Players on the Washington Redskins, a team that (Awesome Trivia™ alert!) hasn't hosted a playoff game in this century, have been forced to get together at some mysterious high schools in parts unknown (the practice write-ups never get more specific than "Northern Virginia") throughout the spring just to work out.

And at those gatherings they've been reduced to pulling fans from the stands just to have enough bodies to bring Kyle Shanahan's Xs and Os to life.

Conversely, on several levels, there's the D.C. Divas.

As they prepare for still another post-season hosting gig, the local women's football outfit's management has announced the date and time of their workouts, and have even named the high schools.

A full quorum of players — enough to run a real practice! — will show up.

The Divas ended a 7-1 regular season on Saturday with a 38-16 win over the New York Sharks, making 'em the 2011 champions of the Northeast Division of the Women's Football Alliance.

In 11 seasons, the Divas have posted an overall record of 80-23, with eight division crowns and one Supe-Her Bowl title (2006).

They'll host the Boston Militia in a first-round playoff game this Saturday at the Prince Georges County Sports and Learning Complex.

Leading up to the match, the Divas will hold two open practices at D.C. high schools: Tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Coolidge, then again on Thursday, June 23 on the field at Anacostia.

The Divas have a real good "in" at Coolidge: The school made international news last year by hiring former Divas receiver Natalie Randolph as the head coach of the (boys) varsity football team, making Randolph one of only a handful of women known to have ever coached at that level.

I'd never talked to a former slave before.

In 1986, Aribisala was brought to America from her native Nigeria as a 12 year old. She spent the next eight years as an unpaid laborer for a family of Nigerians living in Prince George's County.

Human trafficking experts I talked to for the story say these forced laborer cases are found in immigrant communities all across the country; slavery is alive and well in America.

Aribisala, "Lara" to her friends, escaped when she was 20 years old, with the help of an ad hoc underground railroad of neighbors and strangers.

She was at last able to start chasing the life that her captors promised her parents when they lured her here as a child.

Aribisala didn't get back to Nigeria or see her parents again until she was 35 years old.

She admits still having scars from all the fear and physical abuse she lived through before gaining her freedom in the early 1990s.

But the pain and wounds are not obvious at all. Friends and Divas teammates describe Aribisala as the happiest person they've ever met.

Read her story and tell me there's not a movie there. Aribisala is already living the happy ending. She says she's found the American Dream.

That's a pair of slippery plastic pieces you strap to the bottom of your shoes like skates and slide around the house in. The spots for these carpet skates run every few minutes on the over-the-air Channel 66.2, a QUBO network affiliate out of Manassas (but get-able to cable-free households in downtown DC with mere rabbit ears).

The tag line: "More fun than socks on a polished wood floor!"

I mean, childhood obesity has to be dealt with, but this is ridiculous. How Fun Slides haven't been parented or lawyered out of existence amazes me.

You can get little Johnny a pair of Fun Slides for just $19.95 plus shipping. But wait! With each purchase you'll get a second order free, plus an instructional DVD with "bonus footage of pro and semi-pro fun sliders getting extreme!"

According to the ad copy, unsafe as they surely are, Fun Slides won the "National Parenting Center's seal of approval" and were named to Dr. Toy's 10 Best Active Products list. (I'm guessing this Dr. Toy would give his blessing to a box of rusty nails so long as the check clears, and that Dr Toy's malpractice insurance premiums are through the roof. And before you let your offspring strap on some Fun Sliders, you might want to inquire where Dr. Toy went to med school.)

I'm not saying I've seen these commercials too many times. But for weeks now I've had this incredible urge to get extreme with a semi-pro Fun Slider. But not a pro.

(AFTER THE JUMP: No Army, but the EagleBank Bowl can still get Bill Cosby? And there's a party? But is it a Gary Clark party? DC RollerGirls lose their voice? DC Divas will sell you a season ticket for $40? Are you listening, Santa? Tiger Woods finally gets caught up in steroids scandal, and brings in that overage, overbuilt swimmer lady with him? Open Letter Tracker™ turns its sights on City Desk?)

***

So the EagleBank Bowl didn't get their men. Army, the squad organizers were hoping to land, lost again to Navy over the weekend to finish 5-7, or one win fewer than the six required for bowl eligibility. So in steps UCLA (6-6) to face Temple (9-3). Temple should be a big draw, having not made a bowl appearance in 30 years.

Call me Nostradoofus: I predict that the day before the bowl, Bill Cosby will be in town doing interviews about the game from Ben's Chili Bowl while wearing a maroon Temple sweatshirt.

On Dec. 29, the day of the game, there'll be a big tailgate party on the RFK Stadium/DC Armory grounds, with buffets and beer and video game contests. So, now that I think about it, things are playing out exactly like Gary Clark said they would. Sort of.

Maybe he's Nostradoofus.

***

Skaters, Cont.: The DC Rollergirls have announced that Derby Diamond Dave, the only P.A. announcer the squad has ever had, will call it quits after this Saturday's Roller Derby Doubleheader at the D.C. Armory.

I've got emails into the team to find out why DDD or anybody would let go of that gig. (Reminds me of the circus joke with the "What? And give up show biz?" punchline.)

The Rollergirls don't get the media coverage of, say, the Redskins, but they have had an influence around town: The other day I saw a gang of kids skating down the street in Petworth wearing old-school side-by-side wheels instead of in-line skates. I hadn't seen that in decades. "Gotta be roller derby!" I said. I believe that!

