"Paint the town red," this is not.

The exterior of the large red press box behind home plate at Nationals Park was re-painted blue during the team's current road trip, dramatically altering the look of the ballpark's interior.

The two-level Shirley Povich Media Center was a dominant structure inside the ballpark, the natural result of its sharp contrast with the blue seats that ring the park. It made the pressbox feel larger than it actually was and consequently made it a center of visual attention.

Now two shades of blue, the structure is much sleeker and actually echoes the two-toned pattern of the rows of seats in the upper deck. Though the red was distinctive, the new look successfully blends the press box with the rest of the stadium rather than draw attention to it.

This is the second major cosmetic change to Nationals Park the team has rolled out this month. Two weeks ago the team installed the last names of 17 Hall-of-Famers who played for the Expos, Senators, and Grays along the 100-level facade.

The photos below were taken mid-day Sunday. The broadcast outlets' signage will presumably be re-installed prior to Monday evening's game against the Chicago Cubs.

Ian Koski is apparently also Nationals Daily News' chief architectural critic.

      

Nationals President Stan Kasten -- visibly excited about the signing of first-round pick Bryce Harper just minutes earlier -- surprised General Manager Mike Rizzo during a late-night press conference at Nationals Park with a congratulatory whipped-cream pie to the face.

As the presser began to wind down, Kasten, seated next to Rizzo at the conference table, stood up and said "there is one more thing we do have to do when we celebrate victories here." Pulling the plate from underneath the table, he smacked it square into Rizzo's face.

Shocked and amused reporters looked on as Rizzo tried to clean himself off. Rizzo said he was glad it was whipped-cream and not the traditional shaving cream, which tends to burn the eyes. Badly.

Team staff then handed Rizzo the silver Elvis wig made famous in the Nationals' post-win tradition honoring the game's most valuable player. He only donned the wig for a second before taking it off to continue cleaning the whipped cream from his head and shirt.

Rizzo vowed retribution.

CSN Washington has the video.

      

The Nationals have signed their fourth-round pick, 18-year-old right-handed pitcher A.J. Cole.

The 6-foot-5 Cole reportedly throws a 94-mph fastball and had committed to the University of Miami for the fall 2010 semester. His signing with the Nationals was announced by the club just minutes ago.

Though projected to be taken in the first round -- as high as 16th overall -- in the 2010 First-Year Player Draft, he fell to the fourth round and was selected by the Nationals with the 119th overall pick.

Cole was 6-0 in his senior season at Oviedo High School, near Orlando. He had a .93 ERA with 84 strikeouts in 60.33 innings of work.

      

Four demonstrators protesting Arizona's controversial immigration law jumped onto the field during the fifth inning of Sunday's Nationals-Diamondbacks game to urge Major League Baseball to move the 2012 All-Star Game.

With the Diamondbacks on the field, a man wearing a red "Legalize Arizona" t-shirt ran onto the field from the third-base side and ran into left-center field. He stood still for a few seconds until security guards began to give chase, at which point a woman ran onto the field from the right-field line.

The two met up near the right-center field wall, giving each other a two-handed high-five before running off in separate directions. The distraction was enough to allow two more women to run onto the field and attempt to unfurl a banner in shallow right-centerfield while the first two were being apprehended.

A security guard raced over and prevented the banner from being fully opened, grabbing it and eventually falling to the ground before the two women were subsequently nabbed. As they were led off the field through the Nationals' bullpen, several attendees in the first row of seats in right-center field attempted to roll out another banner over the out-of-town scoreboard. It was upside-down, but ushers prevented it from being unfurled.

The Diamondbacks players on the field were largely unfazed by the protest. The incident lasted about three minutes before play resumed.

The demonstrators were said to be part of a group of about three dozen who staged a demonstration and handed out leaflets outside Nationals Park earlier on Sunday. The Associated Press is reporting that group attempted to unfurl a banner that read "Bud Selig Move All Star Game No SB 1070" from the top of one of the Nationals Park parking garages.

Photos by Ian Koski/Daily News

      

Admittedly opening us up to inevitable attacks from the Expos haters among us, the return of Wallpaper Wednesday marks last night's ceremony honoring Expos legend Andre Dawson.

Flanked by former teammate Gary Carter and Nationals President Stan Kasten, a teary Dawson thanked the crowd for their applause before Tuesday's game.

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Thank you for all your emails wondering where Wallpaper Wednesday had gone! We're so glad you like the new feature. Unfortunately work responsibilities have limited the time I've been able to put into Nationals coverage the last few weeks (and will continue to through Primary Day on September 14th), but I'll do my best to continue to roll out new wallpaper through the end of the season.

      

In one of the most prominent acknowledgments of the history of D.C. baseball and perhaps the first in-stadium recognition of the franchise's history in Montreal, the Nationals have mounted the names of Washington and Montreal baseball greats to the 100-level facade of Nationals Park behind home plate.

The display will make its debut at Tuesday's Nationals-Marlins game, before which the team will honor Expos legend Andre Dawson for his induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Eighteen names ring the facade, with room for about eight more.

From the Expos, Gary Carter and Andre Dawson will have the first positions on the first base side at section 126.

The Homestead Grays are then represented left to right by Cool Papa Bell, Ray Brown, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Cumberland Posey, and Jud Wilson.

