A Big-Time Nat gets swatted in Washington
If only Alphonso Soriano wasn’t such a malcontent, he’d be able to stay in Washington.

Even before he took his first official season at-bat in Washington the media had his number. He was such an awful teammate and person coming into DC that he didn’t even want to change the position he played all of his life and felt comfortable at. The nerve!

It’s not all about you, Sori!

Now that he’s on the Nationals, he’s even selfishly boosted his individual stats.

He’s batting .298, including 23 home runs, 47 runs batted in, 15 stolen bases and a .607 slugging percentage. Not to mention his selfishness in the field, leading all outfielders in assists with 10.

Everyone should have seen this attitude coming in his first 3 major league at-bats when he hit 3 straight home runs – against Tampa Bay (game-winner in the 11th… I guess he had somewhere else to be!) and Seattle.

Sometimes you just wish that an All-Star player, earning $10 million a year to play a game, would come down to earth and realize it’s not all about them, and not all about padding their stats. Nevermind that Sori has been an All-Star and the best slugger at second base for the last four years. Why should that hold him back from changing positions, thus altering his comfort zone, and losing out on possible incentives he could earn as the best slugging second basemen during his playing career?

Sometimes it’s all about winning, Sori. The Nats are currently 5 games under .500 and 10.5 games behind the division-leading New York Mets. Who can the team attribute all the losing to?

That’s right – the guy wearing number 12, the malcontent himself, Sori. The guy always covered in a smile when he’s running on or off the field. I bet he’s only smiling because he knows a joke that he won’t let everyone else in on. Selfish.

See what I’m talking about?

**In all seriousness…

The Nats would be quite stupid to let him go, no matter what trade value he can generate. They should trade Jose Vidro. Give the younger (by 2 years) and big slugging Soriano a chance to be the best at his position. If for no other reason than his ability to trump all critics of the deep outfield (Vidro included) fences at RFK Stadium. Sori has 23 reasons why the location of the fence makes no difference to him. And maybe if they promoted Sori as the franchise player, more people would come out and cheer for the Nats. Last year with no one player as their star in their inaugural year they managed to fill the seats (2.7 million year attendance/34,000 average per game). Imagine what they could do with a marketable, personable, star with great character.

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The World Cup: Why I will follow it – no, seriously!
Maybe I should blame the Simpsons for my inability to refrain from laughing everytime I see a soccer promotion. In one episode (“Homer Gets A Gun” for you fanatics), a soccer match coming to town is promoted on a commercial, in which the narrator rattles off the reasons I haven’t traditionally followed the sport closely – “It’s all here – fast kickin, low scorin… and ties? You bet!”This year though, I plan on going a step further than previous years. I plan on keeping up with who wins and loses. Granted, I’ll continue to use a cheatsheet, but it’s a step. Right?I’m dedicated to the true June Madness (ever notice how crazy and exciting you can make any month simply by adding “madness” to its end?) and plan on participating in rooting for and cheering against the teams representing the countries I like and dislike. That’s the way to do it, right?

The Simpsons weren’t too far off when it hyped their soccer match like so:

“This match will determine once and for all which nation is the greatest on Earth: Mexico or Portugal!”

If this is actually the case, then of the two matches I know about so far –

• The Czech Republic is vastly superior to the United States. 3 goals is apparently the equivalent to “vastly superior,” and while I don’t know how to rationalize that in monetary value, economic size or stature, we can assume that it’s probably “a whole lot.”
• Australia may seem to be one “goal” worse than Japan the country but if you hang in for the last 90 minutes, you’d see that the Aussie nation is actually 2 goals better. Never underestimate shrimp, barbies, kangaroos and boomerangs. That’ll teach you, you underestimator.

If you’d like to use the same resources I used, here are three:

• ESPN’s main page of soccer coverage
• DJ Gallo of ESPN’s Page2 breaks down a 32-item World Cup preview and just happens to be hilarious in the process
• World Cup Cheat Sheet – has the teams and schedules laid out for you lazy folk

I plan on following the US team as far as they can go. Drawing from the results of the US/CR game, this will be the most brief soccer coverage by any one person. That could help me ease my way into the sport. I’ll follow Brazil after that because just like in other sports, when all of my teams are out of the running, I root for the most exciting finishes. And in soccer scoring any goal, ever, is the most exciting thing to me.

Quick note: France tied Switzerland in their World Cup opener. Congrats to the French for the neutral ending. Who could have possibly predicted that?

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Call him “The Dirk” or “His Dirk-ness” or “Dirk you very much”
Watching Game 2 was something of a treat. Shaq might as well have not shown up to the game because he faded away in the paint all night. He shot abismally and in the end, when the Mavs win in 5 games, he’ll still have his personal history of 3 rings to his record. Maybe it’ll motivate the Big Diesel to get back in tip-top shape and prove that super-old is the new super-young (see Roger Clemens, Sam Cassell, Steve Nash, Tim Thomas, umm… Barry Bonds… no, wait…).

The Dirk and boyz took the first two games, but tonight they stroll out of the state of the cow, and into the state of the sun and orange, and into the city of the live party scene and hot women.

Here are a few guarantees:

• Antoine Walker will shoot non-stop – especially if the game is on the line
• The Diesel will miss nearly all of his free throws
• The Jet, Jason Terry, will be outshined by His Dirkness’s name, even if JT has the better game

Now for my bold predictions:

• Whoever shoots the better percentage will win the game
• If the combo of DWade/Shaq score more than 55 points total, the Heat will win
• If Dirk scores more than 30, the Mavs will sweep
• I will yet again love watching the entire game knowing that Bill Walton is far, far away from the NBA Finals announcer microphones

We’ll see how far off or dead on I am as the series goes on…

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Beer Pong at its finest – Hoodbridge style
Nothing more exciting happened in the world of sports this past weekend than my Woodbridge Beer Pong League (WBPL) team’s 4-0 week.

