Welcome to Natstown!

It has been a while since I saw something worth linking in SOSH. But this long thread on the hapless 4-15 Washington Nationals is fantastic reading. Highlights include:

• The TV ads showing team highlights feature a dramatic win on a game-winning walk and this one time where one of their scrub pitchers beat John Smoltz.
• Julian Tavarez might be their most effective reliever.
• After a long rain-delay they finished a home game in front of maybe 84 people.
• They had players wearing home jerseys that read N-A-T-I-N-A-L-S, without the "O."
• They race mascots of the Mt. Rushmore presidents between innings; Teddy Roosevelt did not win a single time last year.

I hope someone somewhere is writing a book about this awful, awful team.

Lucky Doesn't Take Cabs

As you may have seen in the Globe last week, the Celtics dismissed their "mascot" Lucky the Leprechaun. The reasons for the dismissal were not revealed to the press.

Thankfully, the Sons of Sam Horn have the rest of the story. Key thought:

"Also, this year he started referring to himself in the third person. And better yet, as "Lucky", instead of Damon."

The lesson is clear: you can only act like this if you are a hall-of-fame-level talent.

Best SOSH Posts about Euro 2008

In reference to today's Germany-Turkey game:

"Holy Jeebus! As a Jew of Armenian decent, I can't decide which team I want to lose more. "

Then the follow-up after Germany defeated Turkey 3-2:

"Well, now that Holocaust beat Armenian Genocide, I'm all about Spain. If fucking Pogrom manages to beat Spain, then I think I'll just root for a cluster bomb to fall on the stadium in the final."

Somebody then had to bring up the expulsion/forced conversion of the Jews during the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. It's all so complicated.