I watched on MASN2 this afternoon two of the lowliest teams in baseball — the Washington Nationals and the Pittsburgh Pirates.<\/p>\n
I consider the Nats my “local team.” I think this is common amongst football fans (and by “football fans” I mean “soccer fans”), where there’s a top tier squad that one roots for, and then they also support a team closer to home. The Nationals are that for me. I root for them automatically, unless they’re playing the Chicago Cubs, because the lowly Nationals need all the fans they can get.<\/p>\n
The truth is, outside of a few names, I’m not especially familiar with the Nationals. I don’t recognize Nationals players on sight the way I do with the Cubs.<\/p>\n
Thus, it came as a surprise to me to discover that the Nationals’ shortstop is named Alberto Gonzalez<\/a>.<\/p>\n The game was played in Pittsburgh, at PNC Park, which has to be one of the loveliest baseball stadiums known to man. One of these days, I’m going to go to Pittsburgh and take in a game there, because every time I see PNC on television it looks beautiful.<\/p>\n The MASN announcers would, from time to time, mention the shortstop Gonzalez, and my brain would stop.<\/p>\n It registered as one particular name — that of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.<\/p>\n Yes, they’re spelled differently. One with an S, one with a Z.<\/p>\n I wondered if Alberto Gonzales, spelled with the S, had finally found a job. He’d had some trouble finding employment earlier in the year<\/a>; I wondered if he’d tried my suggestion of Professional Hellboy Impersonator. Had the Nationals fallen so far that they had hired him to play shortstop?<\/p>\n Alas not. Different Gonzalez. The Nationals’ Gonzalez is merely an adequate ballplayer. Bats .272, with a .316 on-base percentage. Though perhaps he might want to try being a Professional Hellboy Impersonator someday, when his baseball career has ended.<\/p>\n Cubs are on in about ten. Go, Cubs, go! :cubs:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I watched on MASN2 this afternoon two of the lowliest teams in baseball — the Washington Nationals and the Pittsburgh Pirates. I consider the Nats my “local team.” I think this is common amongst football fans (and by “football fans” I mean “soccer fans”), where there’s a top tier squad that one roots for, andContinue reading “On Mistaken Names”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[365,4081,367,4108,24],"class_list":["post-2466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball","tag-alberto-gonzales","tag-baseball","tag-hellboy","tag-politics","tag-washington-nationals","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}