine thousand people? A 0.39 overall score? Really? I know Nats baseball isn't as exciting or riveting as C-SPAN or Wolf Blitzer, but you figure the Nats would have scored a higher rating just by the people leaving their televisions on after a Skins minicamp update...

Photo by D.F. Shapinsky

A local Girl Scouts troop is speaking out against major Nationals advertiser ExxonMobil. According to a press release from The Coalition to Strike Out Exxon:

The Washington Nationals ballpark is the first stadium to be LEED Silver Certified by the U.S. Green Building Council ... Yet the Nationals continue to accept millions of advertising dollars from Exxon, by far one of the world’s biggest contributors to global warming.

The Girl Scouts have joined the campaign to prevent Nationals Park from being renamed in Exxon's honor. In the process, the scouts will fulfill every girl's dream: Getting to wear a polar bear outfit. This Sunday, June 29, the girls will bear up to raise awareness about the Nats funder:

Sunday is “Nats Conversion Day,” when the first 10,000 fans that bring in any old MLB merchandise can trade it in for a brand-new Nats Curly W cap courtesy of ExxonMobil. The girl scouts will don polar bear suits and hold up signs about ExxonMobil and global warming as people enter the stadium.

Photo by mape s

Far as I can tell, only the great Thom Loverro looked into the Nats' last-minute cancellation of Sunday's scheduled jersey giveaway.

The team only told the disappointed 12-and-unders that they wouldn't be getting shirts because of "circumstances beyond our control."

But Loverro found "international intrigue" was behind the un-gifting.

"The Nationals giveaway jerseys, along with ones for the Marlins and Pirates," Loverro wrote, "were seized by customs and have been locked away, according to Major League Baseball spokesman Pat Courtney, though Courtney said they had no explanation for why they were seized."

Nationals president Stan Kasten told Loverro the same thing, and added that he "didn't expect to ever see those promotional jerseys again."

Just a hunch, but I bet for the next several years every Little League team with the offspring of U.S. Customs agents on it will be named "Nationals."

Good work, Thom!

Not a lot to remember so far in this grim slog of death Nats season. But this catch by Ryan Langerhans last night is pretty nice.

Recently an acqaintance shared with me a theory that if you've had a good idea, most likely 100,000 other people have had the same idea. The trick, he said, was getting your good idea to market. He's one of the co-founders of Audible, so I figure his theory is worth pondering.

A couple of months ago, my sister was diagnosed with celiac disease. People with it can't process gluten and are thus condemned to order many T-shirts celebrating this fact. Our much-missed former art director Pete Morelewicz was similarly afflicted and was always strutting around the office in some shirt or another that alerted folks to his wonky digestive system. After my sister's diagnosis, I thought about Pete's shirts and thought it would be funny to make a shirt that said "WHEAT IS MURDER." I have no idea how exactly many other people had the idea, but there are a few at least. Drat! I thought, and went back to pursuing personal agendas and covering up scandals.

ANYWAY, last night I was at Nationals Park, where at least the pretzels were interesting. Noah's Pretzels, a local company that has a stand in Nationals Park, sells both gluten-free pretzels and gluten-free beer. Apparently one of the founders has a child with autism, and autistic kids are often sensitive to gluten. Who knew? And also, now I'm glad that my sister has an enticement to come out to the ballgame with me, though perhaps gluten-free pretzels might not be enough.

So very few people bother drive to the new Nationals Park. While researching my story on all those empty lots, I noticed one tradition that has been left behind: the tailgate party.

If Nats fans did park their cars in the lots, they didn't stick around. One patron simply sat in his air conditioned SUV until first pitch. One family stood by their car drinking. Two other dudes quickly slurped big cans of cheap beer before walking to the stadium. One ended up pouring most of his beer out in a trash can at the lot's entrance.

I saw no mini grills. No hot dogs and burgers. No cases of Bud. And no lawn chairs. I suspect this is due to the fact that the lots are really lonely places and aren't sprawl-y enough for any pre-game festivities. The one lot where you could get away with a tailgate is lot HH--but that's located underneath a freeway. There are probably rules against firing up a grill underneath the on-ramp to 395.

Has anyone tried to tailgate at the new ballpark?