***

Sticking with girls who don't get enough attention: The DC Divas have announced their 2010 schedule and put tickets on sale just in time for Santa.

The season opens at home April 10 vs. Baltimore. For folks looking for ways to spend the money they will no longer be spending on Redskins season tickets (and who didn't find all the answers in my first charticle), a general admission season pass to all Divas home games will cost you $40, or about as much as you'd pay to park once at Dan Snyder's adjacent stadium on a fall Sunday.

***

The Redskins want Charley Weis?

Well, an unsourced Tweet's good enough to get the ball rolling on a story these days. We've already been through the Skins Want Jon Gruden! chapter, which sounded like hokum from the start but probably helped Gruden get his ESPN extension and more money. And Mike Shanahan's name keeps coming up.

But here at Cheap Seats Daily, we still say Marty Schottenheimers' the only guy who can save Dan Snyder this time around.

Unless Jim Zorn wins out. Boy, would that make things interesting.

***

He who wins last ranks highest. Good Counsel and DeMatha had the same records overall (13-1) and against each other (1-1) this season. DeMatha won the regular season matchup. But GC won the game that counted most, the WCAC Championship, and so takes the top ranking in the Washington Post's final Top 20 football poll.

Interesting tidbit in the story: Good Counsel has lost only three of its last 32 games, all to DeMatha.

Sad tidbit: Another year goes by and not a single D.C. school finishes in the Top 20.

***

It was only a matter of time before the Tiger Woods tale brought out the steroid rumors. From the New York Times:

A Canadian doctor who has treated many N.F.L. players as well as Olympic medalists like Donovan Bailey and the world’s top golfer, Tiger Woods, is under criminal investigation in the United States. He is suspected of providing athletes with performance-enhancing drugs, according to several people who have been briefed on the investigation.

The F.B.I. investigation of Dr. Anthony Galea, a sports medicine specialist who has treated hundreds of professional athletes across many sports, follows his arrest on Oct. 15 in Toronto by the Canadian police. Human growth hormone and Actovegin, a drug extracted from calf’s blood, were found in his medical bag at the United States-Canada border in late September. Using, selling or importing Actovegin is illegal in the United States...

Dr. Galea said Mr. Woods was referred to him by the golfer’s agents at Cleveland-based International Management Group, who were alarmed at the slow pace of Mr. Woods’s rehabilitation after knee surgery in June 2008. The doctor said he flew to Orlando, Fla., at least four times to give Mr. Woods the platelet therapy at his home in Windemere, Fla., in February and March of this year.

When asked for comment about Mr. Woods’s involvement with Dr. Galea, Mark Steinberg, of I.M.G., responded in an e-mail message: “I would really ask that you guys don’t write this? If Tiger is NOT implicated, and won’t be, let’s please give the kid a break.”

Guess the kid's not getting any breaks. I can't believe it took so long for that geezer swimmer lady built like Madonis to be outted.

***

More fallout from Tiger's saga: The outbreak of open letters, a scourge followed obsessively by Cheap Seats Daily since the Woods saga broke, has officially gotten outta control.

Why is it now official? Well, unless I'm mistaken, an "Open Letter to Joe Lieberman" appeared in this very forum earlier this morning.

(BTW: According to Cheap Seats Daily's newfangled and highest-tech feature, Open Letter Tracker™, "Open Letter to Joe Lieberman" gets 88,100 Google hits. That's about 81,000 more hits than "Open Letter to Jesus.")

***

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

I'm in awe. For real.

***

Saying the Redskins PR machine is screwed up is pointless at this point. It's operating now exactly as it has operated for 10 years. So it's likely that machine is operating just as somebody at Redskins Park wants it to operate.

But stuff still comes out of that place that boggles the mind. Any sane man would say the Redskins response to John Riggins' characterization of Dan Snyder as "a bad guy" who has "a dark heart" was just plain wacko. Riggins is a pundit. The more outlandish the things he says, the more he is rewarded.  A big boy or wise man would have just taken Riggins' slings and arrows and shut the hell up. There's no way to rebut Riggins' charges without looking dumb or guilty.

So what does Dan Snyder's organization do? It trots out Silent Greg Blache to rebut Riggins charges. Blache, who just a couple weeks ago said he would no longer talk to the media, talked to the media about how Snyder doesn't have a dark heart.

And to make everybody but Riggins look stupider, the Redskins PR office then produced a press release with Blache's silly comments transcribed. A press release! Wha?

(AFTER THE JUMP: Redskins put out how many documents saying "Dan Snyder Does Not Have a Dark Heart?" Mark Rypien comes back to DC? Can he suit up? He only got sacked how many times? DC Divas hold tryouts? The Divas GM used to be on "Inside the Squared Circle"? Is that fab or what?)

And then the PR office puts out a faux news story that treats Blache's "Dan Snyder Does Not Have a Dark Heart!" statement as a newsworthy event, and throws in quotes from the guy who the world knows Snyder has treated horribly: interim head coach Jim Zorn.

Check out Zorn's words, as compiled by the Skins PR staff:

"I would concur," Zorn replied. "Dan Snyder is a guy that absolutely cares about other people and he does not have that kind of attitude. I haven't been here all that long, and I haven't been here as long as Greg has been here, but I have seen time and again Dan reach out to anybody in this program and even in the secondary parts of the program and help in any way he can when there's a need. I've seen it.

