Bryce Harper, for all of his brash reputation, has been remarkably humble and respectful when asked about playing in Citzens Bank Park . He has handled it all as if he has been waiting all his life for these moments, as if he has been practicing them on some back field, running a video in his mind of what it might be like one day.

Harper told the press in Philadelphia all about the privilege of playing against guys he respected as a kid growing up, about how much he looked up to Cliff Lee, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard for the Championships they have won. There was never a negative word, though there is no shortage of opportunities to take offense in Philadelphia.

Harper hears it from the fans in right field and any other place he happens to be on the diamond. Intrepid Seamheads reporter, Rebecca Hall, was at the Cole Hamels game last night. When Harper’s bat splintered and left an ugly shard, the bat boy carried it back to the dugout to jeers from Philly fans of, “take it back and stick it in Harper.” Ms. Hall reported the comment as one of the kinder of the barbs that were constant and ugly through out the game.

Yet Bryce Harper has reacted to the boos and catcalls the way he did to Cole Hamels, in a very old school way. He has used his bat and his baseball IQ to send a message. When Harper was drilled in the kidneys by Hamels, he was 0-for-7 in two games against the Phillies. Since the incident he has gone 7-for-22 and the hits have been timely ones that have helped turn the tide.

It is not only the Phillies. There is something very old school about the way that Bryce Harper plays the game against everyone. There is the hustle that any one can see and the love of the game that just oozes from his every pore. Two nights ago, with the Phillies ahead 1-0, Harper came to bat against Roy Halladay with runners on first and second. There was no one out; it was a pivotal moment in the game and a tough spot for a 19-year old rookie.

Harper took a pitch that was an inch or so up and off the plate and laced it into the gap for a triple the way Yogi used to do it. Any hitting coach seeing Harper’s pitch selection would have winced until he saw the ball one-hopping the right center field wall, the two base runners coming in to score and Harper pumping for all his might for third base. Harper smiled at third base coach Bo Porter, but there was nothing brash or disrespectful, just the joy of delivering in the clutch. Behind the kid Halladay picked up the rosin back and threw it to the ground in disgust.

Harper’s triple ignited a rally and the Nationals went on to beat the Philly ace by a 5-2 margin. It was exactly why Harper was brought up from the minors far earlier than the Nationals would have liked. They badly needed offense and they have gotten that an more.

The decision will cost Washington’s owners millions of dollars, but there are few who will second guess the call. His slash line is only .267/.350/.467, but the eleven extra-base hits–three of them triples–have been timely.

In the rematch of Hamels versus “the Kid,” most outlets are giving the nod to Hamels. But batting second in the lineup in both games, he has gone 3-for-6 with a double, a steal, a walk and, of course, a hit by pitch. He has been on base five of the eight times he has come to bat against Hamels. Nellie Fox could not have done better. If the Nationals had only another Bryce Harper or two in the lineup they would have prevailed.

And in that sense Harper has been worth the money. He has not only sparked the offense, but also added interest in the team. The ink has flowed as baseball scribes every where have followed the exploits of a 19-year old kid who has done little to disappoint.

It is always early in the season until it is too late to have seen what was coming. Bryce Harper may yet lose his way against big league pitching. The league may adjust and the kid may not handle it as well as many would hope. But for now the hype has not been misplaced. I was a skeptic but had my conversion moment, not on the road to Damascus, but at Nationals Park when Harper stole home against the hated Phillies.

The kid taught us all a huge lesson. Don’t get mad, get even. And that is where Washington has gone so far this season against the rivals from the City of Brotherly Love. Quiet as Quakers, they have just won four of six against the Phillies. And that is the bottom line in baseball. It is about winning and that is where the Kid from the Old School has been worth every penny.

On Sunday afternoon, it looked at first as if the Orioles might be the only real contender. After two wins they were confident in attacking Stephen Strasburg’s fastball and jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead. Nats fans had imagined their golden-armed stopper as the answer to losses Friday and Saturday, to a three-game losing streak. But Sunday looked like a replay of Saturday’s game. Yet the competitor in Strasburg realized that a beautiful weekend was about to go quietly into that good night without even a struggle. He came to bat in the third with grim purpose and singled to lead off the inning, igniting a rally that purchased a sliver of pride for the flailing Nationals who knotted the score at 3-3.

The tired arm was gone, the mojo was back. Strasburg struck out four of the next six batters for perfect fourth and fifth innings. Jesus Flores kept the momentum going in the fourth with a two-out homer to put Washington ahead 4-3, and the Strasburg did the unheard of. He went back-to-back, following the Flores shot with his first major league home run to give the Nationals a 5-3 lead. From there, the Nationals kept rolling and settled for a face-saving 9-3 win against the Orioles.

Since 2005, neither the Orioles nor the Nationals have been taken seriously as contenders. They play in the toughest divisions in the game. But when play began Friday night, the Orioles led the AL East and the Nationals were a mere half-game back in the NL East. No one is convinced that either the Orioles or Nationals have a right to be mentioned as serious threats to the Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox or Braves. But whether you see the budding Orioles club or the talented young Nationals as the team most on the path to greatness, the possibility of a Parkway World Series, of a championship baseball contest that never leaves the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, has gained something of a toehold in reality.

However potent you think the possibilities, the two teams rely on very different strengths. One has the best rotation in the game and the other a home run attack to make Earl Weaver proud. Yet both teams have been adept at winning games with climactic late-inning drama. The Baltimore bullpen was a disaster last season, but this year it is the reason the team survives to win in the those extra-inning affairs, as happened Friday night when the Orioles prevailed over the Nationals to win 2-1 in 11 innings.

Dan Duquette has made what seemed like small changes to the Orioles pitching staff, bringing in Matt Lindstrom and Darren O’Day in to support Jim Johnson. Though Lindstrom is on the DL, the group is still every bit as good for Baltimore as Tyler Clippard, Henry Rodriguez and Drew Storen were envisioned to be for Washington.

Less surprising, but equally notable, has been the strength of the Orioles lineup. The Orioles have no regular leadoff hitter. There is no Brian Roberts, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The lineup leads the American League in home runs on the strength of the four hitters that follow: J.J. Hardy, Nick Markakis, Adam Jones and Matt Wieters. Those four Orioles are truly coming into their own and have almost as many long balls – 39 – as the Nationals’ 40 as a team.

The player who will do the most to put Baltimore in post season play is Jones. He is no 19-year old phenom and among center fielders he is neither Matt Kemp nor Josh Hamilton. But he is close and is on a pace to hit more than 50 home runs. While many may project similar feats for Bryce Harper, Jones is arriving right now, in real time.

The Nationals, by contrast, are all about pitching, and most emphatically – at least for now – their starting pitching. Strasburg and Gio Gonzalez have no parallels at the northern nexus of Route 295. Dylan Bundy may change that, but for now that is the largest disparity between the two teams.

Then there is the Aflac advantage. The simple truth is that injury has done as much as anything to define the 2012 Nationals. Without Wilson Ramos, Jayson Werth, Michael Morse and Storen, the Nationals take on the Orioles with a significant handicap. Strasburg reported tightness in his pitching arm and left the Sunday game after five innings. When will this madness end?

This pipe dream may need time to mature. And a rubber chicken Juju that has some teeth to it would certainly help. So get you gone, ghost of Nick Johnson, out dammed haint of John Patterson, we have playoffs to make, a Parkway World Series of which to dream. These games are but a hint of what is yet to come.

Bob was kind enough to speak to Seamheads about the start of his career in Washington, DC as the first television announcer for the Washington Nationals in 1947, where he continued until 1961 before joining Joe Garagiola at NBC for the Game of the Week in the 1960′s. He is the guest for this Friday’s “Outta the Parkway” show on the Seamheads Podcast Network. Call in to hear the interview live at 347-945-7172 or use the link after the fact to listen to an archived version of the show.

Q. You got your start in Broadcasting at Duke University before coming to Washington, could you tell us what that was like?