Richmond, Va.'s minor-league team, the Triple-A Richmond Braves, is leaving town to be closer to its Atlanta mothership. The team and Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder weren't able to come to terms about placing a new stadium downtown; the R-Braves currently play in the Diamond, an unloved, crumbling, 23-year-old facility that is far too big for minor-league games (but conveniently located near Buzz and Ned's, my favorite barbecue place in the Commonwealth).

So there's a smallish city not too far from here without a minor-league team, and, via Nationals Farm Authority, some rumors, or maybe just wishful thinking, that the Nats could move one of their double-A or single-A squads there (other teams seem to be considering Richmond as well). Expanding to Richmond might help the Nats lay claim to an area whose sports loyalties have trended ever-southward since the days when the Redskins were the de facto Team of the South.

But R-Braves games are ill-attended; I was at the Diamond two weekends ago, and most of the thin crowd (including me) left when the game went into extra innings. By moving, say, the Hagerstown Suns to Richmond, the Nats could tap a bigger market of such fairweather fans and maybe even convince a few to make the drive up to Nationals Park once in a while. And if Elijah Dukes gets sent down again, Richmond would offer far more entertainment options than either Hagerstown or Woodbridge, though it doesn't have a zoo.

Photo of the Diamond by haaaley

Remember, a few years back, when every politician in town was going nuts over Mayor Anthony A. Williams' plan to build a city-financed ballpark? Williams figured out a way to whip the votes to get the stadium deal through: create a "Community Benefit Fund" that would collect certain ballpark-related revenues that would be dished out for various neighborhood needs. Of course, for councilmembers to be allocated a piece of that money meant they had to play ball (har har) with Tony.

Several councilmembers did. Kevin Chavous, then Ward 7 councilmember, got $5 million for projects in his ward. Sharon Ambrose, then Ward 6 councilmember, got the same amount for her bailiwick. Sandy Allen, then Ward 8 councilmember, was promised tens of millions for development projects in her ward. Vincent B. Orange Sr., then Ward 5 councilmember, got $12 million for pet projects of his own, including laptops for kids at McKinley Tech High School. Tens of millions more was set aside for city schools and libraries.

According to estimates published in press accounts at the time, the fund was estimated to eventually bring in as much as $450 million. This year is the first time that the District's chief financial officer is certifying that there's any money actually in the fund---but only about $2.23 million. And, under Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's spending plan, not a dollar of that will go toward any of the projects Williams negotiated.

Instead, the money is being used for earmarks, including a half mil each for the Greater Washington Sports Alliance and the Lincoln Theater, plus $398,000 to "explore the feasibility of a D.C. Children's Museum." (The Williams allocations aren't stripped out, but Fenty's items are simply placed above them in the ballpark authorization law.) LL goes into much greater detail about the earmark game in his column to be published tomorrow.

Fenty's budget czar, William Singer, says the move was a result of the low revenues seen coming into the fund, which come out of a tax-increment-financing district around the ballpark and other development-related sources. "We're kind of recognizing that a modest amount of money is coming in," Singer says. "Rather than wait 20 years to cross off one item...we're saying, let's just spend it on the community now."

Also worthy of note: The community benefit money that wasn't allocated through Williams' horse-trading is supposed to be divvied according to a process that includes extended comment periods and "input from Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, community groups, the faith community, representatives of the labor community, representatives of the business community, and other community stakeholders."

But under Fenty's proposed budget, all those procedures are replaced with the following sentence: "The Mayor, through the annual budget process, may make a request for an appropriation for expenditures from the Community Benefit Fund."

Fenty, of course, voted against the ballpark deal and owes no fealty to any of the four aforementioned ex-councilmembers. And the Williams horse-trading always had a hint of charade to it---meant, as it was, merely to provide short-term political cover for a deal unpopular in most parts of the city. Or, as Singer puts it, "Those were and always have been totally empty promises."

Williams is traveling and was not available for comment. LL's calls to Orange were returned by a spokesperson for his employer, Pepco, saying there would be no comment. Allen and Chavous did not immediately return calls for comment.

Singer says a time may come when the money might be used as Williams & Co. intended. "If a whole bunch of money started coming in to the fund, of course we'd come back to the list."