"I would concur with what Greg had to say about Dan really caring about winning. Some of the words that said are just so harsh. Gosh, it's just all the time, it seems like everybody is down. Part of that is on me because we're losing, and that creates issues."

Geez. If anybody says that Jim Zorn will leave Redskins Park looking more foolish than he did when he came, I would concur.

Riggins, by the way, will appear on WTOP today to discuss dark-hearted matters.

***

When things were good, they were real good: Mark Rypien, the guy who proved that a great offensive line can put a mediocre quarterback in front of the world screaming "I'm going to Disneyland!", is coming back to DC for a day.

Rypien will meet with injured soldiers at Walter Reed on Tuesday as part of a Veterans Day event to promote Fisher House. The event is sponsored by Uno pizza.

Awesome trivia about Rypien: During the 1991 season, which ended with his being awarded Super Bowl M.V.P., Rypien was sacked nine times. That's all year.

Jason Campbell was sacked six times on Monday night.

***

The DC Divas are looking for a few good women, to join all the real good women they've already got.

Undefeated regular seasons are the norm for the Divas. They were in the championship mix again last season, but ended up bridesmaids, losing to Kansas City in the 2009 IWFL Sup-Her Bowl. As the squad reloads for another title run, managment will hold final player tryouts for the 2010 season this Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Prince George’s Sports and Learning Complex in Landover.

Sure, it's the same time as the Redskins kickoff. That's not the big deal right now that it once was. For info about the tryouts, contact Divas GM (and, equally fabulous, founding panelist of Inside the Squared Circle) Rich Daniel at 301-573-4260 or divasgm@gmail.com.

On this date in 2005: Get your Tragedy Hats!

None of the Redskins marketing endeavors under Dan Snyder dropped the jaw faster than the "Redskins Flag Hat" that went on sale on the team's web site and at FedExField at the beginning of the 2005 season.

For $23.99 plus shipping where applicable, Snyder would sell you a Redskin baseball cap with a red, white and blue Pentagon stitched on the side to tug the heart strings and stir more nationalism at a time when the country was already crippled by an oversupply. The hats were a great way, according to the radio ads that ran on the sports stations owned by Snyder, to "commemorate Sept. 11."

The punch line: The proceeds weren't earmarked for any charity or cause. Unless you consider the owner's wallet a charity or cause.

Genius!

***

(AFTER THE JUMP: Bankers going for Michael Vick haters? Bob McDonnell, you lie? Boswell basking in the afterglow of his Snyder bashing? DC Divas become video stars? A bump in the Nats' Road to 100 Losses?  Jaycee Dugard jokes?)

It didn't take long for signs of the Michael Vick influence on the football season to show up. The first commercial coming out of the first pregame show on NBC this season was for Wachovia. It featured a woman and her car full of dogs, and had her talking about how she needs to save money at the bank so she can make sure her dogs are cared for.

Coincidence? Heck no!

***

Sticking with notable commercials: Virginia governor wannabe Bob McDonnell ran his new campaign spot again and again on WRC after the Steelers/Titans broadcast.

In the commercial, McDonnell is seen walking down a suburban street while being followed by a cameraman as he lists a litany of political goals for the Commonwealth. To capture the football crowd that would be watching the spots, at one point in the ad McDonnell's son interrupts the boilerplatitudes by throwing the candidate a football and asking with a big smile and an excited shriek, "Dad, how 'bout a game?"

McDonnell answers, "You're on!"

But then he keeps walking down the street and talking politics! The commercial ends with McDonnell and his family standing together at the end of the street for no good reason.

Bottom line: There is no game!

If you tell your son, Game on!, and then there is no game, how can you expect Virginia voters to trust anything you say, Mr. McDonnell? How?

Answer the question!

Butt seriously: You've never seen a lower-aiming, dumbassier ad than this one.

***

Tom Boswell came off the top rope and landed on Snyder earlier this week. In his washingtonpost.com chat yesterday, Boswell told readers, "I've never had such near-universal positive reaction to a tough column."

Pretty soon, you could hold a convention of Snyder's supporters on a golf cart. Oh, wait. Maybe you already can.

***

Albert Haynesworth seems like a real funny tough guy. In an interview that aired yesterday on WTEM, the Redskins' only major offseason acquisition was asked if the size of Giants' running back Brandon Jacobs worries him. It doesn't.

“What is he, 250 [lbs.]?" Haynesworth said. "I weighed 250 when I was in the 10th grade.”

But here's Jacobs dominating Skins' safety Laron Landry last year. "That's getting run over!"  yells John Madden about the hit, which is far more brutal than when Bo Jackson's famously gelded Brian Bosworth in a "Monday Night Football" game. Jacobs' hit was enough to get writers of the NBC TV show "Friday Night Lights" to reference it in a script last season. In a scene where some characters are watching the highlight tape Dillon High fullback Tim Riggins sent to U of Oklahoma scouts, the guys all agree he looks like "Brandon Jacobs running over Laron Landry." (God, I miss that show! Come back soon!)

***

In case you missed it: The most viral sports column of the year, on so many levels, comes from Mark Whicker of the OC Register, perhaps the only employed writer on the planet who found inspiration for giggles in the Jaycee Dugard kidnap/rape/impregnancy/enslavement.

Read his non-apology, too. And the comments! It'll take all day, but it's worth the time.

