Carpenter Secure Again... For Now

"Someone asked me why doing it for a fourth year (in 2009) would be so important to me. Well, you go to high school for four years and you graduate and you go to college for four years and you graduate. I'd like to be back for my senior year, because I think the Nationals are going to be a better team next year, a much better team, and I'm excited about having the chance to see it and call those games."

And even as the Nats face the prospect of finishing with the worst record in baseball, despite their current mini-spurt, Carpenter also remains excited about going to the park every night to do the games, as depressing as many of them eventually turn out.

Both on and off the air, he remains an eternal optimist. Some of his critics might also say he's an unabashed homer, and both he and Sutton clearly would be wise to stop referring to the team as "we," a frequent occurrence during the game telecasts. But Carpenter makes no excuses for what he would prefer to describe as his upbeat philosophy of play-by-play broadcasting.

"There's no doubt that this season has reminded me how easy I had it in St. Louis," said Carpenter, who handled Cardinals game for a number of years. "We were in the (pennant) race virtually every year, we were contending more often than not, and if we weren't, then (Mark) McGwire was hitting home runs, we had thousands of fans in the park and watching the games.

"The feedback I'm getting this year is that we've done a good job of staying positive despite all the losing. The easiest thing to do would be to kill these guys every night. I had the manager of one team with a better record than we have come up to me before a game and say 'we've got broadcasters working for us who are just destroying us every night, and it's really hurting the ball club.' I'm not interested in doing that."

Carpenter said he comes to the park trying to look at every game as a "new experience, when you might even see something you've never seen before. We hope something good happens, and last weekend (a three-game sweep of the reeling Reds) it finally did.

"Back in 1997, I was working with Ozzie Smith (the Cardinals Hall of Fame shortstop), and after one of our first games, he pulled off the headset and said to me 'Partner, the game sure looks easy from up here.' That's something I've tried to never forget. When things are going bad, it's definitely a lot harder being down on the field.

"I hear some of these talk show guys around the country being so critical of the players, but really, they have no idea what it's like down there. So Don and I choose not to do that, and I think that's a good philosophy to broadcast by."

For the time being, Nationals management apparently feels the same way, at least for another year anyway. Good move on their part, though longer would be even better.

E-Mail of the Week

Lt. Col. Bill Reyes (U.S. Marine Corps) -- Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Like many native Washingtonians, I have grown up with Phil Wood going back to the days of his sports call-in show on WTOP Radio. He is a local treasure. Baseball is woefully under-reported/represented on the various local media and the cancellation of his show just exacerbates the situation, even if it is so predictable. (As a die-hard Redskins fan, Dan Snyder is making it tough to love our team, but as Seinfeld says, you root for the jerseys!) I hated to hear that he bought WTEM, although if he just allows the irrepressible drive-time "The Sports Reporters" to stay intact, I will be happy. Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin are our superior version of WFAN's "Mike and the Mad Dog" show. I write to you because I know you will express the vox populi most accurately.