Via Nationals Journal, this wonderful post from the St. Petersburg Times about Elijah Dukes' probation for a misdemeanor drug charge. The Nats told NJ's Barry Svrluga Dukes was at the Nats' training facility in Viera, Fla., rehabilitating his hamspring.

In fact he was cleaning out cages at Child magazine's #1 Family Friendly Zoo in America, the Lowry Park Zoo. Coincidentally, Lowry Park is reporting possible closures in its Florida Wildlife Center.

A capacity crowd showed up on opening night to see the Washington Nationals win a thrilling game.

Ever since, locals have gone back to doing what they have done for decades--essentially ignoring Major League Baseball. Confirmation of this unsurprising phenomenon comes via the Washington Post's Sports page this morning. Turns out that the Nats had an enormous attendance dropoff from stadium opener to second home game. Check out this excerpt from the story:

Since 1992, when Baltimore's Oriole Park at Camden Yards began a renaissance period for new ballparks, 16 existing franchises have moved into new facilities. None has drawn a smaller crowd for its second home game than the Nationals.

Despite all the "excitement" over the new ballpark, the team is 20th out of 30 MLB teams in attendance this year. Sports biz analysts say winning would help--the team is now 4-9--and certainly that's true. Still, it's early in the season--too early for fans to bail as they have on the Nats and their 41,888-seat stadium.

I'm giving the owners seven to nine years to come to grips with the futility of a D.C.-based MLB franchise. Then another few years to grapple with the league commissioner and others about moving or selling out. By 2020, we'll be back to where we were in 1972.

OK, fine, so I'm not so great at predicting the future either--the Nats found a way to end their losing streak with a 5-4 victory over the Atlanta Braves yesterday afternoon. But between Wily Mo Peña's less-than-stellar play at the plate and in the field, and Chad Cordero keeping things interesting in the ninth by loading the bases, new blood doesn't look like a long-term solution to the team's woes. --Mark Athitakis

My otherwise brilliant colleague Andrew Beaujon is pretty awful at predicting the future. I, however, am utterly confident in how the rest of the Nats season is gonna go.

Downhill. Forever.

Paul Lo Duca will make self-lacerating proclamations about how he needs to do better at the plate. And then he won't do it. Ryan Zimmerman will continue to be the face of the franchise, but proceed to bat his weight. Shawn Hill will return as a starting pitcher, but by the end of the season his ERA will be 20.00--which, in a cruel irony, will match the number of people attending the final 2008 home game at Nationals Park. What was that about long lines at the Ben's Chili Bowl stand?

The Nationals will lose every game for the remainder of the season. Trust me.

(Disclosure: I'm actually not very good at predicting the outcomes of sporting events. Whenever I participate in March Madness brackets, I wind up picking the wrong Cinderella team, and back in 1985 I was positive the Bears would win Super Bowls for years and years in a row. I was just a kid then, though, and I should've known that Mike Ditka's ill-advised decision to pursue a career as a rapper would lay his team low.)

The Nationals will be playing 81 games at its shiny new stadium. Craigslist realtors have taken note with skyhigh asking prices and too many exclamation points.

The neighborhood surrounding the ballpark hasn't changed all that much. It's still mechanic shops and liquor stores. Aside from the ballpark, the new amenities include a Subway sandwich shop, a Starbucks, and a Five Guys. Those things are all great. Who doesn't want to eat fresh? Who doesn't like a super strong cup of coffee? Who can't resist a juicy burger? But still--$579,000 for a town house?

This what you get according to the Craigslist ad:

LOCATION IS EVERYTHING! The address is 1012 3rd St. SE. Located 2 blocks from the Navy Yard metro, 5 blocks from the new Washington Nationals baseball stadium, 1 block from the new Courtyard by Marriott and the new Department of Transportation. This is the HOTTEST area in all of DC, with major changes happening daily! The website www.jdland.com is devoted to the southeast re-development with detailed descriptions/pictures of the area. CHECK IT OUT!

Read More "The Nationals: A Home Run For Real Estate Investors!" »

Oh no! Nats blow a 5-run lead! How did I not see this coming? WHY DO I LET MYSELF BELIEVE?