Funny is hard, and damn if I don't hear a time bomb ticking every time I try to get chuckles here, what with New Media's typing demands and aversion to paying gatekeepers. But how many folks had to sign off on Whicker's words before they actually showed up in print?

***

I was in Delaware for vacation recently.

Few states like gambling the way Delaware likes gambling. There are casinos at the fairgrounds in Harrington and at Dover Downs, where there's also horse racing.

All the talk while I was there was about the feds siding with the NFL to crush Delaware's attempt to bring in single-game football betting.

Scads of evidence of the local love for wagering were available at Kupchick's, a nice, low-key restaurant in Lewes, Del. On the bulletin board, the results of the recent Travers Stakes from Saratoga were written in magic marker above the daily dining specials. There were stacks of fliers on the counter with instructions on how to enter the deli's Suicide Pool for this NFL season, entry fee and all.

So I asked the guy behind the counter what he thought of the appeals court's ruling that stopped the state's gambling pursuits. I guessed he would.

"Somebody made a phone call," he says. "They had to help Vegas."

I'm with him. No other explanation makes sense.

***

The DC Divas lost the Sup-Her Bowl, but the First Ladies of Women's Football* are featured in a new video I discovered on youtube. It ain't ever gonna be Soulja Girls — I was the only one to have seen the video according to the Youtube counter last night, and as of this morning the count was up to just six views — but, I gotta say, the song's catchy. Sing with me: "I like football..I like it a lot...I like girls that play...and even when they're not."

This thing deserves double figures in views!

***

Nats win! Countdown to 100 Losses™ stalled at 8!

***

*Dan Snyder really did trademark "First Ladies of Football" for his cheerleaders, a clear affront not only to women's football players, but also to the guy cheerleaders in his troupe. But not surprising. Snyder's amusement park chain, Six Flags, has also tried trademarking "Daycation" and "You Are Here." He likes claiming ownership of things™.

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

Michael Vick was "conditionally reinstated" by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell yesterday. So the Vick-to-Redskins barkers got louder.

I know from dumbass arguments, and here's one of the dumbassiest on why Vick could fit in here as training camp opens this week:  Signing the free agent, says the Sporting News, "would give Vick an opportunity to play close to his home state of Virginia." Good point! The Skins play closest to where Vick did his best animal slaughtering, too!

Dan Snyder wouldn't. Would he?

I mean, sure, he tried hiring Pepper Rodgers, traded for Brandon Lloyd, and founded a chain of boutique kiddie barber shops for a theme park chain just before it went bankrupt.

But, he wouldn't.

Would he?

Gosh, I hope so!

(After the Jump: Snyder makes a good deal? Billick makes case for not signing Vick without mentioning Vick? Nats have more grand slams than your local Denny's? Divas finish on top after all? No Tasering for Scott Van Pelt giveaway?)

***

Speaking of bad bets: We now have perhaps the first proof that Snyder can drive a hard bargain. The Redskins agreement with Virginia lottery officials to sell those ridiculous $20 scratch tickets a couple months back will net the team a reported $4.25 million. Now a publication called New Orleans City Business is reporting that the New Orleans Saints made a similar scratch ticket marketing deal with the Louisiana lottery, but the team will only be paid $155,000. If these figures are accurate, that means the Saints sold their soul for 1/27 as much as the Skins.

***

This quickie Q&A in the Wall Street Journal with Brian Billick has some great bits. Among them, Billick discusses the hazards of the draft, but without ever mentioning Vick explains why the newly reinstated QB could be blackballed by the NFL this season without any collusion taking place:

WSJ: The character issue seems paramount. But do fans care about character if the other team is faster, bigger, stronger?

Mr. Billick: I've long said character is an economic issue in the NFL, not one of morals or ethics.

***

DC Divas Poll Update: The poll taketh, the poll giveth back.

The Divas got digitally and royally screwed in the middle of the IWFL playoffs when the computer rating service used by the league to determine seeding knocked them off the top spot for no obvious reason, thereby costing the team home field advantage for the game against the Boston Militia for Eastern Conference championship.

Yesterday, after the Divas lost in the IWFL's Sup-Her Bowl last weekend to the Kansas City Tribe, that same rating service, the Massey Ratings, has given DC the #1 ranking in its season ending poll.

Kansas City, the real champs, get sloppy seconds. (BTW: The Chiefs' Mindy White is the team's owner, general manager, and LINEBACKER! In other words, she's Dan Snyder, Vinny Cerrato, and London Fletcher all in one!)

This, friends, is exactly why a playoff system would never work in college football. Every year, it'll be the same whine about the computers costing this school or that a slot in the championship tournament.

***

Thunderation Update: Nats get two grand slams from the same guy and win big.

Cheap Seats Daily has said for years that the Nats' biggest problem early in the season was the lack of a fight song. So, on July 21, with the team in a 6-game losing streak overall and new manager Jim Riggleman winless in five games, we unilaterally declared "Thunderation" to be the unofficial official fight song of your Washington Nationals.

Since that declaration, the Nats have gone 5-1 in games that went the full 9 innings. The Nats are now on a three-game winning streak in which they've outscored the opposition 30-9.

As both my readers know, Riggleman's old high school team, the Rockets of Richard Montgomery HS in Rockville, went at least 22 years without a losing season while singing "Thunderation."

It's not the manager, it's the song!

So SING!:

Thunder, Thunder, Thunderation
We’re the Rockets Delegation
When we fight with determination
We create a soul sensation!

