Two underfunded and underperforming D.C.-based operations, the Washington Nationals and the National Park Service, showed their asses on social media this week.
The Nats’ Twitter team got the ball rolling with a video that attempted to be ha-ha funny by asking players and a broadcaster to name their “favorite store on the National Mall.” This is part of the cancer spreading across sports social media staffs, where lots of time and alleged creativity is spent making everybody look and feel dumb. The “joke” is … there are no stores at the National Mall! Gotcha! It’s a national park, not a retail outpost! Get it?
“National Mall, where’s that?” says shortstop C.J. Abrams.
“The only one I’ve spent any time at is the Verizon Store,” says a guy who looks kinda like Mitchell Parker.
Dan Kolko, longtime member of the broadcast team now in his first year as the play-by-play guy, says, “Are there stores there?” Kolko was born and raised in Silver Spring, Md., just on the other side of the D.C. border, and began covering the team professionally in 2012, so he knows what the damn Mall is.
And so on. Maybe some funny and enlightening morsel was accidentally left on the cutting room floor, but the posted clip shows nothing but one ambushed Nat after another appearing understandably flummoxed by the canned bit, and incites nothing but viewer uncoziness.
Then whatever NPS staffer in charge of the official Twitter account of the National Mall followed up the Nats’ tomfoolery with a paternalistic “well actually” post counseling that despite its name, the federally owned and world famous downtown greenspace isn’t actually a shopping mall, and miraculously managed to come away looking as foolish as the poor players who got roped into participating.
“The National Mall embraces the old idea: a public place for relaxation & recreation,” the post reads. “Now home to iconic memorials and amazing stories of American history, the National Mall here in Washington, D.C. is also known as ‘America's Front Yard.’"
Both groups have more important matters at hand. After siccing Elon Musk on the NPS immediately upon taking office, Trump proposed slashing the agency’s budget 35 percent for 2026. And as for the National Mall being a place of “relaxation and recreation,” why do I see heavily armed National Guardsmen walking around whenever I go past nowadays? If this is indeed “our” front yard, get the guys with guns off my lawn! And speaking of lawns, maybe you mofos should get back to mowing all the grass alongside Rock Creek Parkway like the NPS always did under every previous administration? The place looks like a jungle these days!
As for the Nats, they’ve got the second-lowest payroll in the National League according to Spotrac, and are playing like it, with a 10-13 overall record and the MLB’s worst home record at 2-8. How about winning some damn games first, then taking in local color.
If anything, the Nats' unfortunate Mall gag showed me that D.C. is at least as unfamiliar with the Nats roster as the Nats roster is with D.C. There are no chyrons in the gag video to tell viewers who’s talking, and Abrams and Kolko were the only guys I could name without help. But it’s not baseball season in my household yet. So I sent the clip to my buddy Ed, the biggest Nats fan I know, and asked for help. He could only come up with Drew Millas and Daylen Lile, and he was shaky on Millas.
“That’s terrible,” Ed said, “because I watch ‘em every night.”
