Did John Feinstein save Manny Acta‘s job?
I think so. While buzzards circled over Acta yesterday, Feinstein, continuing the Washington Post‘s If You Get It You Don’t Get It strategy of alienating all subscribers, wrote a web-only feature that included about the only defenses of the Nats’ Dead Manager Walking to appear in the MSM.
“There are plenty of reasons to keep Acta, a couple of reasons to fire him,” wrote Feinstein.
Then Feinstein basically says the reasons to keep him are he’s a good guy and nice guy, and reasons to get rid of him are his team stinks and his team loses.
Not really a compelling case, I gotta say. But Feinstein is the Garth Brooks of sportswriting, so maybe his kudos carry more weight than the average pundit’s kudos.
In any case, for now, it looks like Acta will still be around to hand in the lineups for tonight’s game at the new Yankee Stadium.
Joel Hanrahan‘s gotta get Feinstein to write a piece on how he shouldn’t be given a bus ticket.
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In his web-only piece, Feinstein takes a break from defending Acta to slam Rob Dibble.
“If you’re one of the few who watch the team’s games on television with any frequency, you know, courtesy of Rob Dibble, that the Nats never get a call,” Feinstein wrote.
This comes a day after the great Thom Loverro gave a whole column to bashing Dibble as a phony and a sham. And today the great Loose Lips takes a Fenty break and blasts Dibble as a “numbskull.”
There’s something going on here.
I gotta say, I love Dibble’s work. I pretty much only watch him on Sundays, though, with the great Charlie Slowes getting my attention during the week.
If Feinstein, Loverro and Loose Lips turn on Slowes, I’ll have to rethink everything.
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Danny Hultzen of St. Albans had the big hit in UVa’s win over Cal-State Fullerton in the elimination bracket of the College World Series.
Hultzen is something. He’s UVa’s best pitcher. He went 2-4 against Stephen Strasburg earlier in the NCAA tournament. He’s a freshman. And he volunteers at Sibley Hospital when he’s home.
Geez, Danny. Way to make us all feel bad.
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Trent Green, who held a clipboard with the Skins during the Norv Turner/Heath Shuler/Gus Frerotte Era and had one good year here before escaping the franchise right before Dan Snyder’s reign as owner began, has retired.
Green put up fab stats (3,441 yards and 23 touchdowns, with only 11 interceptions) during his one season as a Skins starter in 1998, even though the team started 0-7.
He was a free agent at the end of the year, and GM Charley Casserly called re-signing Green his “number one priority.”
But Jack Kent Cooke’s estate wouldn’t let Casserly throw millions of dollars at the QB until the pending sale of the club to Howard and Edward Milstein and Snyder went through.
So Green signed with the St. Louis Rams.
Then the Milstein Bros. got booted by the NFL, and Snyder took over a couple months later, and the rest is misery.
During post-Skins stints (St. Louis, Kansas City, Miami and St. Louis again), Green took more blows the head than Leon Spinks. Last Friday, he quit the game rather than get as punch drunk as the ex-champ. He’ll turn 39 this summer.
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The DC Divas, the top-ranked ladies football team in the land, have had to deal with losing the services of their starting running back to religious faith and scheduling. But not TOTALLY losing her services.
Divas GM Rich Daniel tells me Rachelle Pekovsky-Bennett, a nine-year veteran of the squad, now rests on her Sabbath. That’s from Friday at sundown until Saturday at sundown.
All Divas home games are on Saturday evenings at 7 p.m..
“We respect her beliefs and accommodate her,” says Daniel.
Pekovsky-Bennett couldn’t hit the field til nearly 8:30 p.m. for last weekend’s game with Philadelphia.
She wasn’t needed. The Divas beat Philadelphia 63-0.
The undefeated Divas will open up the playoffs at home against Pittsburgh on June 27. They’re take as much of Pekovsky-Bennett as they can get.
“The sun will start setting earlier soon,” Daniel says.
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