A four-game winning streak would totally create a soul sensation.

***

Bobblehead Update: Fascism pays off!

Bowie Baysox spokesman Tom Sedlacek reports that Sunday's Scott Van Pelt Bobblehead Night, complete with rules limiting the movement and civil liberties of fans, came off "really really well" — meaning without having to Taser or otherwise restrain any of the bobblehead-hoarding freaks who have ruined previous promotions.

Sedlacek says demand for a free doll and an autograph from the locally reared ESPN host was "huge."

I told Sedlacek that hed opened my eyes to giveaway greediness, and that I got to see it up close at the Nats game on Saturday for grocery bag giveaway night. Creeps were walking around the stadium into the wee hours of the rain-delayed game looking for any Harris Teeter reusable bag (most of which still had the $1.99 price tag on them) that wasn't nailed down.

He's seen it all before.

"We could hand out defective can openers and people would hoard them," Sedlacek says.

There are already five Van Pelt dolls from the Bowie giveaway for sale on eBay. One of the creeps apparently overrode the one-doll-per-fan rule put in place, and is now vending two Van Pelts for $110 plus postage.

The creep's nom de gouge is nyyankeesfan.13722. Figures! What a shocker! The d-bag is a Yankees fan!*

*I've never actually found Yankees fans to be more objectionable than those of our local teams, but faux outrage is fun!

In Saturday's IWFL Sup-Her Bowl in Austin, Texas, the Kansas City Tribe beat DC, 21-18, to win the women's tackle football national title, 21-18.

The Divas end the season at 10-1.

The sunset of Rachelle Pecovsky-Bentley's career wasn't as rapturous as it could have been. Pecovsky-Bentley, a 10th-year running back, only played after sundown this season due to her observation of the Sabbath for Seventh Day Adventists. She's set to retire now, and in her last game was available in the second half. She rushed for a touchdown with less than three minutes left in the game to bring the Divas within three points. But, the Tribe held from there.

I'm no William Morris, but I gotta say, from a public relations standpoint, the IWFL just blows. As of this morning, nobody from the league had even updated the website to say anything about the game, other than one sentence congratulating the winner. Not even a box score? I tried since pretty late Saturday to get ANY news or numbers about the championship, but there wasn't anything out there. If I owned an IWFL team and was paying one dime to be in this league, I'd be steamed about the lack of outreach. If the main office ain't publicizing the championship, odds are it ain' t doing anything.

***

The Nats have won two series in a week.

Back to me: Don't Mock the R²D²!

(AFTER THE JUMP: Is R²D² is the new Total Average? Is Mike Wise the new Sally Jenkins? Can lacrosse solve our homeless problem?)

Look who the Nats' winning series were played against: the New York Mets and the San Diego Padres. Who are the four worst teams in the National League in the Run Differential category this season? Well, here's three of them:  the Mets, Padres and Nats! (The Reds are the fourth.)

Yup, the Padres have actually passed the Nats and now have the worst run-differential in the Majors, having given up 145 more runs than they've scored through the weekend! So the Nats (-115 in the run differential category) have a plus-30-run run-differential differential (R²D²) with the Padres, the only squad in the bigs that they have a positive R²D² against. So of course they're gonna take a series from the Padres! It's all in the R²D²!

In two weeks, the Nats play at Cincinnati (-73 in the run differential category on the season as I type this). If Washington's competitive on the road or, good gosh, wins that series, too, the question becomes: How long before Vegas starts weighing R²D²?

Eat R²D²'s dust, Total Average! It's going to be baseball's Beyer Figure! Ken Jennings will soon drop "R²D²" into his message board postings!

Credit where it's due: Thanks, Washington Nationals, for one of the most enjoyable baseball experiences I've had in a long while. After hours of listening to the rain delays on the radio Saturday night, I left Petworth and headed down to the game, which had just resumed in the second inning, a little before 11 p.m. I pulled into a parking spot on the street about 100 feet from the main gate. The ticket windows were closed, so I went to the ticket services window and the attendant hustled to a front office and came back with a ticket for me, and wouldn't charge for it. I sat in a section behind the dugout on the third base side and, while watching the Nats thrash San Diego, 13-1, I picked up the free promotional gift given to all ticketholders, a reusuable grocery bag from Harris Teeter with the $1.99 price tag still on it! Everybody in the stadium, particularly the stadium staff, was happy and nice. It was a glorious night/morning. I can't wait for the next rain delay!

***

Mike Wise has a radio show now. He wrote a story for today's paper about girls kissing. Coincidence?

Probably about as coincidental writing a book with Shaq, then mentioning Shaq in his Washington Post columns six times in 16 days.

Really!

The stifling of public displays of affection at Mystics games has been an issue for a while now. In 1998, management's relationship with the gay community got tense over "Couple of the Game" promotions at home games, in which the romantic pairing that got the loudest cheers when shown on the screen got free food from the sponsoring eatery. While so many of the lovebird tandems in the stands at Mystics games were of the all-girl variety, no woman-on-woman couple ever won.

After complaints from lesbian fans, the team showed what sure looked like its anti-gay bias by dropping "Couple" from the gimmick and changing the name to "Fan of the Game," even though "Couple of the Game" continued at Caps and Wizards games. The Mystics at the time said the sponsor, a Rockville restaurant, asked for the change; the restaurant responded, "Like hell we did!" Some gay pairs came to games with homemade cardboard squares with “Couple of the Game” written in magic marker, and posed in protest during timeouts. But the promotion never came back.

