Tom Boswell on the Battle of the Beltways

[mlaws9]

Weams! What up, homie? How you been?

[ReclaimTheCrown]

Slightly OT, but good showing of O's fans in DC tonight. I'd say maybe 25-30% O's fans, which is a very strong percentage.

They just about sold out tonight, which is obviously good for a Wednesday night. I wonder if they may get a better attendance bump for these games than the O's seem to because there are more O's fans in the DC area than there are Nats fans in the Baltimore area. Obviously speculative, and a lot of other factors at play, but just throwing it out there.

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[Orioles4Life21]

the tone of his article reminds me of a college rivalry(big brother/little brother) type feel. Like the Nats are Big Brother and the O's are little brother that just seems to keep "upsetting" the Nats which he paints as the superior team. But that the Nats really don't "care" about this "supposed" rivalry. Can I buy that Angelos is miffed when thinking of the "Nats?" Yeah, I can see that, but I don't get any feel that Buck or the O's players really care any extra for these series. And as many have pointed out, the NL East is not as deep as the AL East. Last 10 years, neither the O's or Nats have been to the WS. But 4 of the last 10 years, an AL East team has been in the series (with them going 3-1), while no NL East team has reached the series those last 10 years. Both teams reached the playoffs in 2012 & 2014. And now I am kind of realizing that I don't understand how Boswell is so dismissive of the O's - I kind of had thought the Nats had been in the playoffs more than the O's recently but that's not the case at all. In fact the Nats failed both times to even reach the NLCS, while the O's reached in 2014. In all honesty, I kind of view the Nats organization as "little brother". The Expos/Nats have never even reached the WS while the Browns/O's have reached 7 times. Boswell can suck it......

Your memory fails you. The Phillies went to and won the World Series in 2008. They returned in 2009 but lost. And hello, the Mets were in the World Series LAST YEAR.

[scOtt]

Boswell can write. But he has a chip as well.

You're right about both.

For now, there really hasn't been a "Battle of the Beltway." It's still just a concept or a marketing tag. Because you can't have a battle or a rivalry if, year after year, only one team shows up.

[ReclaimTheCrown]

You also can't really have a "Battle of the Beltway" when, in fact, the two cities don't share one beltway but rather have their own beltways that serve each city.

Sorry, the erroneous semantics of this annoy the crap out of me.

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[allquixotic]

The opening sentence describes the Orioles as the "slightly, but nonetheless distinctly, inferior" team. And it sort of implies that the O's win the head-to-head series because the Orioles and their fans care more about the "rivalry." I think it is fair to say that Boswell made only a cursory mention of the fact that the Orioles play in a much tougher division that the Nats, when in fact the Nats' better record has to be viewed in that context. It can be argued that the Nats have been better, but it isn't as clear as Boswell suggests.

Agreed, especially about the division difficulty. If you took the Rays and Yankees from the past 5 years and stuck them in the NL East and put the Braves and Phillies in the AL East, I think the O's would have more wins than the Nats by far.

If the Nats had to play 18 games head to head with the Jays, Red Sox, O's and Yanks every single year, they wouldn't be able to keep up. The power from the O's, Red Sox and Jays would demolish their entire pitching staff in just a few months, sending the ERAs of guys like Roark and Strasburg several whole points higher than they are now. Even Scherzer would probably be a 4.50 ERA guy in the AL East.

The AL has historically been better than the NL in the All Star Game and interleague play over the past decade or so, but the AL East is the most obvious outlier in terms of how potent they are compared to the NL. The only NL club that scares me is the Cubs. The rest of the NL clubs, if you individually threw them into the AL East, would probably have at least 3 wins fewer than the Orioles right now (assuming they played the AL East clubs as often as we do).

[O-Arm36]

I guess he'd rather have the "Thank goodness for corporate lobbyists and Walgreens enthusiasts" shirts to represent the Nats fan base.

As a Virginia O's fan I admit this rivalry is particularly important, so this week has really been great.

[scOtt]

Dan Steinberg needs a lesson in basic English conjugation, I'm afraid. "Has elicit"? Seriously? Maybe the WaPo should rethink laying off those copy editors...

[video=youtube;4AyjKgz9tKg]

[LA2]

Boswell can write. But he has a chip as well.

On his shoulder or in his cerebral cortex?

[WEAVERMAN]

Read it this morning. Kind of brought up some anger if I'm honest when he talked about affording big name players. Guess I should just forget about a Manny extension now

Don't let this buffoon influence you at all.

[Redskins Rick]

You also can't really have a "Battle of the Beltway" when, in fact, the two cities don't share one beltway but rather have their own beltways that serve each city.

Sorry, the erroneous semantics of this annoy the crap out of me.

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Technically speaking, its the battle of the Parkway.

[CP0861]

Slightly OT, but good showing of O's fans in DC tonight. I'd say maybe 25-30% O's fans, which is a very strong percentage.

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I kept the game on after it was over.....Ray Knight couldn't hear the other guy due to loud chants of "Let's Go O's" right outside the booth.

[DrungoHazewood]

The column kind of rambles between praising the Orioles and taking shots at them:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/in-the-battle-of-the-beltway-its-advantage-baltimore-over-the-nationals/2016/08/23/3615aca6-695b-11e6-99bf-f0cf3a6449a6_story.html

I left out some parts where Boswell pointed out some of the player acquisitions the O's made relatively cheaply, like Alvarez, Kim and Trumbo.

It's good to know that getting his own team and beating Angelos in that way, which was often his single-minded quest for many years, still doesn't quiet Boswell's bitterness. Hold on to the rage, Tom, and channel it for creative purposes! The great artists are rarely the happy ones!

As an old-school sportswriter of course he's not going to mention things like the AL's long-term advantage in quality over the NL as a part of the reason the O's win over a Nats team with a slightly better un-context adjusted record. Or that when a .575 team plays a .550 team it's pretty much a coin toss and a coin that comes up heads 23 of 34 times is unremarkable. He has papers to sell so it's actually a morality play.

[Frobby]

You also can't really have a "Battle of the Beltway" when, in fact, the two cities don't share one beltway but rather have their own beltways that serve each city.

Sorry, the erroneous semantics of this annoy the crap out of me.

You'll note that in the thread title I called it the Battle of the Beltways. I didn't buy in to Boswell's misnomer.

[DrungoHazewood]

You also can't really have a "Battle of the Beltway" when, in fact, the two cities don't share one beltway but rather have their own beltways that serve each city.

Sorry, the erroneous semantics of this annoy the crap out of me.

Marketing slogans should always value exact factual correctness over catchiness.

Some alternatives:

- Sporting contest between two baseball teams loosely representing areas that once were , and may still be, part of Maryland!

- Four of 162 games determining playoff participants and seeding between two geographically close franchises!

- Fodder for semi-contrived rivalry between teams hailing from the mid-Atlantic region!

- Meaningless athletic contest to bide your time between now and the end of Western civilization!

- Come see Tom Boswell turn beet red and shake his fist in a northeasterly direction!