So much for any lingering bad blood between the Nats and Nelson Figueroa. The Mets designated Figueroa for assignment before tonight's game, removing him from the roster. New York also designated reliever Jorge Sosa and placed outfielder Angel Pagan on the DL. Replacing them on the roster are right-hander Claudio Vargas (the ex-Expo/Nat will start tomorrow night), reliever Matt Wise and infielder Fernando Tatis.

As for the controversy over the Figueroa "softball girls" comment, here's a rundown of everything...

During the third inning of last night's game, with Lastings Milledge at the plate, Elijah Dukes started a chant going in the Nats dugout: "Let's go Mill-edge! Clap-clap--clap-clap-clap!" Several teammates joined in, then did the same thing when Austin Kearns came to the plate next. Figueroa didn't like it and made a mocking "clap" motion toward the dugout at the end of the inning, then trashed the Nats after the game.

"They were cheerleading in the dugout like a bunch of softball girls," he said. "I'm a professional just like anybody else. I take huge offense to that. If that's what a last-place team needs to do to fire themselves up, so be it. They could show a little more class, a little more professionalism now that they won tonight, but in the long run, they're still who they are."

Not much public reaction from the Nats today. Manny Acta tried to downplay the incident before a throng of New York reporters who were looking for a story.

"I don't have any reaction to it," Acta said. "I mean, they weren't yelling names or anything like that. All they are [doing is] cheering their own guys. You don't see it every day in the big leagues, but I don't think they were doing anything mean."

Privately, several Nats players said they weren't real keen on the chant and would have preferred Dukes didn't start it. But they also felt Figueroa (a guy who spent the last three years out of the big leagues and was getting pounded by the Nats in the game) had no reason to make a big deal out of it and came across looking worse.

So there you have it. Let's get back to baseball...