Back then, Abe Pollin owned all the teams that played at his arena; he has since sold the caps and Mystics to Lincoln Holdings. In 2006, the lesbians were lovin' it at Verizon Center, with many fans saying then-new team president Sheila Johnson's outreach to the gay community was making them feel welcome for the first time.

But Wise's column shows there's still some kissing and making up left undone.

***

Mitch Snyder would be happy: The Homeless are getting all sort of attention in the sports world. First comes a guy who spends his time and money lobbying Congress to force a college football playoff. Now comes a national soccer tournament for the homeless, to be played downtown next weekend. Maybe all the families living on the streets in this economy should form lacrosse teams.

***

Someday, the top-ranked women's football team in the land won't have to beg for cash to travel to the Sup-Her Bowl.

It ain't someday yet. So the DC Divas will hold a fundraiser tonight to help pay the tab for next weekend's trip to Austin, Texas, for the IWFL Championship.

Meet and greet players and coaches from the 10-0 Divas at Draft Pix, 2450 18th Street NW, from 6 p.m – 10 p.m. Suggested donation is $10. Free drinks and finger foods for the first hour.

,

The Divas kept their season going with a 27-17 win over the Pittsburgh Passion in the first round of the IWFL playoffs on Saturday at the PG Sports and Learning Complex. The Divas went into the game as the top-ranked team in the IWFL, after having assumed they'd secured home field advantage throughout the playoffs with an 8-0 regular season.

But despite the victory, the undefeated Divas will have to play the conference championship game on the road. The Divas knew they'd have to play the conference championship away from their usual home field, since the PG complex was already booked with junior olympics events on July 11, the date mandated by the league.

But they thought their travels would be short. After the win over Pittsburgh, Divas management had announced its matchup with the Militia would be held at the Broadneck High School stadium in Annapolis, and started selling tickets for the game.

But then the Divas learned that the Massey Ratings, the computer ranking system used by the IWFA to determine seeding, had suddenly foisted the Militia to the top spot in the league.

Apparently the New Englanders' 34-14 win over the Dallas Diamonds in their first round game wowed the digital judges a lot more than the Divas' 10-point victory.

"We found out early Sunday morning when the league recalculated the standings that we'd be going to Boston," says Divas owner Paul Hamlin. "That's tough to take, and we're quite frustrated, but we knew that this year the league could be re-seeding the teams in the middle of the playoffs."

So the Divas will now board a bus late next week and head to Somerville, MA., home of the Militia's Dilboy Stadium. Kickoff is 6 pm.

According to Massey's computers, the home field advantage is worth 3.2 points.

The road to the Sup-Her Bowl runs through Landover: The undefeated DC Divas host the Pittsburgh Passion in the first round of the IWFL playoffs. Kickoff is at 7 p.m. at the Prince George's Sports and Learning Complex.

The Divas, the top-ranked women's football squad in the land, beat the visiting Passion, 27-7, in a matchup of the same squads early in the season, giving #4-ranked Pitt its only loss.

Along with being quarterback and team captain, Allyson Hamlin (seen above) is the daughter of the Divas owner.

Lest you think there's some favoritism at play, however, Hamlin's dad bought the team well after she'd established herself as being among the greatest QB's in women's football history.

If you haven't been a Divas home game, go now. Tickets are cheap ($5-$20), the product is way better than you (guys) expect it to be, and the mood inside the stadium, as marching bands play and little cheerleaders cheer, is small-town in the best sense possible.

The Divas game-night package is so fab, in fact, that if you've already been out to see 'em play, you're probably already planning on going back tonight.

For ticket info and directions, see www.dcdivas.com.

Photo courtesy dcdivas.com

I think so. While buzzards circled over Acta yesterday, Feinstein, continuing the Washington Post's If You Get It You Don't Get It strategy of alienating all subscribers, wrote a web-only feature that included about the only defenses of the Nats' Dead Manager Walking to appear in the MSM.

"There are plenty of reasons to keep Acta, a couple of reasons to fire him," wrote Feinstein.

Then Feinstein basically says the reasons to keep him are he's a good guy and nice guy, and reasons to get rid of him are his team stinks and his team loses.

Not really a compelling case, I gotta say. But Feinstein is the Garth Brooks of sportswriting, so maybe his kudos carry more weight than the average pundit's kudos.

In any case, for now, it looks like Acta will still be around to hand in the lineups for tonight's game at the new Yankee Stadium.

Joel Hanrahan's gotta get Feinstein to write a piece on how he shouldn't be given a bus ticket.

***

In his web-only piece, Feinstein takes a break from defending Acta to slam Rob Dibble.

"If you're one of the few who watch the team's games on television with any frequency, you know, courtesy of Rob Dibble, that the Nats never get a call," Feinstein wrote.

This comes a day after the great Thom Loverro gave a whole column to bashing Dibble as a phony and a sham. And today the great Loose Lips takes a Fenty break and blasts Dibble as a "numbskull."

There's something going on here.

I gotta say, I love Dibble's work. I pretty much only watch him on Sundays, though, with the great Charlie Slowes getting my attention during the week.

If Feinstein, Loverro and Loose Lips turn on Slowes, I'll have to rethink everything.