Yes, that means I hold that to be more important than the start of the World Cup, the NBA Finals, and the latest snag in the web of steroid users and abusers.

My partner Deezy and I started off quite slow, ending week 1 with a 1-3 record, but this weekend rebounded and now have a 5-3 record overall. We’re tied for third place now, and hopefully back on track to be in the running for the WBPL at the end of the 5 week season.

Our high pre-season ranking meant just as much as experts’ pick of the Colts to win Super Bowl XL, the US “dark horse” label for this year’s World Cup, Miami and Shaq’s dominant NBA Finals this year — nothing — until we win all the later games that count.

Stay tuned – once we get the WBPL site up and running, you better believe there’ll be frequent updates here!

Support of US occupancy in the Middle East has its limits.

And arriving at those limits is not un-American.

I’ve tried hard to maintain the uncomfortable balancing act of supporting the troops overseas, while opposing the war in the Middle East. I really have.

But when an inhumane, disgraceful act is reported from the battlegrounds, damaging the reputation of Americans and their supporting troops, I have to take a stronger stance against US occupation.

As if US occupancy isn’t hard enough for the safety of both Iraqi residents and US troops, recent reports out of Iraq show that 24 Iraqi civilians – men, women and children – were massacred by United States Marines last November.

Eyewitnesses say that on November 19, 2005, a roadside bomb exploded next to a US Humvee, killing a US Marine outside a small neighborhood in Haditha, a city northwest of Baghdad. Immediately following, US troops stormed into surrounding houses and began shooting civilians.

An interviewer at CNN found 3 main eyewitnesses – a 12-year-old girl, Saffa Yunis, and her 8 and 9 year old cousins.

Saffa said she heard her father killed in the kitchen, along with her mother, 15 year old sister and her 10-year-old sister was shot in the head 7 times. Her little brother was shot as he hid under a bed for protection, just before she was shot.

The 8 and 9 year old cousins survived the attack in which 7 were killed in the house. Their father was burned in a room, grandparents killed with a bomb and their aunt and grandmother shot and killed protecting the children.

There’s no excuse for this type of behavior. The inhumane factor of such an act is obvious. Unarmed, unthreatening civilians should not be victims of any attack, anywhere. But especially not by “friendlies,” the ones assigned to the role of peacekeepers.

The obvious defense for the Marines who flipped out is that every day they have to be on high alert, and after spending days, months and years away from their families and friends, they aren’t completely stable. Not to mention their respective training – aka “brain washing” – which teaches them to be cold killers of the enemy, and to protect the back of their comrades.

The people of Iraq are obviously upset. The families who fell victim to these November attacks were given between $1,500 and $2,500 dollars as what appears to be some payoff.

Typical American way – throw money at your problems.

But I do understand why the Department of Defense would want this story to disappear. When embarassing and torture photographs were released from the Abu Ghraib prison, support from the states and the Iraqi people took a dramatic fall. President Bush’s approval ratings are at their lowest point of his entire tenure as Commander-in-Chief.

This latest act of violence was sparked by a car bomb, one associated with “terrorist violence.” But how do we categorize the latest act of US Marine violence on innocent Iraqi civilians?

Any act of violence towards innocent persons is a terrorist act.

So has the ongoing war in the Middle East driven our own to fall into the category of terrorists when they’ve been pushed to the limit?

When their comrade is killed in a terrorist act, according to policy, there is only so much they can do. It’s one thing when you’re in a war where enemies and allies are widely known. But deep in the trenches – ones disguised in the form of neighborhoods along the Euphrates river and throughout the deserts and cities in the Middle East – the enemy is as defined just as much as it is not. A terrorist is as defined just as much as it is not.

President Bush spoke out against the Haditha reports, “The Marine Corps is full of honorable people who understand the rules of war,” and followed with “… those who violated the law, if they did, will be punished.”

This is one point where Bush cannot waiver in the follow-through. Not all of the details have come out from the Department of Defense – mainly the Marines’ take of how the event went down – but with the amount of evidence stacked up against the Marines in this case, people need to be punished severely.

If the US wants the Iraqi people to truly believe that the occupying troops are there to help and not hurt, they should treat the Haditha Massacre as if it happened on US soil, to US civilians.

I’ll support the US troops for their willingness to sacrifice their lives for the safety and sanctity of the US and its people. There is almost no act more brave than giving up your own free will to fight for whatever cause arises, in whatever trench assigned.

The reputation of not only our troops, but US citizens in general, is at risk of permanent damage. This means our safety is in question. The more support gained in the Middle East, the safter it will be for the US troops, and the sooner they will be able to return home to their families.

But these few bad apples, turned bad by whatever the cause, are putting the entire country at serious risk. President Bush needs to bring down an iron fist on the Marines who committed this heinous act. He needs to do so to make an example, and avoid any similar act from occurring.

How long is too long for our troops to occupy Iraq?

We may’ve just arrived at that point, even though it seems we’ve already been.

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Other helpful links:

• CLICK HERE FOR THE CNN ARTICLE ON HADITHA, COMPLETE WITH VIDEO INTERVIEWS AND UPDATED REPORTS
• http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13053200/