Nats on Steroids?

There have been news reports that a steroids dealer in Florida has claimed to sell performance-enhancing drugs to one or a number of Nationals players (and to members of the Washington Capitols hockey team). It begs the question, if players for the Nats are on steroids, how bad would they be without them?

Right now, the Nats are by far the worse team in National baseball. So far this season they have won 13 games and lost 32. That means they have won fewer than 29 percent of their games so far. To give you some perspective, the next worse team is the Colorado Rockies. They have won 40 percent of their games. The Nats are more than 10 perentage points behind the second worse team.

I love that we now have baseball in DC, but how long will it last if this is the quality of a team they are overcharging to see?

Hump Day Art--Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge

This is a new feature on Running With Blue Sponge called Hump Day Art, which will feature a piece of art each Wednesday. I’ve always wanted to learn more about art, and I figured this might be a good way to do that.

Today’s painting is an oil on canvas called “Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge,” which was painted by Mary Cassatt in 1879. Cassatt was an American painter born in 1844 and died in 1926. She created a series of theater scenes in the late 1870s, displaying an interest in city nightlife shared by many of the Impressionists. This work, showing a woman (said to be her sister, Lydia) seated in front of a mirror with the balconies of the Paris Opera House reflected behind her, demonstrates the influence of Cassatt’s friend, Edgar Degas, particularly to the attention paid to the effects of the artificial lighting on the flesh tones.

I saw the painting in the European gallery of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The photo was taken with my iPhone.