The Washington Senators are then represented by Joe Cronin, Rick Ferrell, Goose Goslin, Clark Griffith, Bucky Harris, Walter Johnson, Harmon Killebrew, Heinie Manush, Sam Rice, and Early Wynn.

The Nationals noted that it consulted with the National Baseball Hall of Fame in selecting the players to be honored in the park.

"The first criteria was that the player had to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame," the team said in a statement. "The second criteria was that the player had to be associated with the Montreal Expos, Homestead Grays, Washington Senators or Washington Nationals. Lastly, the player had to have had significant years with those teams."
 

      

It's been nine months since I first wrote about a new local news website for Washington, D.C. being planned by Albritton Communications (of Politico fame). At the time I referred to the unnamed site as "PostKiller.com," borrowing the clever if overly ambitious moniker coined in an article in City Paper.

That ambitious new website launched early this morning.

It has a real name now, "TBD," and it's live at TBD.com and on cable as TBD TV (formerly NewsChannel 8). That's not a placeholder -- the venture is named "TBD," as in the acronym for the ambiguous and forward-looking "To Be Determined." It is deliberately not like what a news organization usually sounds like.

Buzz about the new site has grown over the last few months thanks to liberal use of Twitter in promoting the hiring of the site's young editorial staff and its partnerships with local 129 blogs and sites... including Nationals Daily News.

Because TBD.com will have a fairly spartan reporting staff of 15, the blog network is expected to play a significant role in the site's editorial delivery. The other major component is simple news aggregation, much like we do on our home page with Nationals stories.

There's a lot of TBD Kool-Aid being sipped around town right now -- a natural byproduct of this town's obsession with the news industry and predilection for prediction. There are many that believe TBD is the closest thing to the shape of the future of news... the last hope for a dying news industry.

We wouldn't go that far (Kool-Aid's not really our thing), but we are definitely excited about TBD's potential and agreed to join its community network early on in the recruitment process.

We believe strongly in the web's potential as a transformative news platform and, as TBD General Manager Jim Brady said yesterday in a preview for some of the participating blogs, that the Internet would probably never be utilized to its full potential if news organizations were perpetually trying to adapt its material to it instead of the other way around. TBD starts with a clean slate, able to present the news in the new way its team of bright young journalists think is best. 

TBD doesn't live up to the "Post Killer" moniker, and they're ok with that. The site's brass doesn't claim TBD will be provide comprehensive original reporting, which is good because two sports reporters and four or five news reporters can't possibly cover this town.

There's one general assignment reporter, one fact-checker, one reporter covering a handful of neighborhoods in downtown DC (if you live in Eastern Market you're out of luck), one reporter covering Arlington (but not Alexandria or Fairfax) and one reporter covering Silver Spring and Bethesda (but not Prince George's County).

There are two reporters and a columnist covering sports, but all filed stories from Ashburn yesterday.

We worry that the light sports staff will be compelled to focus exclusively on the Redskins and neglect the city's other sports franchises (cough, cough), but it's hard to fault a fledgling news operation for investing most of its energy in what is clearly the biggest traffic draw. But what gets lost in that decision is not just coverage of the Nationals, but the opportunity to excel in an area where the Post has under-delivered.

That's not a shot at the Post or its Nationals writer, Adam Kilgore, by any means. But the paper is still governed by available column-inches and the dogmas of Redskins lore. 

Our interest in TBD isn't that it somehow hurts the Post, but rather that it restores some of the competition lost when things started to get wiggy at the Washington Times. A Post on its toes is a better newspaper.

The blog network is designed to compensate for TBD's coverage gaps. 

By partnering with TBD, many of the stories and blog posts written by Daily News staff will appear on TBD.com. Some of them will eventually lead on TBD.com. You'll likely see some of our photos there too and lest you fear that in doing so TBD will make our own site obselete, note that when you click on one of our stories there, you'll come right back here to NationalsDailyNews.com.

Daily News readers probably won't notice anything different around here, but we're optimistic that the additional exposure will help our site continue to grow.

      

Scott Olsen will make his first rehab start with Double-A Hagerstown on Saturday night against the Rome Braves.

Olsen last pitched for the Nationals on May 21 -- a game he exited early because of inflammation in his pitching arm. An MRI came back negative, but Olsen was put on the disabled list to give his arm time to heal.

He was 2-2 with a 3.77 ERA in eight starts prior to going on the DL.

      

Verizon's FiOS service will begin carrying MASN2's HD channel in the DC metro area starting this Friday, July 16, according to a statement released by MASN a few minutes ago. At least through the end of baseball season, MASN2 HD will be on channel 501.

      

Josh Willingham and Matt Capps joined more than 100 volunteers from the USO to pack 5,174 backpacks with school supplies at an event at Nationals Park this morning.

"It's going to make a lot of kids happy, making those backpacks for them," Willingham said. "It's also encouraging to see all the volunteers up there.  They didn't have to be there, but they came here to do that so that's encouraging."

The two-hour "Care Package Party" was part of "A Salute to the Troops" day at Nationals Park Sunday. It was sponsored by the Nationals, Microsoft and the USO.

"Building these at Nationals Park is a huge deal," USO of Metropolitan Washington President Elaine Rogers said. "Interacting with the players and the team, and then we have wounded warriors coming in... it's a huge day for our troops and having all these folks come together to support the USO and the troops."

Below are several photos from this morning's event: