washington-nationals Page 23 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Now Bryce Harper Has Started Stealing Home
As if the young man needed to do even more audacious things, Nationals rookie sensation Bryce Harper stole home during a Cole Hamels pickoff attempt in the first inning of tonight's game against the Phillies. Some balls this guy has! (That is just an assumption that as a professional baseball playe...

Bryce Harper Shows Off His Arm Cannon, Gets Screwed By Umpire
Recreational softball phenom Bryce Harper is making quite the impression on the DC fan base during his debut fortnight in The Show. (They're not really going to send him back down to AAA, are they?) First, it was making good with the locals during a softball game on the Mall, and in lieu of raking a...

Bryce Harper Played Softball Near The Washington Monument On His Day Off
Longtime Yankees fan Bryce Harper will soon be the king of Washington, DC, but he's up for a cup of coffee with the Nats while star third baseman Ryan Zimmerman sits on the DL. So, to get acclimated to his eventual home city, Harper decided to take in some of the local color today by crashing a lo...

Bryce Harper Has His First Major League Hit, Possibly Because Dodgers Fans Were Mooning Their Own Pitcher
Nationals rookie Bryce Harper doubled in his third MLB at-bat, giving him his first hit in the majors. More importantly, though, it happened as some fans behind home plate had their bare asses out and pointing toward the mound. Why? I don't know. Does it matter? No. [PRIME]...

Bryce Harper's First Major League At-Bat Was A Comebacker
He's clearly doomed to failure....

Chien-Ming Wang Holds Press Conference To Apologize For Cheating On Wife
In 2009, Chien-Ming Wang had received shoulder surgery that would keep him out of baseball for two years, and had just lost his contract with the Yankees. So he did what any one of us would do—he went to the bar a lot, and chatted up the cute bartender....

Umpire Greg Gibson Took A Stephen Strasburg Fastball To The Crotch
Ump Greg Gibson, behind the plate for today's Nats-Marlins matchup, was in a Very Bad Place today when Wilson Ramos mishandled a Stephen Strasburg fastball and deflected it right into Gibson's groin area. Gibson bounced back rather quickly—most MLB umps wear cups when working the plate, after all...

Davey Johnson Is Perplexed And Unmoved By Press Conference Fire Alarm
Okay, let's get this out of the way first. Yes, it's hilarious to hear Nats manager Davey Johnson say, completely out of context, "It was shockingly beautiful, and big. I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, jeez. My first one was in 1966." He's talking about Edwin Jackson's World Series ring. Not a pe...

Rick Ankiel Threw A Strike From Center Field
Houston's Jordan Schafer had 22 stolen bases last year, so he's not slow. But even he wasn't about to tag up and test the arm of Rick Ankiel, who showed the Astros' prudence to be warranted by hitting the catcher on the fly. Perhaps it wasn't strictly a strike (unless Larry Vanover was working the p...

Chien-Ming Wang Injures Himself Attempting The Always-Tricky "Step On First Base" Play
Wang left in the third inning of today's spring training start after breaking down while attempting to beat a runner to the bag. It's funny, but it's not funny, because it was another non-pitching related activity—running the bases in interleague play—that turned Wang from a 19-game winner into a ...

Davey Johnson Has Nicknamed Drew Storen "Tinkerbell"
Johnson, the Nationals' manager, picked the name because Storen, the team's closer, has a tendency to tweak his delivery. All well and good. And plenty of swell options for entry music....

The Nationals Have "Natitude," And Stephen Strasburg Is Starting To Think "Dynasty"
There are legitimate reasons for the Washington Nationals to think they're ready to contend this season: Stephen Strasburg, Ryan Zimmerman, and Bryce Harper are healthy; and Edwin Jackson and Gio Gonzalez have been brought in to help the cause. But Strasburg is already looking past contending—he's a...

Nationals "Take Back The Park" From Phillies Fans, Give It Right Back To Them
Every time the Phillies visit Nationals Park, it feels like a home game for them. The stands are filled with fans who made the two-hour drive south to cheer for the Phillies, and it’s disheartening for Nats fans to be outnumbered in their own stadium. The same thing happens when the Yankees visit Ba...

Prince Fielder Could Be A Washington National This Season, And Other News Around The Hot Stove
Your roundup of all the hottest hot-stove items of the day (and whatever shit Ken Rosenthal is throwing against the wall). This is ... HOT FUCKING STOVE!...

Prince Fielder And Tim Lincecum Want Long-Term Deals, Andrew Bailey Is Thinking Music, And More From Around The Hot Stove
Your roundup of all the hottest hot-stove items of the day (and whatever shit Ken Rosenthal is throwing against the wall). This is ... HOT FUCKING STOVE!...

Bryce Harper Named His New Puppy "Swag"
Did you know Nationals wundertool Bryce Harper protects his Tweets? Luckily, Nats Enquirer is here to relay to us that Harper received an adorable chocolate Lab for Christmas, and promptly named it Swag. They're totally off to the park to pick up chicks. [Nats Enquirer]...

Bryce Harper Is Now Using Twitter To Ask Rappers To Name-Drop Him In Their Songs
This is the saddest version yet of "Can I get an RT?"...

The Wilson Ramos Rescue Featured A Gunfight In The Mountains
Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos was rescued last night and that is a very good thing. An even better thing? The rescue involved "Venezuelan police commandos" engaged in a "hair-raising" gunfight with his captors in a remote mountainous area....

<em>Washington Post</em> Reports That Wilson Ramos Has Been Rescued
"Wilson Ramos has been rescued in Venezuela and is with the police on his way back home, his agent, Gustavo Mercano, said in a phone conversation. The Interior Minster [sic] called to tell the family at roughly 10 minutes before 10 p.m. East Coast time....

Nationals Catcher Wilson Ramos Has Reportedly Been Kidnapped In Venezuela
Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus tweeted this story from a Venezulean news outlet, which I ran through Google Translate and got the following:...