Sunday in the Park, with Owl

• Cubs: 11
• Nationals: 3
• Sold: 5 cases beer/7 cases water/24 nut, Crackerjack

The Nationals try to clutter up their ballpark with as many corporate sponsors' promotional tables, branded confections, t-shirt giveaways (for credit card signup, of course), New Orleans jazz bands, and other distractions as possible. It's all bread and circus there, to draw people to the park who might not care one whit about baseball. Here's something that actually was compelling -- a guy from an environmental advocacy group holding a large owl:

The bird got plenty of attention, and looked pretty suspicious of the whole thing, and probably didn't care at all about the game either. I was with him on that point: the park was well-attended with people baking in the sun and willing to shell out four bucks for the treated tap water Coca-Cola mineralizes and calls 'Dasani.' Dumped almost twice as much of that as I did of the frothy stuff, and ended up with another pleasant surprise of an afternoon. It all kept me so busy I didn't look up to the scoreboard until late in the 6th and saw that it was another Nubs drubbing: 11-2.