Given that the Nats aren't going to the post-season, who will you root for to win it all?
by Potomac Fan on Sep 17, 2010 11:16 AM EDT
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Of course my top preference would be for the Nats to be a playoff team and a true contender for a championship. But since that's not happening this year, I'll have to turn my attention elsewhere once the post-season starts. I tend to favor the small-market teams and those who aren't perennial contenders. This means that I really, really don't want to see the Yankees win it again this year. The Red Sox probably won't make the playoffs at all. Neither will the Angels (or Anaheim or whatever the official name is now).
I'm glad to see that Tampa Bay is coming on strong and challenging the Yankees for the division and the best record in baseball. I was surprised to see that the Twins are also in the hunt for best overall record. I hadn't followed the standings in a while so I didn't know how good Minnesota has been playing. They have the best record in baseball since the All-Star break and a 9 game lead in the AL Central with just a couple weeks left to play.
So since the Nats won't win anything this year, I'd like to see either Tampa Bay or Minnesota win the World Series. I wouldn't mind seeing the Padres win it all too, just for the novelty of it. I'm kind of glad to see that small-market Cincinnati is doing well too. They haven't won much in a long time although they had a good run a few decades ago. Besides, if the Reds manage to win it all, Ray Knight will probably enjoy it a bit, even if he's a Nats guy now.
So who would you like to see as the champion in 2010?
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I grew up a Rangers fan...
….so it’ll be pretty easy for me to root for them in their three post-season games, especially now that Hicks is out as owner. (His ownership was the main reason I had become a fan free agent when the Nats relocated to DC, where I was living and have spent the majority of my professional career.)
Hungry Hippos, baby! It's on!
I am completely disgusted by every single one of you who voted for the Phillies.
At least nobody has voted for the Yankees yet.
Aim for the head baby Jesus
I believe that means there were some Philly lurkers who might have dropped by during the game.
Otherwise, stand up and dare to be counted Philly fans. Personally, I voted for Minnesota. I liked getting Ramos, liked Matt Capps, and genuinely would like to see a plucky midmarket team get the job done.
On a desperate search for Sunshine at Nats Park. In Rizzo and Ramos we trust.
That's what I figured as well
I think some of the Phillies fans might be upset that we posted about Matthew Clemens this year (the infamous guy at the Nat-Phils game). So in my mind, I’m discounting the votes for the Phillies in this poll. That makes Minnesota the currently leader on this list.
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"Save it. I'm goin' for a smoothie."
The Washington Nationals, the team of the 2010s!
BTW I voted for the Reds
My family is from Ohio, and rooting for the oldest professional sports team in the US is pretty cool as well.
Aim for the head baby Jesus
I'm probably Reds in the NL
All of the NL teams have flaws for me. Braves it’s the Chop. Phillies it’s there fans. Padres it’s that I don’t think they can do it. Giants it’s the Bonds stuff. Reds it’s Brandon Phillips, Dusty, and the ballpark.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
Phillips is a jerk
but he basically said what everyone else was thinking with his comments about the Cardinals. LaRussa and Carpenter are some of the most annoying people in the league
Aim for the head baby Jesus
No, it wasn't really that.
It’s just his overall vibe. The incident at Nats Park was what got the ball rolling for me against him.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
by souldrummer on Sep 21, 2010 10:32 PM EDT up reply actions
I voted Yankees
After 38 years of rooting for them, it would be weird to switch at this point.
Have you ever been by camp?
If not you owe it to yoursefl to stop by sometime, its great to see the action from a few feet away
Aim for the head baby Jesus
52% of you voted for the Phillies?
What is this mess. Trolls?
I voted Rays, btw.
Needs moar dingerz.
Good choice.
I’m rooting for a sweep by either team in this week’s Phillies/Braves series. If the Braves are serious, they need to win their way back in the divisional race. If they’re not, I’ve got no love for them backing their way in as a wildcard team.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
by souldrummer on Sep 19, 2010 10:23 PM EDT up reply actions
MINNESOOOOOOOOTA!
Because the Twins rock, what with Santa’s hat-throwing antics, Joe Mauer’s sideburns of power, and LET’S GO CAPPS! What’s not to love about them? Besides freezing your ass off at Target field in late October?