***

Danny Hultzen of St. Albans had the big hit in UVa's win over Cal-State Fullerton in the elimination bracket of the College World Series.

Hultzen is something. He's UVa's best pitcher. He went 2-4  against Stephen Strasburg earlier in the NCAA tournament. He's a freshman. And he volunteers at Sibley Hospital when he's home.

Geez, Danny. Way to make us all feel bad.

***

Trent Green, who held a clipboard with the Skins during the Norv Turner/Heath Shuler/Gus Frerotte Era and had one good year here before escaping the franchise right before Dan Snyder's reign as owner began, has retired.

Green put up fab stats (3,441 yards and 23 touchdowns, with only 11 interceptions) during his one season as a Skins starter in 1998, even though the team started 0-7.

He was a free agent at the end of the year, and GM Charley Casserly called re-signing Green his "number one priority."

But Jack Kent Cooke's estate wouldn't let Casserly throw millions of dollars at the QB until the pending sale of the club to Howard and Edward Milstein and Snyder went through.

So Green signed with the St. Louis Rams.

Then the Milstein Bros. got booted by the NFL, and Snyder took over a couple months later, and the rest is misery.

During post-Skins stints (St. Louis, Kansas City, Miami and St. Louis again), Green took more blows the head than Leon Spinks. Last Friday, he quit the game rather than get as punch drunk as the ex-champ. He'll turn 39 this summer.

***

The DC Divas, the top-ranked ladies football team in the land, have had to deal with losing the services of their starting running back to religious faith and scheduling. But not TOTALLY losing her services.

Divas GM Rich Daniel tells me Rachelle Pekovsky-Bennett, a nine-year veteran of the squad, now rests on her Sabbath. That's from Friday at sundown until Saturday at sundown.

All Divas home games are on Saturday evenings at 7 p.m..

"We respect her beliefs and accommodate her," says Daniel.

Pekovsky-Bennett couldn't hit the field til nearly 8:30 p.m. for last weekend's game with Philadelphia.

She wasn't needed. The Divas beat Philadelphia 63-0.

The undefeated Divas will open up the playoffs at home against Pittsburgh on June 27. They're take as much of Pekovsky-Bennett as they can get.

"The sun will start setting earlier soon," Daniel says.

***

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Dibble, the Nationals color commentator, spoke for every fan yesterday. He went off when second baseman Anderson Hernandez jumped out of the way of a fine throw from pitcher Jesus Colome on a routine sacrifice attempt in the eighth inning and the Nats up a run over Philly.

Hernandez's merkel let the Nats blow yet another lead to give the Phillies a sweep of the four-game series.

"[Toronto pitcher] Roy Halladay may pass us for wins by the All Star break," Dibble huffed. "Have you ever seen a play like THAT?"

In an age when team owners have a lot of control over who announces their games, that's about as off the reservation as a commentator's going to get.

Looks like fans have seen enough, too: Hell if Nationals Stadium didn't look empty during the game telecast.

***

"It's a great day for the Redskins," an attorney for the team, Bob Raskopf, said on Friday.

Not a great day for redskins, however: A federal court ruled in favor of the team in a lawsuit filed years ago by a group of Native Americans alleging that the name "Redskins" is too racially offensive to be afforded trademark protections.

The plaintiffs have had some victories on the merits of their case so far — in 1999 the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled that the handle was indeed too offensive and canceled the Redskins marks.

But the team appealed, saying that the Native Americans, who began their litigation in the early 1990s, didn't file their trademark challenges in time. So even if the team's name is too offensive, it's irrelevant because the legal shot clock already went off.

And the Redskins technical argument has now been upheld. Clearly, that's the right decision. Because one thing everybody should agree on is: America is a nation of laws. Well, if you ignore all that land stealing and those human-roundups and attempted genocide of native peoples, we're a nation of laws. Kinda sorta...

(Whenever these stories pop up I seek out the best rock song ever written about the offensiveness of the Redskins name: "If You Own the Washington Redskins, You're a Cock," by the great Atom and His Package. The message predates Dan Snyder.)

***

On a happier football note: Women's football has arrived!

But not because of the launch of the Lingerie League. No, women's football has arrived because there's now a ranking system just for the football ladies, put together by something called the Massey Ratings.

And our DC Divas are atop the poll of 49 teams with the IWFL

The undefeated Divas had the No. 2 rated offense and the top rated defense in the land heading into Saturday's game in New York.

DC beat the No. 8 ranked NY Sharks, 21-7, so the No. 1 overall ranking should live another week.

Get on the Divas' bandwagon now!

***

So women have rankings...What's the next step for acceptance?

Betting lines!

Why not? The state of Delaware very quietly passed laws allowing sports betting.

Major sports leagues, mostly the NFL and NCAA, have for decades bullied jurisdictions into not allowing sports books, so Las Vegas has been the only town in the game.

But Delaware didn't have much of anything to lose — no pro franchises, only a couple major college teams — so they put it through. The University of Delaware apparently won't be hosting any lower-tier NCAA playoff games from now on.

There's still some legal issues to work through, but if Vegas-style sports books show up in Delaware, the WHOLE WORLD could change.

All the states that waited too long to get into slots — Maryland, anybody? — should try to get in early on sports betting and balance their budgets with the bucks of all those dumbasses who think they can beat a betting line.

They can't. But why not have sports books everywhere? The pursuit of happiness should include the chance to make a futures bet on the Capitals or Redskins.

