Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

This much is certain: The Wizards' days of losing in teal are over!

The team unveiled its new color scheme today. City Desk's own Kyle Weidie went to the ceremony and wrote it up. TBD and The Great Dan Steinberg, the H.L. Mencken of the increasingly vital "Who Are You Wearing?" school of sports reporting, have more details.

Irene Pollin, the widow of former owner Abe Pollin, liked the new look, according to an official statement:

I am absolutely delighted by the newly unveiled Wizards uniforms. The return to a red, white and blue color scheme is a wonderful way to celebrate the past while looking towards the future. The revamped logos are a strong, favorable and natural evolution of the Wizards brand, and I applaud Ted Leonsis for bringing this refreshing, yet familiar look back for Wizards fans of all ages to enjoy. My heart is still with you—go Wizards!

You can now buy next season's shirt from the team's online store for $35.99 to $75.99. Who knows when you'll be able to pay half to see 'em play in the fancy garb?

City Desk ran a gallery of proposed new Wizards logo combos in March. None of our genius suggestions were adopted.

Instead, the team will go back to the red, white and blue stripes that the franchise first adopted in 1973 as the Capital Bullets.

The bad news: Your Gilbert Arenas jersey, whether home or away, teal or copper, is worth even less today than it was yesterday.

The good news: A return to "Washington Bullets" has never seemed so possible!

The best news: There's no crooked or curly "W" in the new design that we have to worry about losing to Walgreens.

So Snyder has apparently asked that the flight-tracking services no longer divulge where the plane's going. When you punch in Redskins 1's digits over at flightaware.com now, you get this message:

DSWA LLC (DULLES VA)
This aircraft (N904DS) is not available for tracking per request from the owner/operator

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Dan Snyder, of course, has more than flight-trackers to blame for watering down the Mike Shanahan story. For Redskins marketing purposes, NBA Commissioner David Stern picked the worst time to announce he'd banished Gilbert Arenas. Within hours of Shanahan's introductory press conference at Redskins Park, it was all-Gilbert, all-the-time on local sportsradio. The Arenas' story got the above the fold slot on the Washington Post's front page that would have gone to the coach. Arenas knocked Shanahan below-the-fold on the sports page, too.

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Moral #1 of the Gilbert Arenas tale: Quirky always end bad.

Moral #2: Big Threes don't work in Washington basketball.

We now know that none of the high hopes fans had for a lineup that put Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison on the floor will be realized. That's the greatest flop since Chris Webber, Juwan Howard and Rod Strickland wore the same uniform. When Webber retired in the spring of 2008, I looked back over the years that trio spent in town. Good golly, was their fall epic.

Strickland and Howard and Webber spent much of their Bullets/Wizards careers getting arrested for driving offenses. Strickland's been confirmed as a louse in the years since he left, and Howard went on to have a solid and amazingly long post-Wizards career. He's still at it, and is now in his 19th NBA season, playing with Portland. Howard had 13 points in Tuesday's loss to Memphis, and is averaging about 5 points and four rebounds a game on the season.

But Webber doesn't get nearly enough credit for his jerkitude. He was a dick as soon as the Bullets traded four first-round picks to the Golden State Warriors to bring him here in 1994. (Yup, four first rounders — the Warriors got Tom Gugliotta, who was the No. 6 overall pick in the NBA's 1992 draft, plus three future #1 picks.)

One harmless example: Early in his first season here, Webber went to the Washington Times to complain about the food served on the team’s chartered flights. “I don’t eat beef,” he said.

Owner Abe Pollin ended up buying the team its own plane a few years later. Webber didn't reform, and was all but given away to Sacramento not long after he was pepper-sprayed and busted on petty traffic and drug charges by Prince George’s police in January 1998.

The big three of Strickland, Howard and Webber never won a single playoff game.

But, they never pulled a gun on anybody, either.

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I don't think I'd ever heard a college player booed by home fans like Vasquez was last year. It was like Juwan Howard at MCI Center right before he was run out of town. But Howard was getting paid eight-figures a year (!) to take that abuse.

Vasquez tried to get out of College Park, but yesterday he withdrew his name from the upcoming NBA draft.

Seems NBA scouts thought less of him than the Terps fans.

Seriously, do other college stars get booed at home?

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Manny Acta lives to lose again!

The Nationals manager-for-now got to watch Elijah Dukes misplay two balls hit to the outfield by consecutive Yankees batters in the seventh inning, turning two outs into two Yankees runs and a lead into a loss in New York.

The .258 winning percentage means the Nats are now on a pace to beat the '62 Mets mark of 120 losses.

Why is Acta still around?

Well, much appreciated Cheap Seats Daily commenter Angry Al posted that Acta's going to stay no matter how much losing goes on, because the Lerners are so cheap they don't want to pay Acta and pay another manager.

I hadn't thought of that. But sounds like a plan!

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Biggest winner in baseball yesterday: Barry Bonds.

How the hell are the feds gonna move forward  with their lame prosecution of Bonds for a couple dubious lies, now that Sammy Sosa's been outed?

Turns out Sosa's was among the 104 names on baseball's not-so-secret list of positive testers from 2003.

Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and Roger Clemens all swore before Congress and country that they never ever never ever took anything. And The Man is going to let them walk, even though there's at least as much proof that they're PED-ophiles as we've seen against Bonds? No way. (A-Rod just lied to Katie Couric. That's fine.)

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Biggest loser in baseball yesterday: Mike Lupica. The enthusiastic New York sportswriter's book "Summer of '98," sanctified that season's home run duel between Sosa and fellow chemical Popeye, Mark McGwire. "Summer" now stands alongside the Washington Post's 2003 editorial about Colin Powell's U.N. speech about all the WMDs in Iraq, a piece headlined "Irrefutable!," as the most ridiculable documents ever published.

(According to a review on Amazon, "Lupica gives both McGwire and Sosa their proper due.")

Please, Cal Ripken. Admit you used steroids! Baseball will never get past the Dead Balls Era™ until you do!

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On the verge of the U.S. Open: Slate posts a video of what golf, a game where losers are allowed to blame camera clicks, would be like if basketball announcers called the action.

The real treat is hearing a few seconds of Johnny Most, the greatest play-by-play man in the history of history. And I'd forgotten how forced Dick Vitale's calls were.

The piece was conceived by my friend Josh Levin, Slate's sports editor and the godfather of tape-measure journalism (count the measurements!), and put together by his colleague Andy Bouve.

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