Interesting possibility that the former Senator franchises could meet in the ALCS.
Watching the O’s try to use strategy is like watching Mike Green trying to figure out the difference between "your" and "you’re"--Terpgrrl
Donation info for SAVES FOR KIDS 2010!! Make a difference.
It’s that “former Senators” part that can make the old timers cringe about rooting for the Twinkies and Rangers. Not so, me. Twins for me, too.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
by souldrummer on Sep 19, 2010 10:53 PM EDT up reply actions
I should, as a DC native, abhor the idea of both former Senator teams making it, but my Duluth years brainwashed me! I unabashedly adore the Twins.
btw, I’ll be at the Park Wednesday, probably flipping Ks.
Watching the O’s try to use strategy is like watching Mike Green trying to figure out the difference between "your" and "you’re"--Terpgrrl
Donation info for SAVES FOR KIDS 2010!! Make a difference.
You are getting sleepy...
Repeat after me. There was no team in Washington before the Nats. There was no team in Washington before the Nats. …
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"Save it. I'm goin' for a smoothie."
The Washington Nationals, the team of the 2010s!
by Potomac Fan on Sep 24, 2010 12:19 PM EDT up reply actions
No one should feel guilty about rooting for Minnesota
You should, however, feel guilty if you are rooting for the Phillies. Or the Yankees.
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"Save it. I'm goin' for a smoothie."
The Washington Nationals, the team of the 2010s!
by Potomac Fan on Sep 24, 2010 12:21 PM EDT up reply actions
I’d never root for those teams! Never. Here’s hoping to the Nats winning the rest of their games, and the Twins going all the way!
Watching the O’s try to use strategy is like watching Mike Green trying to figure out the difference between "your" and "you’re"--Terpgrrl
Donation info for SAVES FOR KIDS 2010!! Make a difference.
Proud to root for the Yankees
My tenure as a fan started before the Steinbrenners owned the team, and I make no apologies for rooting for them. Heck, when I started rooting for them I was living under the thumb of Orioles fans, as the O’s were riding high as the historical power in the East. You can look it up, as Stengel used to say! :-)
Baseball season is over for me at the end of the Nats game on Oct. 3.
Your voice of doom and gloom. Read more at natsnewsnetwork.blogspot.com
by Dave at District Sports Page on Sep 20, 2010 12:05 PM EDT reply actions
I believe this is alluding to your lack of interest in the playoffs...
…rather than some my jibe at my refocusing on the Caps. Basically, I’m still here. I’m not going away. I’m just trying to protect my emotions.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
because cheering for the Caps is a real investment in protecting your emotions! :) says the devout Caps fan.
Watching the O’s try to use strategy is like watching Mike Green trying to figure out the difference between "your" and "you’re"--Terpgrrl
Donation info for SAVES FOR KIDS 2010!! Make a difference.
I'm rooting for the Twins...
But I’ll be happy with anybody but Philly. They’re a damned good team and I have nothing but respect for them, especially their starting pitching, but their fans are a bunch of loud mouthed, rude,obnoxious boors. I wish them misery, loud wailing and gnashing of teeth this post season!
Not very nice...
When there are hundreds of thousands of fans for a team there will be a noticeable number of jerks. Most of us Phillies fans just love our guys and love baseball. We bring our kids and want a nice family outing just like you do. That is why we pack bus loads to go to your park for games (that and the invite from your GM). When we have standing room only in our park many fans can’t get to see a home game, or see as many as they like to. We do travel to other cities to see games and yours is no exception.
As to our loud mouths…our players have consistently stated in interview after interview that the noise of the fans helps energize them. We are loud mouthed on purpose. One of the games we were most pumped about this year was when your new ace pitcher came to town. Phillies fans knew they had a chance to witness something great. Trust me we were horrified at what happened at that game. You did not see boorish behavior from our fans when that kid left the game. We hope to have many more great games with you folks next year.
Uh...
…this is your first post ever on SBNation?
Or would this be your umpteenth handle?