Bob Wolff. There were many lucky breaks, but I tried to make them come true. I went to Duke University to become a baseball player, but I broke my ankle down there–my spikes got caught in the dirt–and while I was sidelined the local CBS station asked me to sit in and they would ask me questions about my team mates.  They liked my work and asked me to join their crew. I talked to the Duke baseball coach and told him that I wanted to get to the majors some day and he said, ‘this may be the opportunity.” So I decided to try that. I did basketball games as well and I would get back home from doing the games around midnight; I would study until three in the morning and then get up and go to class around 7:30. But I loved it and that was my start.

World War II brought me to Washington. I was commissioned into the Navy and went out with the Seabees and was stationed in the Solomon Islands as a supply officer. I found that the rules they had taught me were more applicable to a ship than to a station on that island so I wrote my own rules. I put it all in book form with pictures and sent it back to the Navy in Washington. I was very lucky that they decided to publish my book and asked me to fly back to Washington to work in training and that is how I got to Washington.

I decided at the end of the war to go back into broadcasting and I took by application with all the clippings from what I had done with Duke for CBS around to the local news affiliates and I took a job with the Washington Post. Then I heard there was a new television station–WTTG–where they were doing the Washington Senators baseball games. From there I have been getting lucky breaks all along the way.

Q. That was in 1947 and it was the very beginnings of television. You were a pioneer in what was a new medium at the time. Arch McDonald was the radio announcer. Can you tell us what it was like? What your relationship was with McDonald?

Bob Wolff. Arch was very well entrenched when I arrived and I did some radio with him when I first arrived. Like you say, television was brand new and while I did some radio side-by-side with Arch McDonald at the beginning, that did not last very long. I was the only television announcer. Not only did I do the play-by-play, but I did a 15-minute pregame show with interviews and the post-game 15 minute show. And I had my own nightly show on TV so I was busy as a solo man during those years and never again did I work with Arch McDonald. Eventually we got the same sponsor: Chesterfield King Cigarettes, and I would do the first three innings on TV and the last three innings and then in the middle I would go over and do three innings on radio while Arch did the TV. So our paths kept crossing, but we never really worked together. I guess it would have been more fun had we because he was an excellent announcer and he is in the Hall of Fame with me.

Q. Did you work with Clark Griffith, the Old Fox, and the owner of the Senators back then?

 Bob Wolff. I loved Clark Griffith. Washington was run by Clark Griffith and the Griffith family, a large family, and every day he was there early in the morning running the ball club. At noon everything would stop and he brought in the many children–he had adopted many children–and they sat around this large table, like a conference table, and they had lunch. They after that he went over and had his pinochle game and he played that for two or three hours. The game might include announcers, sign painters, the people who did the score board, insurance men, anyone who wanted to keep their contracts going.  Every once in a while someone would show up who wanted to become part of the group, to burrow in. But after the pinochle game, Mr. Griffith would go up to his office and would turn on the radio or TV for the Lone Ranger. Because he came from the Old West, he wanted to re-live all those memories through that show. And then after that he went out to the ball game. There he was uncanny. He was the best scout the Senators had. He would watch the other teams, he brought in players to look at and he guided the fortunes of the team without any real money at stake. It was a team that ran on a shoe string and they did a remarkable job considering that.

Q. You described Griffith in an earlier discussion as “not penurious but poor.” Griffith did not have the money to support a top notch organization in the post-war era.  Is that what you meant by that?

Bob Wolff. They had enough money for one or two stars in those days. Ball players at the time were making six, seven or eight thousand dollars a year. They had to have other jobs after the baseball season. Even the big home run hitters were making something like $20,000 a year. They fielded excellent teams, but they could not afford nine really excellent players. The other guys were good, but not enough great ones to win a pennant.

The attraction to me was one, I was a major league broadcaster and not only did I watch the Washington Nationals, but we got to see Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris, all these great stars, people like Luke Appling, Satchel Paige, they were great stars and the amazing thing about Washington is that it is ideal for a broadcaster who tries to be impartial like me because there is as much crowd roar if not more for Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago–all of those other teams–because of Washington’s transient population. There was as much crowd noise for them as for the Nationals most of the time.

So I played up the “artistry” of the game. “Look at that Ted Williams, what a ballplayer, he’s worth coming out to see folks.” It’s like a broadway show. You don’t have to root for who wins or loses, you see ideal artistry in sports. So it never quite concerned me that the Senators never quite won the big ones.

Q. The situation has not changed much and the transient nature of a major part of the DC workforce continues to support other teams when they visit DC.  It’s gotten to be quite an issue with the Phillies.

Bob Wolff. Well that’s never going to change because of the transient nature of government workers who come from other cities to work in Washington. But this year the Nationals have some good ball players and they will be in the pennant chase all the way. It will be interesting to see whether the crowd roar changes. They have some money behind them to get up there into the winner’s circle.

Q. Where did your love of entertaining the crowd come from, what background did you have that helped you come up with ideas for keeping the crowd in the game?

Bob Wolff. When I gave the score, when I said the score was 10-to-2, I never had to say which team was  losing because the fans knew. Even if the Senators were ahead in the late innings I never said, “Well let’s see if the Senators can hang on,” because they lost most of those tight games. I thought the role of the sportscaster was to “augment” to enhance the experience so I did all I could to avoid the dry statistics. I always included as many human interest stories as I could, I injected as much humor as I could. I wanted people to look and listen because they were having the time of their lives, without worrying about who won or lost the ball game. If they won, Great! but I always believed it was part of the entertainment business.

Q. You create a great yardstick with which to judge broadcasters and I am certain that if people think about their favorites they will find that they use humor and entertainment as you are saying. You told me that you came up with one idea for entertainment called the Singing Senators, can you tell us about that?

Bob Wolff. At Duke University I sang with the college band. I wasn’t going to win any awards, but I kept on key and was enthusiastic. With the Senators I would always bring my ukelele and I would get the guys singing along and I said to them one time, “You guys are pretty good.” They could harmonize and so I organized different groups because the players changed every year, but one group was really good so I had them booked on the NBC Today Show, Dave Garroway was the host, and we spent forty-five minutes at the Monument Grounds doing one broadcast for the East Coast and one for the West Coast. And the Singing Senators were born. People competed to be in the group as much as they did to be on the ball team. It was great fun and part of the way I kept things a little different.

Q. Roy Sievers was one of the Singing Senators. Do you have any recollections of his career in Washington? Did you form bonds with players like Sievers who were there for longer periods of time?

BobWolff. I never gave up my lust for playing ball myself. Even when I was in my seventies, I was still pitching against the Mets and the Yankees before games. I was thrilled when my kids became ball players. One of my sons played for Princeton, the other for Harvard and he was drafted by the big leagues as was one of my grandsons. I pitched batting practice for the Senators and that was where I came up with some of my locker room stories that I used.

Then I would talk about the techniques of hitting and fielding which were more entertaining than dull statistics like the guy has had one hit in his last ten at bats. So I stayed very close to the players and they were personal friends. I ate with them, road the train with them on road trips.

You mention Roy Sievers. He was a great personal interest story. He injured his shoulder when he played with the St. Louis Browns, tore all the shoulder muscles, and had to worry about whether he would ever be able to throw a ball again. He could swing the bat but he could not throw. When he came over to the Senators they said, “don’t worry about throwing the ball in, just get it to the shortstop and he will throw it. Just swing the bat.” He became one of the great all time home run hitters by swinging the bat.

They always looked for that one home run hitter, which was a tough thing to do in old Griffith Stadium, the left field fence was over 400 feet away and a big wall to go over. In right field there was a mammoth fence to go over. Mickey Vernon who twice won the batting title did it by hammering balls off the right field fence. They had guys that could hit, they just didn’t have enough of them.

Q. Do your remember anything else about old Griffith Stadium?

Bob Wolff. From a broadcasting standpoint, I was up so close to the batter. They built an overhang right behind home plate that was no more than forty feet up and maybe 60 feet behind home plate. I was so close that not only could I see every curve of the ball, but I could hear every conversation with the batter and it was a thrilling way to watch a ball game.

