The Washington Nationals’ blight of physical maladies finally reached total absurdity Tuesday afternoon when Stephen Strasburg, pitching in a downpour, was apparently attacked by the topical analgesic balm, Hot Stuff, that pitchers sometimes rub on their bodies to keep them loose, limber and ornery....

... when it rains very hard, goo can dilute and run. And you never know where it will travel.

On Tuesday afternoon, Strasburg allowed four runs in four innings in a 6-1 loss to San Diego, three of those runs in the first inning after three dawdling Nats allowed a simple popup to drop for a “double.” After the game, Manager Davey Johnson listed Strasburg’s hardships,....

“The Hot Stuff on Stras,” Johnson said. “I don’t know how it got where it got, but it wasn’t comfortable. . . . Somehow it got the wrong place.”

When asked for additional details, pitching coach Steve McCatty said, “I’m not gonna touch that.”

... the Chicago Cubs must contemplate the only solution that might restore the team to glory: Tear down Wrigley Field.

Destroy it. Annihilate it. Collapse it with the sort of charges that put the Sands Hotel out of its misery in Vegas. Implosion or explosion, get rid of it. That pile of quaintness has to go. Not merely the structure, but the ground on which it stands.

... it's a false heaven—the bases, trestles, ivy, wooden seats and bleachers, the towering center-field scoreboard—all of it must be ripped out and carried away like the holy artifacts were carried out of the temple in Jerusalem, heaped in a pile and burned. Then the ground itself must be salted, made barren, covered with a housing project, say, a Stalinist monolith, so never again will a shrine arise on that haunted block. As it was with Moses, the followers and fans, though they search, shall never find its bones....

The Cubs pre-Wrigley: 2,971 wins, 2,152 losses.

The Cubs since (before Monday): 7,382 wins, 7,703 losses....

What will happen when the Cubs walk away from Wrigley? They will forget, and as they forget, they will win. Think of 100 years in Wrigley as 40 years in the wilderness. It's time for a new generation to be born, untouched by the slavery of endless defeat.