Do tell.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
Sorry if I offended you...
but I wasn’t trying to be nice. I’ve been to sporting events in different cities and I can honestly say that Philly fans (Eagles, Flyers, Phillies) are the worst I’ve seen anywhere. And as far as I’m concerned Phillies fans booing Ryan Zimmerman at our home opener when he was being honored for his All Star, Gold Glove and Silver Slugger achievement was about the rudest and most obnoxious thing I’ve ever seen….and I don’t think there are many Nats fans who would disagree. Nothing personal…I don’t even know you and AFAIC, you’re welcome in our park and I hope you have a good time while you’re here.
You don't really have anything to apologize for.
Just about everybody here has had there worst experiences at the park when the Phillies come to town. Unless there’s some “Familes for Decency” campaign amongst Philly fans that I’m unaware of, they justifiably earn much of the backlash they get. When I’m dealing with living, breathing Philly fans sitting next to me at a ballgame or a bar or a street I’ll judge them on their individual merits. Had a nice conversation with an adolescent Philly fan next to me last night. Some times I have fun needling Philly fans goodnaturedly for being either frontrunners or criticizing them for their reputation. The best Philly fans take it in stride and accept responsibility. The worst come at you by embracing being jerks and the not the greatest often come off with the our reputation is worse than we actually are kind of stuff.
Given that I have no idea who we’re dealing with (because this person’s profile is pretty much zippo), I’m waiting to see if this person will walk the walk or is just lobbing grenades or worse.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
What makes you ask that?
I can’t really see how I offended you.
I'm not offended, just curious
You’ve ducked the question, though.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
As far as why...
…I simply don’t get it when people spend more time worrying about what other fans think about their team than following their own team. My position generally is it’s not my job to know about your team or care about what your fans think. My job is to know my team and like my team. Consequently, we see that the Philly fanbase as a whole leads to some of our worst experiences at the ballpark and we respond to it as we choose.
You’ve still ducked the question. If you look at my profile, you see I post everywhere. Anybody who wants to see what I’ve been up to can easily jump to another board and see that I try to walk the walk and talk the talk when it comes to representing my teams and what I’ve been up to.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
I have never been on this site prior to yesterday
Just did a little search since my kids are headed down there for the game tonight. I came across this page and found it curious that folks in your town think that it is"lurking" if people from other cities post. More than half of the posts on the phillies sites are from Yankees and Mets fans and we don’t think there is something unusual about it. But I get it now. We should just stay in Philadelphia and not converse with you or visit your stadium according to you folks. I don’t see how your club will have the money to build the team you want unless you sell some tickets and concessions to someone, but you have that all covered.
That makes a lot of sense.
Different SBNation sites have different norms but they’re pretty social sites and most of the folks that post here are people that post quite a bit. I also found it a bit weird because most of the Philly fans that come through here might be a part of the Philly SBNation site, The Good Phight. Part of the attraction of SBNation for me over sites like the Washington Post board is that people do have to have a profile so they can’t just say stupid things over and over without moderation. You weren’t writing stupid stuff but it’s important to understand where you come from.
I’ll continue to assert that Philly fans are pretty tough to like. Either they can be passionate without respect for our toddler fan base (we’re new on the scene and “this is our house” kind of stuff is roughly the equivalent of beating up on a 5 year old) or they can be straight up boorish. While there are families, a fair amount of them are also the bus travelers that you know more about as well as college students. Great example is my Metro stop at Catholic University. You go left, and it’s Catholic U students who go to drink and sometimes make trouble. You go right and it’s a DC neighborhood with more Nats fans. Given the states of the franchises there’s a lot more going left than right.
On the “I don’t see how your club will have the money” tip. I don’t want our stadium filled with visiting fans or our ownership to feel that they can make a profit off of Philly fans. If they want to do that, let them go broke. I’d like them to see and know that if they spend money on the team and build it in the right way, they will earn our trust with a good plan or earn casual fans with victories.
DC’s an event town and right now there aren’t many Nats games that are events yet.
Is what it is.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
by souldrummer on Sep 29, 2010 11:13 PM EDT up reply actions
I wish you folks good luck
in 2005 Shane Victorino complained that playing in philly felt like playing in Shea stadium. The core of our team was young and the folks from NY spent their money here. Now we can reward our great players and go out and get the missing pieces. I’m OK if we did that initially with money from Mets fans.
How much of it is really money from Mets fans, though?
You know the trajectory of the Phillies rise much better than I do for sure. To me, the 2008 core is mostly homegrown talent or affordable acquisitions. While big ticket acquisitions like Thome helped get them closer to the pennant, it was once they rejected the big ticket Thome and went with homegrown Howard that they hit the big time.
I’m not close enough to the Phillies situation to be able to assess how sustainable their current model is without going to a Yankees spend at all costs philosophy. I feel Howard is an overpay at 5 years 125M, and I hope that’s the first step in their fall from grace. Trading Cliff Lee should have given the Braves the divsion this year. Acquiring Oswalt basically made up for that mistake.
The Phillies have had to borrow off of their farm system to get Lee and to get Oswalt and we don’t know the consequences of that yet. But I will give the Phillies credit. The reason that they are the NL favorite for the pennant and the Braves are just trying to hang on is because the Phillies fans sell out the ballpark so they can add salary at the deadline in Oswalt. On the flip side, the reason the Braves may be sustainable is that they have some mega prospects coming on the way in guys like Teheran.
Nats fans are looking at this offseason trying to figure out whether they’re going to try to be the Braves and focus mostly on the farm, go for a short term spend more solution to try to break into the DC market, or just continue to muddle through and hope they luck into the right mix of top 10 draft picks. Next two offseasons will be very revealing about our organizational philosophy.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
Nope.
I live in the Brookland neighborhood. Didn’t make it clear from my post.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
Don't know how old you are...
but we may have been neighbors (in a manner of speaking) way back when. I went to Catholic U 77-81. I remember when that Metro Station opened…best thing that happened to CUA in 100 years…
I like talking with baseball fans of any teams
I’m on a couple of other boards, including the Good Phight. Welcome to Federal Baseball! I hope you come back again for more conversations. But we also like to know the people who come in here and post.
I have no trouble with “loudmouths” per se – that would be hypocritical, since (as many in the blog have literally heard) I am quite the vocal fan. But I don’t drink alcohol, use profanity, or even get particularly personal (I did ask Dobbs if he regretted leaving CNN, a very DC joke). I will boo umpires or to drown out fans of opposing teams, but I don’t boo the home squad. I’ve been going to professional sports for about 40 years, mostly baseball and football, some hockey and rarely basketball. In my experience, it’s just a different experience when Philly fandom shows up. I don’t confuse Philly fandom with every Philly fan; I have friends who are Philadelphia sports fans, and I’ve met many excellent Philly fans at events and had a great time, great conversation, maybe even a bit of trash talking. But as a fandom there’s no one else close to Philly fandom in terms of the percentage of loutish behavior.
I respect sassygr1 for at least sticking around to continue the conversation. Not going to change my position that I am rooting for the Phillies to be first to fall and would seriously consider rooting for any AL team over the Phillies should they win the pennant, though.
Agree with much of what you’ve got here. Philly fans are pretty much the worst right now, although Red Sox fans give them a run for their money. Both fan bases have a lot of passion that was bearable when they were losing but has gone into insufferable now that they’ve won the World Series and seem to want to take out their new status on anyone within their path, even the poor little Nationals who helped them close out the NL East early and set up their starters for the playoffs.
Gotta make sure I take in a game with you at some point next year. Loud and proud fans need to stick together and there need to be some specific sections in the upper tier at Nats Park where it’s basically understood that fans are going to be loud and proud.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
Happy to take in a game, wish we didn't have to wait so long
I may try to make a run to spring training this year; I’ve never done that before.
I’m actually rooting for the Phillies in the National League, although it wouldn’t break my heart if they didn’t go (#2 choice would be San Francisco; I have friends and family in the Bay Area). I like it when the best team goes, and top to bottom I really like their roster and the way they play baseball. They have an AL lineup and a top drawer NL pitching rotation. If they do make the WS, I hope they face the Yankees … and lose again, of course :-)
You are a bigger man than me.
Hard for me to separate the fan base from the team. Rays, Twins, and Reds for me are my rooting interests.
The wait for 10/7 begins. This man is focused. Are you?
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