And the Divas!

***

Speaking of betting on women in sports: The Preakness!

Nobody showed up to the infield, thanks to those anti-running-of-the-urinals fascists who banned BYOB at the track.

But what a race! Let's hope for a Rachel Alexandra/Mine That Bird rematch in three weeks!

(Alas, the educated picks John Scheinman gave Cheap Seats Daily readers FOR FREE on Friday didn't come in. But anybody who boxed the Purely Sentimental Rachel/Bird combo passed along in the same space cashed an exacta ticket worth $39.20.)

***

I went to Pimlico on Friday, for the running of the Black Eyed Susan Stakes and to get a look at the contenders for the big race a day later.

Mine That Bird looked very small in his stall, noticeably smaller than filly Rachel Alexandra and all the other horses he was sharing a barn with. So I was rooting for the little guy against the big girl. Not just because he's small, but because he's a gelding; that means there's no stud career in his future, so he could be racing for a while.

If Rachel Alexandra was an ungelded boy, the horse would surely be retired right after the Belmont. But he's a she, and there's not as much value for her in retirement, since top stallions can make babies day after day — Maryland stud hero Allen's Prospect once fertilized 120 mares in a single year –  while Rachel can have just one child at a time.

The big buzz on the backstretch was that former Pimlico owner Joe DeFrancis, who grew up in Maryland racing — his father Frank is a legend — might buy back the track from current owner Magna Entertainment, which is now in Chapter 11 reorganization and looks like a goner, at an upcoming bankruptcy auction.

Sell high, buy back low. In the '00s, that's the formula for success.

***

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Awesome Capitals trivia about play-by-play man Steve Kolbe: The franchise has had only two play-by-play announcers in its long history, Ron Weber (1974-1997) and Kolbe (1997-).

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Speaking of consistency: Awesome trivia about the Redskins: During the offseason, the Skins have now signed Jaison Williams, Mike Williams, Roydell Williams, Eddie Williams and Edwin Williams.

After reading yesterday's Washington Post opus on local-product Edwin "Don't Call Me Eddie" Williams's family's drug problems (we're told his folks "traveled up and down the East Coast in search of cocaine." Really? Why? Did DC run out?), I'm pretty sure everybody named Williams has a hard-luck tale.

Me, I'm rooting hardest for Mike Williams, who used to weigh 400 pounds. He's on a biggest-loser style weight loss plan, I learned in a previous installment from the paper's series, Opuses on Guys Named Williams and Their Hard-Luck Tales.

Too bad, cuz if Big Mike wasn't watching his waist he and his new teammates could open a burger joint and name it, um, how 'bout Five Guys Named Williams? (Mark Moseley wouldn't dare sue fellow Skins!) The team also has four Smiths, three Thomases and two Montgomerys.

But just one Vinny!

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Awesome trivia about the new Detroit mayor, Dave Bing:

Only one high school in the U.S., public or private, put two alums on the NBA's 50 Greatest roster when it was released in 1996: Spingarn High, which produced Elgin Baylor (Class of '54) and Bing (Class of '62).

Great as Bing was, the Detroit Pistons had to throw in a future No. 1 draft choice before Abe Pollin would take Bing and send Bullets guard Kevin Porter to Motown in 1975.

That trade, which Pollin always regretted, was part of the reason that the Bullets made EIGHT (8!) first round picks in the 1975-1978 NBA drafts.

And all but two of those first-rounders (Kevin Grevey in '75 and Greg Ballard in '77) were huge busts. Tom Kropp or Roger Phegley, anybody?

The Kwame Brown pick's Tom Brady next to those guys'!

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Maybe what Peter Angelos meant was: The Baltimore/Washington market isn't big enough to support the two worst teams in baseball.

The Nats (7-18-1) went into last night's worst-vs.-first battle with the Dodgers in first place in the race for the top pick in next year's MLB draft by several lengths. The O's (10-17) were only 2.5 games behind.

Consumer question: Since Tuesday's tie with the Astros will be broken in Houston, do DC fans who suffered through the sister-kisser get a rain check?

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Speaking of no-win situations: DC United tied KC, 1-1. If United had to give out refunds after every push, they'd be broke.

Err, broker: The team has organized still another rally in which fans will be following management's orders and demanding a new stadium. From anybody.

The, um, festivities will kick off Saturday at 3:30 p.m. at Lincoln Park. To ensure somebody shows up, the team will provide bus service from RFK to the rally.

Are you gonna be listening, PG County? How 'bout you, soccer-mad MoCo? Richmond? St. Louis?

No?

None of ya?

Et tu, DC?

Dangit.

Man o man o, is all that slamming of Mayor Fenty gonna haunt this team! (But anybody who was at the United game YEARS AGO when Fenty got on the RFK PA and promised everybody there he'd get 'em a new soccer stadium can show up at the rally without guilt or irony!)

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Speaking of teams that threatened to leave DC for PG but, get this, ACTUALLY PULLED IT OFF: Get on the DC Divas bandwagon now!

The Divas are 3-0 and had outscored the opposition 95-0 before giving up a TD in garbage time of last weekend's 27-7 win over visiting Pittsburgh. The Sup-Her Bowl trophy is all but in the bag.

Clearly, the input of Assistant General Manager Brian Mitchell is paying off.

After a bye this weekend, the Divas travel to NY to face the Sharks next week.

But every real sports fan in the market already knew that...

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