I remember one day Clint Courtney, an always unshaven catcher, who enjoyed being hit by pitches. He had welts and bruises and discolorations all over his legs. Many times he would get hit by a pitch and the umpire would say, “Come back, you put your leg out on purpose.” He was an old fashioned player. One day he got thrown out of a ball player without even saying anything. He was making marks in the dirt each time the umpire made a bad call. When he got to five he crossed through the four marks demonstratively with his middle finger and the umpire said, “that’s it , you’re gone.” Courtney said “I didn’t say anything.” I thought it was an unusual way of getting kicked out of a ball game.

Q. You moved with the Senators to Minnesota. Do you remember the discussions surrounding the move. It was an emotional moment for the city, losing a team that had played in DC for 60 years. What do you remember of the reasoning leading up to the move?

Bob Wolff. For years the Griffiths had managed to keep the team afloat. But one thing happened that changed everything. Television was broadcasting games across the country. The game is the same, but there are millions more fans watching games around the country. And the sponsors wanted to grab that and so suddenly there was big money to be made. The Griffiths had an offer from the people in Minneapolis who had a brand new stadium and wanted to fill it. They had sponsors lined up and they had riches lined up that Griffith had never seen before. So when the decision had to be made, they went with the money. It was a simple decision.

Money has changed everything. If I went on the road trip with a bunch of ball players and asked them if they wanted to join my singing group, they would look at me like I was deranged. Ballplayers don’t share rooms any more, they have individual suites. They are the millionaires of the world now, the elite.

A lot of that feeling of intimacy that you had in the days before big salaries is no longer there. ANd the game has changed as well. Defense used to be a central part of the game. Players like Nellie Fox who averaged something like one home run a year and is in the Hall of Fame, but now, you don’t have a chance to make the Hall of Fame unless you can hit the home runs as well. The players are bigger, stronger, and have more power. Given the choice of a great scrappy ball player, one who can run, hit and do the small things like hit and run, given him OR someone who might hit thirty home runs and play second base, they are going to take the one who hits the home runs. Why? Because he will bring more people to the ball park.

The same thing with the pitchers. The wiley guys like the Whitey Fords who did it with finesse, they say forget it. They put the radar gun on guys like that and say forget it. So the structure of the game has changed. It is now a power game. Television has done that.

Special thanks to Philip Hochberg, former Senators public announcer, who as a young man got his start with Bob Wolff and who provided the contact.

Under Johnson in the last half of 2011, the Nationals team batting average jumped by almost 25 points from what they hit under Riggleman. Davey was happy. The pitching?? That was for someone else to worry about. Individual players like Ian Desmond thrived under Davey Johnson and it seemed as if Davey was always welcoming his players back to the dugout with a hearty clap on the back and a big smile.

The smile is largely gone. It’s not the injuries to key players like Ryan Zimmerman, Michael Morse and Jayson Werth; it is the prodigious strikeouts and total clueless approach of too many of his players at the plate. Danny Espinosa is on pace to strike out 200 times if he is given the chance. The team batting average is .236. They are scoring only 3.4 runs per game and that was before Jayson Werth’s lusty .276 average was taken out of the batting order.

So where does Davey turn for help?

I would suggest two sources: Ted Williams and Yogi Berra. Williams was the manager of the 1969 Washington Senators who made a group of banjo hitters into a respectable force in the American League. He had a single message, “Get a good pitch to hit.” It is actually a rather difficult concept when a tiny sphere is coming at you at 95 mph and your brain has only milliseconds to decide whether to swing or not.

But Williams succeeded with hitters as diverse as Frank Howard and Eddie Brinkman. Howard took Ted’s message to heart and doubled the number of walks he drew, and almost hit .300 for the first time in his career. Eddie Brinkman, for whom success at the plate was hitting above the Mendoza Line, hit .268. Mike Epstein harnessed his huge potential and became a major league power hitter for the first time. They did it by not swinging at pitches that were outside the strike zone.

Watching the pitch selection of the 2012 Washington Nationals is a study in frustration. They swing at breaking stuff under their hands that they could not hit in fair territory with a tennis racket. And they flail with equal lack of success at the high fast ball away. But when the breaking ball is over the plate, they watch in stunned silence as if it were computer porn.

And the league has eyes. Danny Espinosa is pitched exactly the same way by everyone and he obliges the pitching fraternity with the politeness Eddie Haskell once used to woo June Cleaver.

Yogi Berra had the exact opposite approach at the plate. He swung at everything, but he could hit anything. He attributed his success to “keeping it simple.” Yogi told Nick Swisher during his worst year with the Yankees to “move up against a breaking ball pitcher, step into it from your back side” –from Driving Mr. Yogi. Swisher was amazed when he used those two small suggestions to turn around his career as a Yankee.

So who is in charge of these guys and their approach? Williams and Berra are not available and the task in Washington has fallen to Rick Eckstein. I am not qualified to judge Eckstein and his coaching techniques. But I will let Yogi do it. Berra’s belief with Swisher and others was that breaking down the swing and adjusting the mechanics of the swing was overly analytic. “Keep it simple,” said Yogi.

Watching Davey Johnson’s young players, one can only conclude that their coaching is in how to swing, not what to swing at. Jayson Werth is–or for the next few months, was–one of the most selective batters in the National League. He was notorious for letting first pitch strikes go by and working the count. He was a marked contrast with Michael Morse who was the most aggressive hitter in the Washington lineup and the most successful.

But Morse swung at strikes early in the count, rather than swinging at the first pitch he saw. One thing that I took away from Harvey Araton’s book about Yogi and Ron Guidry was the wealth of talent that is just hanging around the Yankee dugout and clubhouse. Excellence is a way of life and young players are exposed to the great names of the game. Whether through coaching insights as Yogi provided for Swisher, or just inspiring by their presence, the result is the same.

Rick Eckstein may be an excellent batting instructor, but Davey Johnson needs something more. The Pantheon of Washington baseball history is not filled with the likes of Berra and Guidry, but Frank Howard lives in the Virginia suburbs.

Frank might tell today’s Washington baseball heroes a very simple thing, something he once heard from the best hitter to every play the game. “Get a good pitch to hit, kid,” Ted would say if he could. And if Danny Espinosa and company would take to heart that very, simple concept–almost Yogi-like in its simplicity, then Davey Johnson would be smiling again.

And that would be a good thing, cause no one likes an unhappy Davey Johnson.

Yes it is too early for pronouncements on Harper’s ability to handle major league pitching, too early to say what a long 1-for 15 slump will do to his demeanor. Will he still be able to handle the adversity and when some pitcher plunks him for good measure, will he still react with the kind of class that he showed last night?

We cannot answer those questions yet, but it is not too early to be impressed with his approach to the game and anyone who was watching the ESPN’s Sunday Game of the Week had to be somewhat in awe of the first glimpses of what this young man can do.

Cole Hamels drilled Harper in the back in his first at bat and the brash kid with a history of bat attitude took his base and never even looked hard at Hamels. It was a “message” pitch not so much from Hamels as from Charlie Manuel and the Philly organization to the Washington organization, as if to say, here’s what we think of your “Boy Wonder.”

Harper took it and then when Jayson Werth singled sharply into the outfield he took third on pure hustle and speed. When Hamels somewhat smugly threw to first to keep Werth close–not even looking at Harper–the kid stole home and it was not really even close.

Harper sent his own message, one of a whole different sort. In baseball, it is difficult to imagine a better way to say, “see you and raise you” than what Harper did. Later in the game Harper took second on a bloop single that was even more of a hustle play. It wasn’t a two-run homer; it did not win the game for a Nationals offense that was completely baffled by Hamels, but it was not a bad rejoinder to Charlie Manuel from “the kid.”

And that seems to be what we will get from Bryce Harper this time around. He is up against major league pitching for the first time and he can clearly hit the fast ball when it is thrown over the plate and not into the middle of his back. He may need to smooth out his swing and adjust to the off-speed stuff that he will see increasingly, but it ain’t bad for first time round.

