While the Nationals didn’t require much in the way of heavy ammo in today’s 1-0 defeat of the Mets, they’re pulling out all the stops in a their ongoing battle for the hearts & minds of Maryland baseball fans writes the Washington Post’s Marc Fisher :

Yay to the Washington Nationals for finally taking a return shot against the Baltimore Orioles. While the O’s continue to do everything they can think of to diss the newcomer franchise, the Nats have played it polite and friendly up until now. But with the two teams playing in Baltimore this weekend, the Nats have sent the racing presidents, their Screech mascot (above) and the Nat Pack (those overly friendly, annoyingly cute human mascots who roam the stadium making everyone feel a bit cheesy) to wander Baltimore’s Inner Harbor distributing Nats promotional wares. Nice move–happening even as we type.

How bad was Jason Isringhausen against Pittsburgh today? Even Aaron Heilman wanted to change the channel.

Alex Rodriguez has filmed a congratulatory video, scheduled to be shown when Manny Ramirez hits his 500th career home run. A-Rod kept his clip short, because “I am going to get booed”. Presumably, Dan Shaughnessy’s video is equally brief.

Of the Yankees’ 20-21 start, Hank Steinbrenner tells the Daily News’ Bill Madden, “What bothers me is that these guys are all working for me and my brother and they’re all making more money than we are. That’s what makes me mad. But while I’m confident they’ll come around, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens this year. And if they don’t come around then changes will have to be made. I’ve just got to clean up the mistakes of the last five years and make us what we should be.”

Hey, who says you can’t rebuild in New York?