Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been spend a lot of time watching and thinking about baseball and football.

On the baseball side of things, your Maximum Leader’s son, the Wee Villain, has started to play organized ball. The Wee Villain has been enjoying himself very much at practice and is looking forward to the first game (which is Saturday). In terms of his skills, he has a good and reasonably accurate throwing arm, he is a slow runner, he is still somewhat afraid of balls hit in the air coming down and hitting him, he is good at fielding grounders, and his swing is terribly aggrevating. All in all he is a middling player in his group. Your Maximum Leader believes that he’d be much better if he could improve one element of his swing. When the ball comes at him he “steps out” with his front foot. He completely opens his stance and misses the ball. The motion causes him to lose the ball visually, it messes up his swing (which otherwise would be okay) and completely takes away any power he might have in the event he made contact. Your Maximum Leader has gone so far as to lay on the ground behind the Wee Villain and hold his ankles when he swings so he can’t move his feet at all.

It is going to take more and more practice. Then again, he is six…

As far as your Maximum Leader’s beloved Washington Nationals are concerned… There is all at once so much and so little to say. Your Maximum Leader had predicted that the Nats would win 70-75 games this year. That is still a possibility, but it is a little reach. Most of the Nats’ games are against NL East opponents; and we have a pennant race in the NL East. On the good side of the equation (for Nats’ fans) is that the Nats have played NL East teams that are not the Florida Marlins very well. So well in fact that they have a winning record against the NL East (except Florida). But the Phillies are highly motivated to play well to make sure they make the playoffs and have some “mo” working for them. It will be interesting to watch as the Nats could play the role of spoiler to some team.

In other Nationals news. Your Maximum Leader believes that the team should offer Adam Dunn a 3-4 year contract and keep him. If this season has shown us anything it is that you never know what will happen with your prospects. With that in mind, give the big lug a contract and let him stick around. Sure he isn’t a great fielder (and in a perfect world he’d be a DH for an AL team - a role he’d fit exactly) but he does pop the ball and he makes Ryan Zimmerman a better hitter. Keep him for his offence says your Maximum Leader. We like Adam Dunn and we’d like to see him stay on as a Nat.

Nyjer Morgan however… Your Maximum Leader has turned on Nyjer. Last year he was fun to watch and greatly entertaining. This year he is making mental errors and being a little more belligerent than he should be. His “baseball IQ” is not as advanced as others and he probably has been working himself out of a job in DC. If Morgan winds up being traded, your Maximum Leader wouldn’t shed a tear. The Nats have plenty of talent coming up that can play outfield and likely do better at it than Morgan is now.

So that is baseball…

As for football…

Your Maximum Leader has been souring on football more and more over the years. He can actually see himself not watching it at all within a few years. The problem for him now is head injury leading to early death. He finds himself wincing at hard hits and heads snapping back in blocks and tackles. All of the research coming out about the connection between head trauma and dementia, ALS and other problems has actually scared your Maximum Leader a bit.

Of course, your Maximum Leader doesn’t play football, hasn’t played organized football and has nothing to fear from injuries he’s never sustained. But at some level now that he knows what is going on out there he doesn’t like watching it as much. It was hard to watch his (beloved) Green Bay Packers play the Philadelphia Eagles. It was hard to watch because Aaron Rodgers was getting sacked quite a bit early on. With every sack your Maximum Leader wondered if a few months were taken off Rodger’s life - or the life of the defensive player who got the sack.

Because your Maximum Leader can’t let this subject go without some sort of snarky political comment… Here tis: You know that with nationalized health care coming up they will eventually have to outlaw (or othewise prohibit) football being played like this because it is too dangerous and the public cost will be too high to bear.

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader hasn’t stopped watching football, but it is sort of hard. He can say this, the Wee Villain will never play football. EVER. That doesn’t stop others from sacraficing their sons to the allure of the gridiron… Your Maximum Leader is happy to let others do that…

All this angst aside, it was good to see the Packers win. Very good in fact. It made your Maximum Leader very happy.

Carry on.