Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

I take it as granted that all friends of the decanter who follow MLB and know of Ol’ Robbo’s adherence to the Washington Nationals will by now be perfectly cognizant of the nooz yesterday that they traded Juan Soto who, up till a few weeks ago, was being trumpeted as the New Face of the Team, and perhaps the greatest player of his generation, over to the Padres. (Those of you not interested will excuse Ol’ Robbo, but this is my blog and I need to rant somewhere.)

Well, what can I actually say?

A friend this morning speculated that the Lerner Family needed to slash payroll in order to make good some real estate losses. Myself, I begin to speculate that maybe they’re seeking to tank attendance to such a low level that they can move the team to another city. (Whether one of them is an ex-showgirl, I do not know.)

But there it is.

Ol’ Robbo glommed on to the Nats when they first came to Dee Cee back in the day, having never had a home town team for whom to root before then. I stuck with them through the first years, embarrassing as they were, emphasizing to the Gels that those of us who labored through our, ah, winters of discontent, could sneer at the summer soldiers, the sunshine patriots, who clambered aboard the bandwagon when the team started winning pennants in the 2010-teens and took it all in the astonishing 2019 Series.

I suppose I need remind myself of this idea again, although damme if I can understand the reason behind this pattern of building up anchor players from their foundations and then dealing them out (see Bryce Harper, Anthony “Tony Two-Bags” Rendon, Trea Turner, et al.)

Anyhoo, as for the rest of the season, despite my major disappointment I intend to stick around and to cheer when we are able to pick off a win (and we did smack deGrom last evening, after all), Why not?

What else is there to say but

GO, NATS!!