(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

With the Nationals hosting the New York Mets for a long four-game series last weekend, New York’s media crew had to watch the orange and blue drop three games. At least the Mets’ sad performances left the broadcast team on New York sports radio station WFAN with plenty of time to ruminate over Nationals Park’s in-game entertainment.

While visiting family in New York this weekend, I briefly tuned into the Fan’s broadcast of Friday night’s game just in time to catch an assessment of the Racing Presidents. According to WFAN’s Josh Lewin, the race is “not funny anymore. It’s not a race. It’s a skit.”

Sensing an oncoming verbal onslaught against the beloved mascots, I scrambled for my phone to record the rest of the assessment as Lewin wondered why the Presidents couldn’t behave more like the Famous Racing Sausages in Milwaukee. There, anonymous friends of the team, fans, and even the occasional ballplayer will don one of five tube-meat costumes and engage in an unscripted foot race at Brewers’ home games. Italian Sausage is firmly at the top of this year’s standings.

Lewin’s broadcast partner, Howie Rose, chimed in before a call of Anthony Rendon’s fourth-inning at bat against Mets ace Matt Harvey. Here’s how Rose recapped the Presidents Races during Friday’s doubleheader:

The great Long Islander out of Oyster Bay, Theodore Roosevelt. They finally let him win. He won the [Friday afternoon] opener here. And then they pull some chicanery where four presidents just got tangled up. They all got knocked down by one interloper or another and chubby old William Howard Taft rolled to victory. It’s an outrage.

Teddy, for the record, recorded his first win last year. [Editor’s note: And things have never been the same since.]

I’ve never been to Milwaukee’s Miller Park to see Polish Sausage and Hot Dog in action. But Nats fans may recall Abe, George, Tom, and Teddy’s challenges to them in the past and how they’ve dealt with the Racing Sausages’ unauthorized cousins, the Un-Racing Sausages. Take this 2009 event, which we’re sure Abe won fair and square and without any predetermined outcome when “Not-wurst,” “Choriz-no,” and their sausage-y friends accidentally tripped.

And, hey, it’s not like our team is represented by most risible mascot in all of Major League Baseball.

Mr. Met (Wikimedia Commons)