Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

They knew that should they become linked to the Phillies, they would be catapulted to the national stage, with their youth, talent, pluck, and an intense rivalry to keep them there.  Nats fans and employees were quick to attack the Phillies and their fans, hoping that the statements would provoke a reaction to villify their NL East counterparts.

An early 2012 series in Washington saw the “Take Back the Park” campaign come to fruition, as well as a Nationals series win, which they called a “statement,” despite the final game being played without a full umpiring crew and featuring two blown calls at third base, where the umpire was missing.

There’s been a hot sense of urgency when it comes to the Nationals worming their way into the Phillies’ crosshairs, and only after they’d established that they’d be good enough to do it.  Now, they’re the constant victims, whining with every wayward pitch and running to the commissioner just because one of our starters purposefully hit their star player in the spine with a pitch for no reason.

But still, Washington Post analysts have to sit on stools and discuss whether or not the Phillies and Nationals are really rivals.

“There’s a cockiness about [the Nationals] that almost makes the team you want to plunk.  For… for lack of a better term.”

–Mike Wise

“My friend… says that Nats-Phillies is one of the five best rivalries in sports right now, which I think is really absurd.  I don’t know if it’s one of the five best rivalries in D.C.”

–Jonathan Forsythe

“It all starts in your heart and in your mind.”

–LaVar Arrington

So, yeah, I mean, I guess we can all sit here and pretend like you guys didn’t watch this rivalry get instigated and manufactured by the Nationals, desperate for relevance.  I guess the commercials targeting Phillies fans specifically and the campaign to keep them out of the ballpark and the public quotes from all the former Phillies signed by the Nationals saying that the Nationals are better were all just normal, non-provocative things for a baseball team to do.

The Phillies were just minding their own business, winning the division a bunch of times, occasionally making headlines based on isolated atrocities happening in and around their stadium, and now they’re being forced to throw at Tyler Moore’s head.

For shame, Washington.

And while the motives behind the rivalry can get skewed depending on the bias in reporting them, I think we can all agree that the Nationals started it and are dumb – but also, that this is indisputably a rivalry, no matter what any man on a stool has to say about it.

I mean obviously people are lining up to talk to this guy. Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

Miami Marlins

If you’re the Marlins, what’s your biggest problem?

No money?  No fans?  No talent?  No credibility with employees, competitors, or the league?

No, the biggest threat to you is the fact that everybody just keeps finding out about these problems.  So why not do the comprehensive thing and, instead of tackling these issues with tough, analytic answers, fix all of them at once in a big, dumb, lazy plan?

On that note, the Marlins will no longer be speaking to the media.  Jeffrey Loria, who radio silenced himself in November, is now telling team president David Samson that he is not allowed to go on the radio or conduct interviews of any kind. Loria followed up the executive order by clapping his hands together, propping his feet up on his desk, and doing nothing else to solve any other problems.

Atlanta Braves

Is it this horse? Who knows!

The creeping madness of retirement has finally caught up to Chipper Jones, and he will in fact be attending the Braves’ spring training camp this year.

Jones plans to inspire young players, offer knowledgeable tutelage, and “see a man at a horse,” according to his Twitter feed, meaning he either thinks “@” means “about” or he misspelled “house” as “horse” or he plans to check out a man standing next to a horse and become awestruck at the wonder of people and horses and how many places there are on this planet to stand and how many of them are near horses or he’s going to do what the phrase “see a man about a horse” usually indicates and do something incredibly shifty and unmentionable.

Still waiting for his Braves spring training e-vite is John Rocker, who, if he is doing that, seems to think that the best way to do so is make more comments about Jews and Nazis and guns guns guns:

“Absolute certainties are a rare thing in this life, but one I think can be collectively agreed upon is the undeniable fact that the Holocaust would have never taken place had the Jewish citizenry of Hitler’s Germany had the right to bear arms and defended themselves with those arms.”

–John Rocker, aware that he must keep talking to stay alive in the media

While we’re discussing absolute certainties, John Rocker was certainly an embarrassment while he was playing baseball, and has worked hard to make sure anyone who ever employed him has deep, deep regrets about it.

Washington Nationals

Apparently, there’s some sort of question as to who the better team is as far Phillies-Nationals, and after putting the two teams next to each other, we can see that yes, each team has players at every position.  Comparing them beyond that, honestly, seems like a waste of time I SAID DON’T DO IT

“Stupid innings limit.” **kicks pebble** Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY Sports

Obviously, the Nationals are going to be at least 40 innings better.  They called Stephen Strasburg’s parents to let them know that they’ve upped little Stevie’s innings limit to 200 in 2013, rather than last season’s less than 160.  Mr. and Mrs. Strasburg responded by asking the Nationals not to call after 8:30 at night again because Stephen is in bed.

No word yet on how many innings the Nationals’ new closer Rafael Soriano will be limited to, but what does it fucking matter, the Nationals have all the players and money and somehow everyone on their roster is 22 years old.  So maybe it’s time to start a Take Back the Park campaign of our own, one in which we keep the Nationals’ baseball team from entering the stadium to prevent a situation where we have to play them.

