In the end, our DC Divas were only bridesmaids.
In Saturday’s IWFL Sup-Her Bowl in Austin, Texas, the Kansas City Tribe beat DC, 21-18, to win the women’s tackle football national title, 21-18.
The Divas end the season at 10-1.
The sunset of Rachelle Pecovsky-Bentley‘s career wasn’t as rapturous as it could have been. Pecovsky-Bentley, a 10th-year running back, only played after sundown this season due to her observation of the Sabbath for Seventh Day Adventists. She’s set to retire now, and in her last game was available in the second half. She rushed for a touchdown with less than three minutes left in the game to bring the Divas within three points. But, the Tribe held from there.
I’m no William Morris, but I gotta say, from a public relations standpoint, the IWFL just blows. As of this morning, nobody from the league had even updated the website to say anything about the game, other than one sentence congratulating the winner. Not even a box score? I tried since pretty late Saturday to get ANY news or numbers about the championship, but there wasn’t anything out there. If I owned an IWFL team and was paying one dime to be in this league, I’d be steamed about the lack of outreach. If the main office ain’t publicizing the championship, odds are it ain’ t doing anything.
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The Nats have won two series in a week.
Back to me: Don’t Mock the R²D²!
(AFTER THE JUMP: Is R²D² is the new Total Average? Is Mike Wise the new Sally Jenkins? Can lacrosse solve our homeless problem?)
Look who the Nats’ winning series were played against: the New York Mets and the San Diego Padres. Who are the four worst teams in the National League in the Run Differential category this season? Well, here’s three of them: the Mets, Padres and Nats! (The Reds are the fourth.)
Yup, the Padres have actually passed the Nats and now have the worst run-differential in the Majors, having given up 145 more runs than they’ve scored through the weekend! So the Nats (-115 in the run differential category) have a plus-30-run run-differential differential (R²D²) with the Padres, the only squad in the bigs that they have a positive R²D² against. So of course they’re gonna take a series from the Padres! It’s all in the R²D²!
In two weeks, the Nats play at Cincinnati (-73 in the run differential category on the season as I type this). If Washington’s competitive on the road or, good gosh, wins that series, too, the question becomes: How long before Vegas starts weighing R²D²?
Eat R²D²‘s dust, Total Average! It’s going to be baseball’s Beyer Figure! Ken Jennings will soon drop “R²D²” into his message board postings!
Credit where it’s due: Thanks, Washington Nationals, for one of the most enjoyable baseball experiences I’ve had in a long while. After hours of listening to the rain delays on the radio Saturday night, I left Petworth and headed down to the game, which had just resumed in the second inning, a little before 11 p.m. I pulled into a parking spot on the street about 100 feet from the main gate. The ticket windows were closed, so I went to the ticket services window and the attendant hustled to a front office and came back with a ticket for me, and wouldn’t charge for it. I sat in a section behind the dugout on the third base side and, while watching the Nats thrash San Diego, 13-1, I picked up the free promotional gift given to all ticketholders, a reusuable grocery bag from Harris Teeter with the $1.99 price tag still on it! Everybody in the stadium, particularly the stadium staff, was happy and nice. It was a glorious night/morning. I can’t wait for the next rain delay!
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Mike Wise has a radio show now. He wrote a story for today’s paper about girls kissing. Coincidence?
Probably about as coincidental writing a book with Shaq, then mentioning Shaq in his Washington Post columns six times in 16 days.
The stifling of public displays of affection at Mystics games has been an issue for a while now. In 1998, management’s relationship with the gay community got tense over “Couple of the Game” promotions at home games, in which the romantic pairing that got the loudest cheers when shown on the screen got free food from the sponsoring eatery. While so many of the lovebird tandems in the stands at Mystics games were of the all-girl variety, no woman-on-woman couple ever won.
After complaints from lesbian fans, the team showed what sure looked like its anti-gay bias by dropping “Couple” from the gimmick and changing the name to “Fan of the Game,” even though “Couple of the Game” continued at Caps and Wizards games. The Mystics at the time said the sponsor, a Rockville restaurant, asked for the change; the restaurant responded, “Like hell we did!” Some gay pairs came to games with homemade cardboard squares with “Couple of the Game” written in magic marker, and posed in protest during timeouts. But the promotion never came back.
Back then, Abe Pollin owned all the teams that played at his arena; he has since sold the caps and Mystics to Lincoln Holdings. In 2006, the lesbians were lovin’ it at Verizon Center, with many fans saying then-new team president Sheila Johnson’s outreach to the gay community was making them feel welcome for the first time.
But Wise’s column shows there’s still some kissing and making up left undone.
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Mitch Snyder would be happy: The Homeless are getting all sort of attention in the sports world. First comes a guy who spends his time and money lobbying Congress to force a college football playoff. Now comes a national soccer tournament for the homeless, to be played downtown next weekend. Maybe all the families living on the streets in this economy should form lacrosse teams.
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