Philadelphia walked Harper four times in three games and the young 19-year old went 2-for-3 against Hamels. So, his command of the plate is impressive given how few professional at bats he has had since signing with Washington late in 2010.

So the early scouting reports will emphasize his throwing arm that already freezes runners in place on routine fly balls. And pitchers will not take him for granted when he gets on base. But there is a lot left to see, a lot left to take in.

Harper has struggled in his exposure to advanced levels of play. When he began his career in Hagerstown last season, he began slowly. He only warmed up after the first three weeks of the season and then he went on a tear, hitting .318 with 14 homers in the first half of the season before being promoted to Harrisburg. His slash line for the year was .297/.392/.501, sound but not eye-popping.

What diminished the numbers were the slow weeks in Harrisburg and the adjustments to his first exposure to the long grind of a professional season. Improving on those numbers at the major league level, adjusting to better pitching and the grind of the season are a tall order.

But that is what makes this game such a wonder. It is clear after Bryce Harper’s first few weeks in the majors that he has a unique gift as an athlete. The hype had its base in reality.

What has impressed me more than any singular thing about the young man is that he is wearing a Washington uniform and like other Nationals fans, I am going to have a seat right down front where I can take in all of the action. Because this show looks like it is going to have lots of action, some great chase scenes, explosive fire works for the duration. I’m glad I got the giant combo cause I’m going to need it for this one.

Yogi Berra is a New York Yankee from start to finish and this book is about the storied franchise at every level. Yet Berra is loved by baseball fans regardless their loyalties and it is the insights into the complexities of Yogi Berra, the grand old man of the game, as brought out by his friend Ron Guidry, that give Driving Mr. Yogi the same special status as its main character. The relationship between Guidry and Berra is a warm and compelling story, but around it New York Times writer Harvey Araton skillfully wraps so many others.

There is the story of Berra as modern day coach and counsel to players like Mariano Rivera, Nick Swisher and Jorge Posada. The relationship between Yogi and Jorge Posada provides a wonderful point of entry. There is Posada talking about the value of Yogi Berra as a mentor during Spring Training of 2000: “maybe the most important thing he helped me with was his view of the game, knowing how hard it is, but that you really need to keep a positive attitude every day.”

Many fans know Yogi Berra as the origin of fathomless sayings like, “Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel.” And then there are more knowledgeable fans who still remember Yogi Berra as a failed manager of the Yankees and Mets. But Yogi the master of the game emerges as well, whose homespun witticisms, serve to bring him closer to those around him and put his vast knowledge of the game of baseball within easier reach.

The best story in the book is that of Berra and his simple approach to baseball and to life. How even at age 85, Yogi can make himself hugely relevant to both is worth the knowing.

Harvey Araton presents a picture of both Guidry and Berra as men whose expertise extends beyond baseball, but who are unparalleled savants of the game. The charm of the book is watching two relatively different human beings, from different backgrounds geographic and ethnic who bond so completely over the game, and of course the Yankees. Their friendship is like the spice in Guidry’s Cajun cooking: it flavors everything to perfection.

As someone alien to the culture of what Marty Appel calls the Pinstrip Empire, I thought Araton at times tried to dance me down an aisle of what is palatable for Yankee fans. Those who exist outside that universe have long admired Yogi Berra not only for his remarkable career, but his ironclad integrity as exemplified by his principled disdain for George Steinbrenner–for whom many non-Yankee fans reserve a special and none-too-dear place in their hearts. But Steinbrenner is lionized by Araton in a way that only Yankee fans can truly embrace.

Resolving the bitter feud between Steinbrenner and Berra is almost as central to the book as the friendship with Guidry. It is an emotional tale. Araton deserves credit for handling it artfully and it certainly belongs in this book. However, Steinbrenner, as presented by Araton, is judged only on the grounds that he won championships for the Yankee faithful. Whether non-Yankee fans are willing to walk away with such a superficial analysis of Steinbrenner is a personal decision I will leave to the reader.

Red Sox fans may have their own problems with the book. The red meat served up for Yankee fans may make accessing the rest of the story difficult. In the opening pages of the book there is a description of the brawl between the Sox and Yankees that was part of Guidry’s first game. “Nettles body-tossing of Boston’s flaky left-hander Bill Lee,” is followed gratuitously by the triumphant, “Nettles separated Lee’s shoulder.”

Yogi Berra is as Yankee as it gets, but his value to the game is his ability to transcend those class distinctions. Yogi is an every man who values his friendships with Red Sox players like Bobby Doerr, and Dodgers like Campanella and Koufax. It is not about team at the end of the day for Yogi, but about the game and the person. Yogi and Ron Guidry are two of the finest and it is their friendship that at the end of the day makes this story. Whatever may have been sacrificed to appeal to Pin Stripe Nation, missing this little splendid little splinter of a book would be a huge mistake.

On Saturday night at Dodger Stadium, the two players were on the same major league field for the first time, wearing the road jerseys of the Washington Nationals. Strasburg took the mound against the Dodgers and Harper started in left field for his very first game in the majors. Was it a historic moment?

Only time will determine how historic or mundane the game in Los Angeles was, but there were glimmers of what to expect. Stephen Strasburg continued to dazzle in his tenth start since returning from elbow surgery last September. He struck out nine Dodgers in seven innings including Matt Kemp twice. He allowed only a single run, lowering his ERA to 1.13.

Strasburg’s statistics may not remain at such historic levels, but he has been masterful over the ten starts and there was no hype in the description of his prodigious talent.

When the Dodgers scored their only run against Strasburg, the first real convergence of the two super-stars occurred. Jerry Hairston was on second with one out after being hit by Strasburg to start the seventh inning. A.J. Ellis singled into left field where Bryce Harper fielded the ball cleanly and threw a strike to Washington catcher Wilson Ramos that should have caught Jerry Hairston easily.

Hairston knocked the ball from the catcher’s glove and scored the first run of the evening. The Nationals went on to lose the game in heartbreaking fashion, but the historic moment may have been that first real look at Harper’s arm, which is the least well known of his plus-plus tools

Tony Kornheiser did not see the game but was on ESPN where he commented nonetheless about the throw saying that Rick Ankiel’s throw more than a week earlier–from deep center field that Ramos caught chest high on the fly–could not possibly have been one-upped by Harper. But when Kornheiser was shown the video, he wasn’t so certain.

Harper has been hitting only in the .240 range at Triple-A Syracuse before his recall. But the Nationals collection of left fielders filling in for the injured Michael Morse, were hitting considerably less than that and General Manager Mike Rizzo called up Harper saying the young phenom could hardly do worse.

Keith Law asserted that the Nationals are putting Harper at risk with the early promotion. With so few indications that he is ready, what are the long-term affects to his confidence if he fails? Given the bristling nature of Harper’s confidence, his swagger that seems to simmer somewhere just below full boil, it is difficult to imagine what it might take to dent the young man’s belief in himself.

Harper went 1-for-3 in each of the two games he has started. His long double to dead center on Saturday night was a clean hit that demonstrated his power, but his showing over the two games does not compare to Strasburg’s debut that was far more dramatic.

In his first game, Strasburg struck out fourteen Pittsburgh Pirates over seven innings. He hit 100 mph on the radar gun numerous times to the delight of fans. He struck out the side in his final inning of work with a packed stadium on its feet. That excitement plummeted when Strasburg needed elbow surgery before the end of his first season, but now he seems healed and to have learned from his first taste of hardship.

Strasburg’s fastball now sits at 96-97 and he has said that he is learning to pitch more and depend on his overwhelming fastball much less. It may not be the strain of an additional 3-4 mph that overworked his arm in 2010, but it seems a wiser Strasburg that is taking the mound in 2012.

Bryce Harper’s first two games have not provided the high tension excitement of Strasburg’s first few games. But it seems likely that his career will have similar highs and lows over the next few seasons. No one believes there is a structural flaw in Harper that will undermine his ability to play the game.

The question with Harper is not whether he will be a high impact offensive player, but when. Just how long will it take him to adjust to big league pitching?

Nationals manager, Davey Johnson said that Harper was ready for the majors prior to the start of Spring Training. But Harper suffered a minor injury in the spring and with a shortened window to prepare for the majors, Washington GM Mike Rizzo sent him to the minor league camp.

But now he has joined the team and the era of Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper has begun in Washington, DC. Either would be a significant bonus for a team, but for Washington to have both on the same field at the same time is truly something special.

The supporting cast has a few flaws currently, but not that many. The Nationals have the best starting rotation in the majors according to the early numbers and Stephen Strasburg is no small part of that. When Drew Storen, Michael Morse and Ryan Zimmerman are all healthy, the real show will begin for the Washington Nationals. Catch it in a city near you. They do not disappoint.

Or it could be Cleveland where he won his first World Series behind Larry Doby, or St. Louis where he met his match with the Browns. Or better yet, it could be the Eastern Shore, from which Veeck stalked the Washington Senators and Baltimore Orioles like the spurned lover he was. But wherever he turned up, he was out in the bleachers, or on the concourse, meeting the fans, mixing it up. And Paul Dickson says that is the real reason the owners hated him. Because they hated seeing pictures of him in the bleachers, sitting there with the regular guys having a beer.

There are so many wonderful stories in Paul Dickson’s biography of Veeck. The big ones like Eddie Gaedel, Minnie Minoso and the Go-Go Sox, and the small ones like planting the ivy at Wrigley Field in his first real job in baseball in 1937. But it is all there, warts and all. Paul Dickson doesn’t miss a beat, down or otherwise.

The most fascinating stories revolve around Veeck’s role in integrating the American League. Dickson nails it. It was the first time that Bill Veeck asserted himself center stage in the baseball world. Paul Dickson sets up that story by including the 1943 winter baseball meetings where Commissioner Landis and the major league owners met with Paul Robeson and “a group of black publishers and editors” who wished to “advocate for the entry of black’s into baseball.”

Much of what has been written about the meeting has focused on why Landis included Robeson, whether it was intentional to shift attention away from the central claim for equality to Robeson’s ties to communism. But Dickson included the transcript of the meeting without any apologies for Robeson and with not intent to lessen Landis or anyone else. The words speak for themselves and the great man, who always admitted his links to the Communist Party, beautifully articulates his case for why baseball should do what was right, “because a thing like this–Negro ballplayers becoming a part of the great national pastime of America–could make a great difference in what peoples all over the world would feel toward us.” (p.90)

It was a moving presentation and Paul says that he is the first person to use it, having found the transcript in the Cooperstown Library shortly after it was first available to the public. The Robeson meeting is a metaphor for the entire book. The research is impeccably thorough and the presentation of crucial junctures in baseball history is always thoughtful and many times poignant.

Bill Veeck became known to some as the “Abe Lincoln of baseball,” but somehow he alienated the other American League owners over the issue of race. Paul Dickson told me it was not Lary Doby– that was to be expected after Jackie Robinson, “No, it was Satchel Paige,” said Dickson. Baseball had for so long denied Paige his chance, so when Veeck brought him up in the second half of the ’48 season and he pitched the Cleveland Indians into the World Series, that showed the owners up, and they did not like that.

Paige, like so many others, never forgot the chance that Veeck gave him. It began a long friendship between Paige and Veeck, a constant loyalty of one showman to another, according to Dickson. But it was the kind of loyal friendship that was never one-way and it is repeated so often in the book. Larry Doby, Minoso, Early Wynn, and so many players who revered the man and called him friend. The many fans for whom he did favors, and the writers. Everyone loved Veeck except the owners and the Commissioners.

I asked Paul Dickson what was the most surprising thing he found out about Veeck in researching the book and he said without pause, the war hero side of Veeck. The man who always had a quick smile lived with intense pain from injuries incurred as a U.S. Marine fighting on Bougainville Island. It was one of the worst environments any fighting man in World War II had to endure and it took a drastic toll on Veeck. Airlifted out to a hospital in Hawaii, his injuries left him with Osteomyelitis that forced numerous amputations of his leg in the years after the war. Yet Veeck made jokes about it even when the pain was at its worst, hiding an ashtray in his wooden leg, producing it whether he was sitting in the bleachers to the delight of the fans around him, or whether he was dancing with his wife at Sardis to entertain the glitterati.

The controversy about Veeck’s attempt to buy the Philadelphia Phillies during the war is there as well, presented with the same thoroughness and thoughtfulness as everything else.  There is an appendix devoted to the issue for SABR members who are not convinced by Dickson’s assertion that the positive evidence he marshals outweighs what he calls the proof of a negative by SABR researchers David M. Jordan, Larry R. Derlach and John P. Rossi. They were the first to claim Veeck’s story a fraud in 1998 in the SABR publication, The National Pastime. Dickson devotes a lengthy discussion to the issue, but provides convincing evidence Veeck was telling the truth.

Whatever negatives are there, they are hugely outweighed by the weight of those that loved the man. A letter by Early Wynn of the Indians,excerpted on page 246, is a wonderful tribute. Wynn wrote, “I know I speak for all of us when I say that you have been a helluva lot more than just the boss. You have been a wonderful friend. All of us will always cherish your friendship.” It is not just Early Wynn at a banquet mouthing the needed platitude. It is the genuine sentiment presented throughout by the many who remained friends with Veeck throughout his life.

What made me appreciate Veeck more than anything in the book, however, was his genuine warmth for fans, his willingness to be one of them, to celebrate the game with them, not just for them,  but because he was one of them. Bill Veeck made money from baseball not only because he knew how to give fans more of the game, but because he truly loved it.  He knew little else having grown up the son of Bill Veeck, Sr. who was the President of the Chicago Cubs  from 1919 til his death in 1934, when the younger Veeck was still at Kenyon College. Bill Veeck was about baseball from the day he was born until the day he died and he never quit being a fan.

Washington baseball fans will find great tragedy in one of Paul Dickson’s stories, one he no doubt feels himself. Veeck made numerous attempts to buy the Washington Senators, but was denied every time. Veeck was also prevented from moving the St. Louis Browns–that he owned in the early 1050′s– to Baltimore, forced to sell them before the owners would approve the move. But during the 1960′s and ’70′s Veeck tried to purchase the expansion Washington Senators on at least three occasions and his offers were refused, ostensibly on financial grounds, but given the consequences and the questionable nature of the owners who ended up with the team, that claim rings hollow.

That story is one that fans in DC need to read. Though I have read at length of the small-minded owners: Calvin Griffith and others who helped engineer the move to Texas, I was surprised to learn that they had Veeck as a viable option not only in 1971, but as early as 1962 and again late in in ’68 when the team was first sold to Bob Short.

As Dickson says repeatedly, there is so much more to Veeck than exploding score boards and Eddie Gaedel. They are part of the man and important to the telling of his story, to understanding him and they certainly are part of this heart-felt remembrance. But there is so much more that most fans do not know.

The Scott Simon quote that begins the Epilogue summed it up for me. “Bill Veeck had one of the most absorbing and valuable American lives of the century.” No less absorbing and valuable is Paul Dickson’s biography of the man.  It comes out today, and it is worth every bad penny.

Paul Dickson will be a guest on the Outta the Parkway Show talking about the Veeck book this Friday, April 27th.  All quotes above are all from Paul Dickson’s book, Bill Veeck,Baseball’s Greatest Maverick, by Walker and Company, New York, New York, available April 24, 2012.

The Nationals were on the verge of their fourth shutout of the young season, ahead 2-0 in the bottom of the ninth, when Brad Lidge coughed up the home run to Logan Morrison. Stephen Strasburg led the way to what would have been the second shut out he has started in the young season. But the Nationals defense stiffened and Ian Desmond proved to be a difference maker again to launch the team to new heights of excitement. Four shutouts, though, what would that have meant?

It is sufficient to ponder the implications of only three shutouts in the sixteen games so far, without concerning yourself about the one that got away. Given the sense that any of the pitchers can potentially toss a shut out on a given day, projecting three out of 16 to the whole season is not outlandish. Thirty shut outs is what the math says, thirty shutouts by the pitching staff over the course of the season. That is quite a lot, and the history books say that no team has done better since 1909, during the Dead Ball Era, when the Chicago Cubs tossed 32 shut outs as a team.

Washington Post beat writer, Adam Kilgore, quoting FanGraphs on Wednesday, said that the average fastball velocity of the starting pitching was at 93.4, the fastest figure since FanGraphs starting tracking the stat in 2002. This may be more than just your average good pitching staff. As Ian Desmond said when interviewed after the Saturday afternoon win, “It is still early, but…”

The last time any Washington Nationals pitching staff managed to generate this kind of buzz was in 1945, when World War II veterans were just beginning to come back from the war. The Washington Nationals team that year featured four knuckle-ball pitchers, including Roger Wolff—who won 20 that year, and Dutch Leonard who won 17. All four starters were quite good and the team ERA was the best in the American League that season at 2.92. That staff had 19 shutout victories and finished second in the eight-team league just a game and one-half behind the Detroit Tigers.

But 1945 is not a real test. The war colored the level of competition. In truth it is really necessary to go back to the Nationals golden era when their pitching led the American League frequently, as it did in 1930 when the team finished second to Connie Mack’s Athletics. Or back just a bit farther to 1924 and 1925 when Washington still had Walter Johnson and the pitching staff let the league and the team to consecutive pennants and a World Series victory.

It is early, as Ian Desmond said, but people are paying attention anyway. A friend, knowing my level of devotion, felt the need to share with me that he is watching every Washington Nationals game all the way through, that he is glued to the television each night exactly the way his father was when he watched the 1969 Mets. It is a remarkably close parallel: the “Miracle Mets,” the team that was still a laughing stock in 1968, finishing ninth out of the ten teams then in the National League. They turned it around and won 100 games behind Seaver, Koosman, Gary Gentry and Tug McGraw.

It would have been good to sweep the Marlins, they who have been a plague upon the house of Washington. They beat the Nationals in eleven of the eighteen games they played last season, thirteen times in 2010. But let the rain fall. We will beat the Marlins another day. Ryan Zimmerman needs the rest. And maybe we all need to take a deep breath, to spend a couple of days away from the suspense of all those goose eggs, spend some time pondering just where they are leading us.

Or we can just look forward to the next game in San Diego on Tuesday. Somewhere I hear it never rains in Southern California

Ross Detwiler pitched well on Sunday. His fastball was sitting at 94, and there was plenty of life to all his pitches. He was squeezed by circumstance, however, first by an errant throw by Ian Desmond and then by the whimsical strike zone of Laz Diaz. Diaz went from calling Ryan Ludwick’s “prime cut only” strikes in the first inning to “all of the above” strikes for Ryan Zimmerman in the bottom of the eighth.

Neither Detwiler’s luckless outing nor the 11^th inning implosion by Tyler Clippard can obscure the fact that the 2012 Nationals remain the best pitching staff in the National League. The team ERA of 1.99 remains far and away the best in both leagues.

Cincinnatihas one of the more potent offensive lineups in the NL, and yet they managed only four runs in the first three games. Any member of the Nationals’ starting rotation remains capable of pitching a gem, of totally shutting down opposing hitters.  Sunday was just a day when it did not happen. The Reds were due.

The Nationals continue to sit atop the NL East because of that pitching excellence. But it also accrues from clutch hits by Ian Desmond and Adam LaRoche who were the core of the attack again on Sunday. They are sparking what remains an inconsistent offense. Jayson Werth is hitting .333, but the rest of the team—most notably Ryan Zimmerman—has yet to engage. They are forcing the pitching staff to be nearly perfect, which will not work over the course of the long season with any greater success than it did on Sunday.

Last season a similar cast managed to score fewer than four runs a game: 3.88 to be exact. Thus far they have scored 39 times in 10 games. Do the math. There is no bailout waiting in the wings either. Michael Morse is sidelined for the next six to eight weeks. Bryce Harper is hitting .220 in Syracuse.

There were no late inning heroics on Sunday, but there were still gutty performances from Craig Stammen, Brad Lidge and Henry Rodriguez. Ryan Zimmerman has found his “A” glove and one can hope his bat is not far behind.

The Houston Astros come to town Monday for four games. They are a young and rebuilding team that has played everyone hard so far this season. Stephen Strasburg will greet them in the first game.

Another friendly face will be back as well. The downside of this spring’s set up has been Passover falling during the first home stand. Max’s Kosher kiosk has been closed through out the home stand to observe the eight days of the holiday season. There has been no Chicken Swarma, no Felafel sandwiches, no Kosher dogs with onions with which to mark this spring celebration.

As difficult as a home stand without swarma has been, it seems small price to pay for the past week’s five-game win streak. So hit the replay switch. It’s always ‘Spring Time’ in DC, and the Washington Nationals are always playing .700 ball.

Keeping Kerry Wood out of Sunday’s game may have been the difference for the Cubs.  Cub fans wildly cheered when Wood appeared on Thursday according to Nationals fan, Dan Flynn of Chevy Chase—who traveled to Chicago for all three games.  Yet the same excited throng was silenced by two days of bullpen meltdowns and Flynn watched them leave the games in a dejected mood all too familiar to a Nats fan.

Jeff Samardzija tried to avoid the issue by throwing a complete game on Sunday.  He had a heater sitting at 98 mph to start the game and had limited the Nationals to a single run on only three hits as the ninth inning began.  His performance was eerily reminiscent of Strasburg’s on Thursday, but there he was starting the final frame having thrown just under 100 pitches.  Samardzija’s fast ball had lost some of its zip, but he was just an out away from finishing a 4-1 win when a throwing error and a two-run home run by Adam LaRoche cut the lead to 4-3 and ended his day.

Carlos Marmol came into the game for the third time in three days.  The brown and haunted ivy of Wrigley field sagged at the thought of another bullpen collapse.  Marmol blew the save on Saturday and took the loss on Thursday.  His 27.00 ERA going into the game was a dead-on match for Wood’s.  But on Sunday he had only to get a single out.  He toyed with disaster by walking Jason Werth, but got ahead of Xavier Nady and put the Nationals away as Chicago held on to win the getaway game.

Cub starters Ryan Dempster and Matt Garza frustrated the Nationals offense in the first two games until late in both games.  The Nationals best offense may have been playing at Harrisburg where Michael Morse and Rick Ankiel hit three home runs rehabbing with the Senators.

But Kerry Wood was enough of a trigger mechanism to launch the Washington offense in the two Chicago wins.  Wood came in for the eighth inning on Thursday and again on Saturday.  All together he put six runners on base and recorded only three outs over two outings.  Clippard, Lidge and Rodriguez were as good as Marmol and Wood were bad, as Clippard and Mattheus got both wins and Lidge and Rodriguez recorded the two saves.

It wasn’t just the bullpen or any one player; it was a family affair and pretty much everyone contributed.  Almost a goat on Thursday, Adam LaRoche, bounced back and was one of the heroes on Saturday and got the Nationals back on the edge of tying the game on Sunday with another home run.  Ian Desmond and Danny Espinosa had their anemic numbers as table setters from 2011 flashed across the screen numerous times in the run-up to Opening Day, but they both played key roles, especially Desmond whose clutch hits over shadowed the quality at bats he had almost every time he came to the plate over the three games.

The 2012 Cubs, it should be noted, are without Aramis Ramirez and Carlos Pena, and did little to upgrade the team in the off-season.  They are part of a collection of April opponents the Nationals will face whose overall winning percentage last year was a lowly .442.  Teams like the Reds and Marlins—who will come in on the home stand–improved dramatically in the off-season. But theChicago series provides the impetus for a strong start, the hope for a winning April once again in Washington.

The Mets will test that proposition over the next three days.  They beat the Braves three times and had strong pitching in doing it.  The law of averages may be working in the Nationals favor, however.  Ryan Zimmerman will not hit .091 for much longer.  A starting rotation that deserves a little love and an early lead or two would no doubt like to see him break out in a big way very, very soon.

