Perhaps a Yankee or RedSox fan would disagree…but at this point in time it’s great to go a Nats game on a nice day when they field a team that simply has a decent chance to win….for my money it takes the edge off of living in a city that takes itself way too seriously.

I met Wilbon a few times and I once discussed with him which sport drives more readers to dead tree papers sports pages and he agreed baseball. 6 months of regular season versus 4, and, like the dead tree and internet, the games are “published” daily. These 162 unique events — and the accompanying features, columns, and news items that accompany those events — just provide more fodder.

Skins will remain #1 for fans and traffic, but the Nats will eventually be #2 and it won’t be close. It makes all the sense in the world to lead blogging sports coverage with the Nats, but I’ve been telling Agent Steiz this for years (intermittently).

And you could make similar arguments about the Caps and Wizards, which have (I’d think) pretty similar existing coverage as the Nats. Actually, there’s probably less Wizards coverage out there than there is for the Nats, who have four legit beat writers (Zuckerman, Goessling, Kilgore, McNally). And this is a basketball town much more than a baseball town historically, right?

I’m saving my entry on our 24-hour D.C. Divas network for later. Can’t reveal all our tricks just yet.

I don’t think we’ll abandon paying attention to reader interest to pursue some high-minded leading-versus-following concept…the point is that we can’t ignore the Nats. Incidentally, I’ve been linked to your blog many a time. It’s a damn good blog.

It’s about more than leading vs. following; it’s about reader interest. Our experience has shown that the interest in the Redskins is massively, overwhelmingly, obscenely, ridiculously greater than the interest in anything else, to the point where the most minute and inconsequential Redskins story will get more eyeballs than major developments concerning any other D.C. franchise.

So sure, in theory, whatever. But in practice, I’d still hitch my saddle to the 19th best Redskins blog than the center of the Nats universe.

Good questions. For one, this isn’t a statement on the Nats’ future success, just their future fandom. I have faith that the Nats can at least be competitive…a core of Ryan Zimmerman, Stephen Strasburg, Derek Norris and Bryce Harper (I’m assuming) is nothing to sneeze at. I don’t know if they’ll ever win a World Series, but at some point I do think they’ll be playing with the rest of the NL East. A relatively small amount of success, along with a little more longevity here, will be enough to at least increase the interest in the Nats.

As far as competing with the WaPo: First of all, we’ll have our own beat writers/columnists that readers can connect to, but I think you’re underestimating how powerful the blog network can become. Some bloggers are credentialed themselves, and some of them already have considerable followings. We can develop name brands like Boswell — and who’s to say we won’t link to Boswell himself? The key will be offering something different than Nats fans have seen before, and this blog network will be one part of that. We’ll also be an easy place to go for EVERYTHING Nats, not just that one columnist you like.

And even if they do enjoy success, I wonder if your site will be able to compete with WaPo given the established beat writers with credentialed access and connections with the sources on the Nats beat.

Not saying TBD can’t gain traction or build traffic with Nats coverage, but “center of the Nats online universe” might be tough to do going up against Boswell et al