Given how great the team is now, who wouldn’t rather play for the Seattle Mariners?  Michael Morse, of course.  ”That was one of the teams I was hoping for,” Morse said in response to his being traded from the widely considered best team in baseball to a team that everyone is waiting to announce is moving to Oklahoma City.

Having worked out a deal with Adam LaRoche, the Nats deemed Morse and his slugging percentage superfluous, and, refusing to trade him to somebody in-division like a bunch of babies with common sense, sent him across the country.

New York Mets

Jon Heyman is all over the Mets/Scott Hairston proceedings, and so far we can deduce that the Mets don’t want to pay Hairston much money, and that Hairston doesn’t seem to realize how little money he’s going to get.  Heyman specified in a follow up tweet that Hairston is “upbeat” pretty normally, so he could have just been thinking about a bird or something.

Meanwhile, the Mets are getting into the political game–a wise move for a franchise built on high moral standards.

Washington Nationals

It’s easy to understand why the Nationals feel like they need attention:  They’re a first place team with a 14th place attendance rating.

But they have a plan!  Every time they acquire someone with even faint attachment to the Phillies, they have them turn around and say something awful about their previous team.  Brad Lidge had his turn.  Jayson Werth won’t stop saying terrible things about the team that gave him a shot and got him a ring.  Nobody really realized when Eric Bruntlett was in the Nats clubhouse.

It seems as though not even manager Davey Jones is above being handled and groped by the greasy hands of Washington’s PR office, hollowed out, and replaced by the words of his petty organization, sharing these “personal” sentiments over the Phillies’ trade deadline moves.

“I have no sympathy for ‘em.  Shoot, I’m still missing three key players — I’m missing Willy Ramos, Ian Desmond and Jayson Werth. They’re not in my lineup. So they’ve fallen on some hard times over there, and they had a little fire sale today, which was fun for me to watch.”

–Davey Johnson

Nothing stings more than unsolicited non-sympathy, so Davey really knows where to hit us where it hurts.  The question is, how do we move on without the sympathy of Davey Jones?  How long have we not had it?  How much has it cost us, that we’ve relied on it all this time but it may not have been there?

Davey’s words carry weight.  Fortunately, however, we have words of our own.

Well Davey Johnson, I don’t have any sympathy for the wobbly old man-skin hanging from your gullet. So we’re even.

— Justin Klugh (@TBOHblog) August 2, 2012

And that’s the kind of mature, adult responses we will be defending ourselves with in this fun little rebuilding period.

New York Mets

Did you know that Grant Balfour once saved R.A. Dickey from drowning?  Yeah, apparently, he’d just lost out on a $810,000 signing bonus, thanks to a doctor reporting to the Rangers that Dickey was born without a right ulnar collateral ligament, and it was only going to net him $75,000.

Dickey, naturally, felt like swimming across the Missouri River would be just what the doctor ordered; not literally of course, because remember, a doctor had just ordered that he be paid way less money.

Whether a certain elbow-doctor lived in the house on the opposite shore is uncertain.

But Dickey went ahead and did it anyway, and to this day credits Balfour for being there to pull him out when he struggled.

“I’m not trying to be modest here, but he really saved himself.  He had done most of the work to get himself close to the shore. I’m just the guy who put my arm out to him.”

–Grant Balfour

The important thing is, everybody is okay, and the Mets are starting to succumb to their own Mets-ness.

Atlanta Braves

Ryan Dempster is saying he never turned his proposed trade to Atlanta; he just needed a little time think.  And even if he did then HOLY SHIT DOES ANYBODY CARE THIS MUCH ABOUT RYAN DEMPSTER I MEAN REALLY HE’S JUST ANOTHER FORMER CUB LOOKING TO JOIN A CONTENDER AT THE DEADLINE DO WE REALLY NEED TO KNOW THE EVERY THOUGHT AND ACTION OF ONE MAN SO FAR AFTER THE FACT.

Now let’s all just STOP TALKING ABOUT HIM and MOVE ON to concentrate on more important things, like whether or not Bryce Harper got home before curfew.

I just hope he’s okay.

Miami Marlins

The New York Times agrees; it’s time to give up on the Marlins.  The garish home run sculpture in their crisp new facility has become the colorful cape on a superhero who is really a homeless man on PCP running across a four lane highway.

What?

No, but it’s time.  They’re not much better than we are, and we don’t have a documentary film crew following us.  As the Times points out, Showtime’s The Franchise had a banner year with the 2011 Giants, who gave them a quirky, feel-good, fun-loving, redemptive, grating, irritating, overexposed cast of characters to choose from.

If that gutted, distant stare of the star player who doesn't play for the team anymore doesn't invoke hope, I don't know what will. Steve Mitchell-US PRESSWIRE

The last thing the Marlins need is a camera in the room as they sell off pieces of their recently-acquired dream team so that Jeffrey Loria can build a new fish-themed retirement community or whatever.  But there it will stay, because Showtime paid for an entire season, and something wildly entertaining is probably right around the corner for this fourth place mess.

Stay tuned for the next episode, when the team’s Facebook account gets hacked.