I have seen Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder take batting practice, but I do not remember them being as proficient as Zimmerman was last Friday. While a few balls landed short of the wall or were merely line shots through the infield, it was uncanny the large percentage of balls struck that left the yard. People began to take notice and we watched each ball to gage its carry. “That one’s gone,” said the fan next to me as Zimmerman launched one well past the outfield wall.

The batting practice pitcher was tossing 55 mph marshmallows. Zimmerman’s front leg would lift off the ground as he timed the pitch, and then the bat flashed through the zone and out the ball went as it began it’s long vacation from Central Florida. It was a thing of beauty to behold. Other players jumped into the cage for their turns and the contrast was striking. A few nice shots from other players, but they could manage nothing even close to the barrage from Zimmerman.

Does Zimmerman’s batting practice form mean he is on the verge of a break out season as a top slugger in 2012? The bottom line is that it is just spring training, but if Michael Morse can maintain his 2011 form and provide cover to Zimmerman like Adam Dunn did in 2009, look for a big season from the Z-Man.

And maybe next spring there will be more opportunities to watch batting practice with the Nationals. The Washington front office seems determined to move their complex to Ft. Myers for 2013. The biggest obstacle standing in the way is the existing contract with the Brevard County Stadium on which $1.6 million remains committed for two more seasons.

Breaking that contract will be painful, but if the Lerners can manage it, the Nationals will be training in Ft. Myers with the Minnesota Twins and Boston Red Sox. The Sox train at Jet Blue Park; the Twins at Hammond Stadium. The Nationals would move into City of Palms Park that was the Spring Training home for Boston until they moved into a new complex modeled on Fenway Park.

With three teams playing in the same city, watching the Nationals take batting practice as the away team in the other two complexes would be far easier than it is now. Currently the closest complex to Washington’s Viera, FL spring home is Kissimmee, FL where the Astros train. That is a 90-minute drive and other than the Rodeo Diner there ain’t much “there” there.

One of the reasons for the move is exactly the distances that the players must travel for spring training games. But fans would be accommodated as well. Currently one of the biggest difficulties in planning a trip to Florida is finding a time when one can see as many games as possible. With the team making so many long trips, it is difficult to find a time when there are consecutive games in Viera that allow fans to see multiple games over a short span of days. That problem would be obviated with two other teams in Ft. Myers and the Tampa Bay Rays training just a 30-minute drive up I-75 in Port Charlotte.

All three of those teams are American League teams, so it would provide an opportunity to see teams with whom Washington fans have little familiarity. So from this fan’s perspective, bring it on.

Next spring it could be quite a show between Zimmerman and Harper to see whose batting practice is more impressive. Me, I am a Zimmerman fan now and for the future. But I am open to being proved wrong.

Yet as much as I look forward to the Spring Training experience every year, there is a new twist to it that sucks just a little of the wind from those gorgeous Florida sunsets, something that cuts into the fun that I as a baseball “everyman” get from the games.

I went to my first spring training in 1999 with my 11 year-old daughter, a little red-head with a pen and a baseball leaning over the rail yelling, “Mr. McGwire, Mr. McGwire, could you sign my ball?” She ultimately cornered Mark McGwire in Washington, DC along the rail at RFK Stadium at a preseason exhibition game between the Cardinals and Montreal Expos. The big man smiled at his admirer’s crimson locks and told her how much he wished they were his own. He grinned broadly as he signed her ball, making her and her father about as happy as they possibly could be.

We arrived at RFK stadium early that day in 1999, several hours before game time to watch batting practice. We were rewarded with an amazing display put on by McGwire.  Balls flew into the upper deck of RFK where seats were marked to denote where Frank Howard had hit his moon shots back in the late 1960′s and early 1970′s.  A few of the balls McGwire hit struck the light standards above the roof line of RFK and the gathered throngs were just waiting for one to totally exit the confines, headed for the moon no doubt.

It would be difficult to replicate that experience today. Fans cannot enter the playing area until 90 minutes before game time and the home team never takes batting practice in front of the home fans.  There are security guards that ring the field and discourage fans from getting too close to the players. Sometimes players will sign autographs, but it is not like it used to be. The red-headed 11 year-olds are still there, but their access is tightly controlled in almost every major league baseball venue.

There is an exception. Every year we venture up to Osceola County Stadium, the Spring Training home of the Houston Astros in Kissimmee, Florida. It is a small little stadium that tightly hugs the playing field. There are fewer security personnel and during the run-up to game time, they allow unfettered access to the field level seats.  Kids and adults hug the rails yelling out to the players as they stroll past.

My favorite baseball teddy-bear of a guy, Pat Corrales, limped past last week while we were there and I yelled out, “How’s the leg Pat?”  ”Still got one,” he answered with his uniquely charming snarl. A concessionaire was standing next to me having left his post to be with his 16-year old daughter who cradled a pen and baseball. He asked me how hard it was to get Ryan Zimmerman’s autograph. I opined that in the atmosphere of Osceola County Stadium it would be much easier than any where else. And indeed the face plate of the Nationals came over and signed for her and chatted with the two of them for a bit. Those two fans left absolutely delighted to be a small part of the action, something they will cherish for the season, perhaps for a lifetime.

The neighborhoods around Osceola County Stadium in Kissimmee, Florida are overwhelmingly Hispanic. The restaurants are Tex-Mex, the Catholic Churches that dot Route 192 are named for saints with a distinctly Latin flavor. The games draw well with the local Spanish-speaking fans who often get into hot conversations with some of the Latin ball players.

Two years ago it was Jose Cruz, a coach at the time for the Astros. A group of bench jockeys along the rail were riding Cruz before the game and a grin was spreading slowly across his face as they needled him in Spanish about god knows what. Finally he came over and they got into a conversation about his playing days that left them all smiling. Ultimately they were joined by Cito Gaston of the Blue Jays and the crowd of fans grew until Cruz and Gaston departed to warm applause.

You would never see that happen at most of the other complexes in Florida. Osceola County Stadium was designed in the mid-1980′s by HOK, the architects of almost every major league baseball stadium in the country now. Each of these new stadiums was intended to harken back to the old days and for the most part they are more personalized than the cookie-cutter, rounded, multi-purpose stadiums they have replaced.

Yet there is a “sameness” to them and with the rules for fan access in place at all of them, there is no small irony to their claim to have captured that old time ballpark atmosphere. Those beautiful parks are in danger of losing the most important design feature of all: the fan.

The road to the Astro’s complex–Route 192–ultimately leads to Disney World where the Braves train. Driving from one training site to another, one cannot help but be struck by the strip-mall sameness of Florida, and no where is that more apparent than at “Sports World,” as Disney calls it, the March home of the Atlanta Braves. When my daughter and I went there in 1999, one could access the Braves complex at Disney World from the highway. Now access from the highway has been restricted so that fans have to drive past every Donald, Minnie and Mickey in the entire theme park to find Chipper and the gang.

The operative word in the paragraph above is “restricted access.” Whether it was the Lakeland Flying Tigers, Brevard County Stadium or the parks in the Ft. Myers area, fan access to the players follows tight rules of conformity.  The gates open at a set time every where and home teams do not take batting practice in front of their fans. As a Nationals fan my best chance to watch my hometown players was at an away game in Kissimmee.

So what happened to the intimate feel that my daughter and I so loved more than a decade ago? To the ability to hang over the rail and yell out to the players? Sure, it has to be annoying to the players to be accosted by so many youngsters and adult fans, but it has been part of the game for as long as I can remember. Players used to come and go from the parks before every game through a throng of fans seeking autographs. That too has been eliminated.

Twenty years ago I was in Detroit on business and sneaked out of my final meeting of the day to walk down Michigan Avenue to the old stadium where I went in several hours before game time to find the Tigers taking batting practice. What a sight it was. Cecil “Big Daddy” Fielder sent kids scurrying through the bleachers in pursuit of his batting practice shots. Alan Trammel, then a coach, talked with a fan standing on the rail down by the dugout. He had gone to high school with Tram and asked him to sign a group picture of their graduating class as the two of them talked about the old days.

