Mock the Nationals Relentlessly
The appropriate punishment for the Nationals COVID failure? Laugh at them.
It’s Opening Day, kind of. I’m tired of saying this by now, but that’s a line I never expected to write. The Mets will open their season today, which makes it Opening Day. They’ll play the Phillies, who have already opened their season, and they’ll play at Citizens Bank Park, which has already seen a season opener, so there probably won’t be any of the festivities which ordinarily accompany Opening Day. Well, maybe there will be, but they’ll be the kind you see when a season opens on Monday and you can’t get to a game until Sunday afternoon: the outline of “Opening Week” still barely visible spray-painted on the grass after three mowings, the bunting hanging halfheartedly around a deck or two, the Opening Day merchandise on sale for 33%off.
However, there will be Mets baseball today — it feels like a jinx to say it, but at this point we should be okay, even though saying that feels like jinxing it even further — which makes it, in a literal sense, Opening Day. Jacob deGrom will start. Francisco Lindor will play shortstop. The bullpen will be bad. Someone will strike out in a key spot and everyone will hate them for fifteen minutes before cooler voices prevail. Keith will sigh at how bad everyone is. Baseball will be back.
Of course, it was supposed to be back four days ago, when the Mets were scheduled to play the Nationals in Washington. For that, I can’t help but feel that the Nationals deserve some kind of consequence for being fine all year, then on the one day that was supposed to be a celebration of baseball and some semblance of normalcy finally returning, suddenly announcing that more or less their entire team had COVID.
Today, the Nationals will cancel their fourth straight game, this one — mercifully — against the Braves. Shouldn’t there be some sort of penalty for what amounts to either crippling stupidity or abject failure? If the Nationals showed up for a game and 11 players were out with toe fungus, MLB wouldn’t say “that’s okay, take your time, we’ll wait for you, play when you’re ready;” they’d say “how the hell did 11 of your players get toe fungus?” The Nationals, of course, would respond “we think someone came into contact with Aubrey Huff a few days ago, and it all spread from there,” and everyone would have a hearty chuckle, and the Nationals would put out a team of AAA players and lose games until the Aubrey Huff Toe Fungus cleared up. I kid, of course. Kind of.
This past weekend, the Mets were basically a group of friends heading to a movie, or out to dinner. The Nationals were the one friend who was taking a long time, and MLB was the mediator, on the phone with the Nationals, convincing the Mets to wait up. “Don’t worry about the cold!” MLB was saying to the Nationals. “No, we’re fine — take your time! Get ready! We’re fine waiting outside — it’s barely snowing! Take as long as you need — we’ll be waiting patiently when you’re ready to go!”
How could MLB have punished the Nationals? One obvious possibility is forfeits, but that strikes me as counterproductive: Nationals forfeits, after all, would result in wins for the Mets, but they would be fewer actual games that Mets fans would get to watch, which is the very problem we’re trying to fix. The punishment needs to be something different, and I have just the thing.
Here’s what I think MLB should do: revive old-fashioned punishments that seemed mostly based on what would be funniest. Mock the Nationals relentlessly. Hound them with COVID-themed jokes. For every game they cancel due to COVID, make them wear COVID-themed hats and call them the Washington Germs. Instruct broadcasters to get in on the action, so that if a Nationals batter jumped out of the way of a pitch, a broadcaster could say something like “Wow Bob...he did a better job avoiding that fastball than the Nationals did avoiding COVID!” Get the umpires involved too, so that if a Nationals runner slid into second, an ump could say “safe — but not from COVID! Also, despite my pun, you’re actually out!”
The Nationals have done baseball a disservice, and they should be mocked endlessly for it. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem like a punishment MLB would endorse. However, I have a good feeling that if MLB does nothing, baseball fans, especially on Twitter and in publications, will be more than willing to step up and fill the Nationals Mockery void created by MLB’s inaction.
And anyway, today, Mets baseball is back. There’s no need to mock the Nationals for COVID — we can just mock them for being bad and annoying, the way we usually do.