This is officially my 500th consecutive daily post on the blog. I expect that your reaction is: Get a life. Might be a good idea.

Well, on this Saturday, March 30, we are going to see The Lehman Trilogy at the Shakespeare Theater downtown. Hopefully, I will like it, and tell you what I think about it tomorrow.

But today, I want to talk about DC sports. Not that I am an expert (that should relieve you, I guess), but there is a lot to say.

First, the Nationals (that’s our baseball team): The Nationals, in the middle of or near the end of their rebuilding) came off a very strong Spring Training. Here’s what I noticed: First, our set team, which includes many from last year, but two or three new to us but seasoned players who have had fair-to-middling careers so far, played well, but were certainly not exciting. Second, our “prospects”, young guys who were not expected to be on our opening day roster, played much better than our regular team did, but that didn’t seem to mean that much for this year. Third, our starting pitchers were the same five guys who were not as good as they needed to be last year (our relievers include a few new to us pitchers who could be very good).

Conclusion: without pitching, and without bringing up our prospects, it looks like more of the same for the Nats this year. And that’s too bad. [I should add that one of our new fair-to-middling players, Nick Stenzel, unfortunately broke his finger before Opening Day and the Nats called up Trey Lipscomb, one of our prospects to be the starting third basement.]

We have tickets for the home Opening Game Monday at 4. The weather promises to be wet. Of course.

More important is the news about the Wizards (basketball) and the Caps (hockey). Their owner, Ted Leonsis, announced several months ago that he his teams would be leaving downtown DC in four or five years, to move to a new arena and attached entertainment center, to be built in Alexandria, Virginia. As DC’s downtown has been struggling since the pandemic (there are still fewer that half the daily workers downtown, with so many working remotely), with empty sidewalks, vacant storefronts, and closed restaurants, the loss of these two teams seemed like just one more tough blow. And it was presented as a done deal.

But the done deal became undone when, on top of worries and complaints from Alexandria residents who feared the crowds and traffic, the Democrats in the Virginia legislature made it clear that they were not going to support a $1,500,000,000 giveaway to the billionaire team owner and the deal suddenly died. Virginia has a Republican governor, who apparently thought this would be a slam/dunk, and a legislature where both houses are controlled by the Democrats.

Suddenly, everything was reversed. DC Mayor Bowser, DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson, and owner Ted Leonsis turned out to be best friends, and to have been sharing drinks throughout this entire time, and a deal was put forward for the complete modernization of the DC arena. Not only that, but the commercial mall which adjoins the arena (and which had contained an AMC Multiplex and a bowling alley among other things, but which is now fairly empty) is being leased by Leonsis for what I understand will be a 200,000 square foot entertainment center and more, and the DC government is providing all sorts of incentives to protect and clean up the Gallery Place area. This is enormously important for the downtown. I am sure it would have eventually recovered from everything having to do with the last four years (how could it not?), but this will make things much easier and faster, and will certainly help the city’s tax base.

In the meantime, the Wizards (whose record so far this year 14-60) will keep struggling for a long time, but the Caps might even make the playoffs this year; they continue to be exciting to watch and hopefully will keep up the pace they have been on recently as the season winds down.

And then there’s the Commanders (nee Redskins – football) which, under new ownership, is making change after change every day, it seems, and which even talks about building a new stadium at the site of the abandoned RFK Stadium in the District as a replacement for their current home in Prince George’s County MD. We will see if that happens – there will be a lot of neighborhood opposition I am sure, as rebuilt Capitol Hill now extends almost to the RFK grounds. Either way, with new ownership, the Commanders should engender new interest.

That’s it for my sports report. I pay little or no attention to our women’s basketball team, the Mystics, or to our soccer team, DC United. And I note that our neighboring Baltimore Orioles (baseball, of course) also has new ownership, led by Washington good-guy philanthropist David Rubenstein, replacing ownership under Peter Angelos. who recently passed away. This will hopefully make the Orioles and the Nationals friends, and not only rivals for attention.