Washington Nationals

The strangest thing just happened to me.

A few minutes ago, I received a call from Nationals’ team President Stan Kasten. He said that Mike Rizzo was fired by the Lerner family, after being found walking aimlessly along the Beltway, wearing nothing but a Mets’ cap.

Kasten told me Rizzo could have survived the “naked” part, but wearing the oppositions’ colors was a deal breaker.

Thanksgiving Day has a very special meaning to me. Oh sure, there are family and friends and turkey and football. But that's a given.

However, in my life, Thanksgiving is all about baseball. It was on that day 24 years ago that I left the blizzards and barren trees, the yellow grass and the smoking chimneys of middle-America for Southern Florida and year-round Spring Training.

The good news is that Stephen Strasburg doesn’t need surgery on his injured knee . The bad news is that this is the second injury for the pitching phenom and it has the potential to linger for years.

Baseball season at the major league level has been over for a couple of weeks now but for fans in Arizona there have still been games played in the Arizona Fall League. All of that ends today with the conclusion of the Arizona Fall League Championship.

The Arizona Fall League Championship pits the two teams with the best records facing each other at Scottsdale Stadium. For the sixth consecutive year one of those teams is the Phoenix Desert Dogs.

If the Washington Nationals are planning on extending the contract of first baseman Adam Dunn, they had better do it soon because it looks as though the period of contractual sanity is over.

It didn’t take Jim Riggleman long to make his first decision as full-time manager of the Washington Nationals.

Starting shortstop Christian Guzman will be moved over to second base in 2010. The Nationals became concerned with Guzman’s range at short last year, and now coupled with off-season surgery on his throwing shoulder, it makes sense for the Nationals to move Guzman to second base.

Guzman’s move to second base presumably opens the door for Ian Desmond to take over the starting shortstop job for the Nationals in 2010.