Red Sox-Yankees was the highest-rated sporting event on television this past Sunday. Higher than basketball, higher than hockey (BIG surprise), higher than golf, swimming, skating, and whatever strongest man competition may have been on: Red Sox-Yankees was even higher than NASCAR, something that really DID surprise a lot of people.

One can only hope that some of those people watching were here in our neck of the woods. One can only hope that some of those people watching what was without a doubt THE most breathtaking, engaging, entertaining, jump-up-off-the-couch-and-bounce-around baseball of this young season were some of the same naysayers who have already leapt off the Nats' bandwagon three years into the great and wonderful DC Baseball Experiment (DCBE).

Don't get me wrong; the Nats ARE dreadful, and they will continue to be dreadful for at least a short while. But the idea that some of the people who played lip-service to getting a ball-team here only a few years ago are already turning their backs on a team that was treated, for all intents and purposes, like the red-headed step child of Major League Baseball by the rest of the owners for, literally, YEARS, is just laughable.

My advice to those people? Good riddance. See ya later. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Beat it. Your negativity and whiney sense of entitlement was bringin' the rest of us down anyway. Fun vacuums, all of 'ya.

Baseball, in it's best of moments, gives us what Red Sox-Yankees gave us all weekend: highs and lows, twists and turns, the good, the bad and the ugly. The Nats aren't there yet, to be sure, but it takes time, and frankly, taking that time is half the fun.

Baseball has always had a strange relationship with time unlike most other sports; it's something that seems to offend the sensibilities of some quasi-fans. Baseball has no time limit. Time-keepers and their clock-police have no place in baseball. Baseball ebbs and flows, taking sometimes strange, wandering, meandering turns, and generally goes along at whatever pace it wants.

Baseball seasons seem to take a lifetime, running from the end of one snow-season to the beginning of the next. No one person can take over a baseball game or transform an entire team by himself, so quick fixes are fool's gold and anybody who tries to tell you different is selling you magic beans.

The Nats just got to town, and people are already harping on the fact that they're not world-beaters yet. Give 'em a chance to catch their breath, to sink some roots, to get just a little bit familiar with their surroundings. Cripes, they haven't even moved into their own house yet!

Manny will coach these guys up and the ones that he can't will go somewhere else. Stan Kasten knows what he's doing and will go about doing it as well as he knows how, which is very. Jim Bowden may or may not be a baseball savant, but at least he's entertaining and his phone is always on. The Lerners aren't running out of town or out of money anytime soon, so the team is in good hands. This thing'll get turned around sooner rather than later. Promise.