Dave Cokin’s Hardcore Baseball: The Notinals

It’s possible we may be seeing a new entry as the worst franchise in any professional sport. The Washington Nationals are pretty amazing right now. Not only have they been phenomenally inept in the early going, the comedy of errors at the organizational level are absolutely Clipperesque.

Basically, this outfit is baseball’s version of “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight”, and I’m not just talking about their play on the field. They’ve been racked by scandal upstairs, much of it centering around allegations of skimming by deposed GM Jim Bowden.

Whether or not any of that stuff is true I have no way of knowing. But Bowden, along with Jose Rijo, were forced to resign in the wake of the discovery that a highly touted prospect was using an alias and was four years older than previously listed.

The “Nots” have tied themselves to players with checkered pasts and character issues. They’ve drafted poorly, failed to develop quality prospects, and managed not to sign last year’s top draft choice. They have the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s draft, and that means a shot at one of the most exciting prospects ever in San Diego State flame thrower Stephen Strasburg.

The Nationals must draft and sign Strasburg, even at what will be a very high asking price. It’s a no brainer. But since this franchise may not have a brain, I’m not chiseling anything in granite just yet.

So there’s no argument that the Nationals are pathetic in every respect, which goes a long way toward explaining why in just their third year in the nation’s capital, no one is showing up for their games.

I won’t pin that entirely on the organization. It’s a lousy baseball town, the stadium is reportedly nothing special and the parking situation is apparently horrendous. The city gets the blame for that gaffe, and on that level, it looks as though D.C. and the Nationals are made for one another.

Now we can add this weekend’s hilarious uniform typo to the litany of mind-numbing blunders by this joke of an operation. You’ve probably seen it by now. On Friday night Adam Dunn and Ryan Zimmerman took the field wearing jerseys that proudly read “Natinals” instead of “Nationals”. That’s right, their own team name was misspelled.

The error was obviously courtesy of the manufacturer, but still, how do you take the field wearing these jerseys? Majestic Athletic, the rights holder for uniforms for all 30 Major League teams, took the blame and issued an apology. Nevertheless, I just can’t imagine this happening to any other franchise.

For years, the NBA Los Angeles Clippers have been widely regarded as the most incompetent franchise in any of the four major sports. Well, it looks as though the Clippers may be about to fall off their pedestal as the Nationals are seemingly doing everything in their power to supplant them as the ultimate joke.