That ability to see the players up close, to chat with them as people is part of the game as it has been played for generations. I would hate to believe we are losing it. Reading about baseball’s “everyman owner” last night, I could not help but wonder “what would Bill do?” I would like to believe his ball park would be like Osceola County Stadium. He loved daring the tight-asses to complain about his approach to the game. He loved being different. In today’s vernacular, giving the fans the best show in town is too easy. It just means giving them a little more access to the action. Not the Disney sham version, but the real thing. Bill Veeck knew the real thing when he say it. How disappointed he would be with how today’s game is held at arms length from the fans.

MLB Inc. has initiated many good thing for the game. It has spread the wealth among the teams proportionately and brought new economic health to the game that has been missing for decades. But the cost to fans has been to move the game into a “gated community,” where access is too tightly controlled. So Bud, bring those “everyman” fans a little closer to the action. Put a little more Veeck back into the game we love.

The large majority of  current American sports fans were either born after 1968 or were too young at the time to have any memory of its historic events. Many regard the events of “the 1960′s” disdainfully, as if indulging the stories of that era can only taint their own world view with the deeply partisan divide that dates to that time. But that is exactly why it is so important to read Tim’s book. So much of our current situation has its roots in those events that changed baseball and the country forever.

I should say at the outset that I was disappointed to walk away without a better understanding of the core premise of the book: that the nation and game were deeply affected by the events of 1968. Tim provides wonderful insights into how the tragedies of that year–the assassinations of  Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy–affected ballplayers like Bob Gibson and Tim McCarver; Willie Horton and Gates Brown. He catalogs the tragedies that unfolded in Chicago during the Democratic Convention with insights from Tom Hayden on his baseball roots. It doesn’t get better than that.

Yet the changes to the game that date from the lowering of the mound and the shrinking of the strike zone at the end of the 1968 season, do not get enough ink. Tim talks briefly about the first nibble of steroids as the game sought ways to muscle up. Yet the thrill of that great ’68 World Series pushes it all aside. And maybe that is the way it should be.

There was no shortage of drama that October. Bob Gibson provided pure energy on the mound and Lou Brock was a perfect counter point on the base paths. As a Cardianl fan at the time, the Tigers seemed a more pedestrian affair. Denny McLain may have sought media attention, but he was not a proven star despite his 31-win season. Nor were most of the other Tigers. Al Kaline was the lone Tiger with a CV full of All-Star appearances.

Yet Tim Wendel brings them to life, drawing on interviews with the surviving Tiger players as well as from the numerous books from Tiger sports writers, announcers, and others. And he sets up early one of the key narratives of the St. Louis-Detroit match. The city of Detroit was the one that needed the win more. In George Cantor’s book, The Tigers of ’68, he quotes Willie Horton as saying the team was, “put here by God to save the city.”

The Tiger players never set out to win one for a city more beset by urban chaos than any other. However, several of their key players, Horton, Bill Freeham, Mickey Stanley and Jim Northrup were Michigan natives, and many on the team had played most of their careers in the Tiger organization–as Tim documents artfully. They were well aware of the dynamics of the city and the tensions that swirled beside them.

Wendel makes the point repeatedly that in 1968 Detroit was a tender box just waiting for a spark that everyone knew was just around the next corner. Yet somehow the drama of the Tiger pennant drive through those hot summer days captured the attention of the city and held it until October 10 when there was “Dancing in the Streets.” The celebration was legendary. “Beers were passed from car to car, as well as cigarettes of the illegal variety,” wrote Cantor of the celebration that brought traffic to a standstill in the same downtown areas victim to riots the summer before.

As much as the city needed it more, the Tiger players wanted it more. And that is why the Cardinals lost. Not because the Tigers were a better team, but because they played with more heart. That is difficult to say for a Cardinal fan. But Wendel and others make the point unerringly. For a team to get up off the floor like the Tigers did in ’68 and win one against one of the most dominating pitchers in the game, in his career year–that is heart.

So yes, I was disappointed that Tim Wendel could not explain how Richard Nixon was elected president several short weeks after the 1968 World Series. Baseball books, however, are about a game that we love because it is a refuge from the world around us. It provides a safe haven from the boss we work for, the elections our champions lose.

There are those rare occasions, however, when sweeping change to the wider world walks in tandem with baseball, as it did in 1968. Tim Wendel’s book captures the spirit of those times, the way that great players were humbled by the loss of their own heroes, how they recovered–as did the nation–and how they gained new strength to achieve greatness and walk away winners.

The Summer of ’68, by Tim Wendel is published by Da Capo Press and will be out on April1st.  Tim will be a Seamheads Podcast Network guest on the Outta the Parkway Show, March 30, 7-7:30 pm.

Spring Training is full of oversell.  There are plenty of nostrums and carney’s to bark them out. But they will hardly pass muster, like the notion that 37-year old Mark Derosa is part of the answer to the Nationals outfield needs.

However, it is not the press but Davey Johnson who is the one selling Harper the hardest, although he has elite company. Baseball Prospectus (see pages 501-502) may have been the first, but they are certainly not the only ones to link Davey Johnson’s belief in young stars–Strasburg and Harper–to his 1986 Mets team fronted by young marquee stars Daryl Strawberry–24–and Dwight Gooden–21. It is an “intoxicating” brew. Yet it remains to be realized and few believe 2012 will bring it to market.

The comparisons between the 19-year old Gooden–who won 17 games playing for Davey in 1984–are apt to Harper. Gooden was good in ’84, untouchable in 85 and merely excellent in 86.  But after those early accomplishments, it all went downhill too quickly.  Unfair or not, his success as a 19-year old in the Big Apple is sometimes linked to his substance abuse problems that began a few years later. Would he have handled life in the big city better with more seasoning, or was it all just fated to be?

Bryce Harper is unlikely to fall prey to cocaine addiction. Yet the ability to bring more than a 19-year old’s level of maturity to bear on fame and fortuune can only help him withstand whatever problems he might encounter. Can spending time with the Crash Craddock’s in Syracuse make Harper into not only a better player, but a better man? Can Davey Johnson remember back to 1984 and wonder about all of that? It’s hard to know what is going on behind the posturing of the Nationals’ brain trust, but seemingly not.

The more reasoned approach to what the Nationals will look like in 2012 comes from examining players like Jordan Zimmermann, who was the subject of another Spring Training profile in the Washington Post. In contrast to Harper, Zimmermann has worked his way through the system and overcome setbacks already. He is only 25, and stands poised to become a legitimate star in 2012. The odds are that the Zimmermann– with two “n’s”–will have at least as much to do with the Nationals 2012 success as Strasburg, who will be limited to 160 innings.

Zimmermann has more in common perhaps with Ron Darling who pitched second behind Dwight Gooden in the Mets rotation. But it wasn’t just Gooden and Darling, it was Bobbie Ojeda, Sid Fernandez and Rick Aguilera that gave the 1986 World Champion Mets a rotation of fine quality arms from start to finish, not to mention a bullpen of Roger McDowell and Jesse Orosco at their peak.

Again, the similarities to the Nationals of 2012 work better when not wowwed by the stars flashing off the twinkle twins. It is the talent of players like Gio Gonzalez, Wilson Ramos, Danny Espinosa, Michael Morse, and even Anthony Rendon; a bullpen of Storen and Clippard, all of that will likely have as much to do with the Nationals winning an NL pennant as Harper and Strasburg.

Harper sells newspapers and dreams, but it is the depth of talent–the team–that will win pennants. Davey Johnson probably knows all about it, knows that consummate professionals like Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter, Ray Knight and a second-year player named Lenny Dykstra had as much to do with the ’86 World Championship as Daryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden.

Jordan Zimmermann said that the best thing about all of the new talent brought in by Mike Rizzo for 2012 was keeping reporter’s attention elsewhere. Maybe that is just how it works. The blue collar guys that get the work done toil out of the limelight, while the stars shine under the bright lights.

Maybe the best news of the spring so far is Bryce Harper ditching his Twitter account. Maybe he is a quick study, maybe Crash Craddock has already got him under his wing. But in the golden days of summer, when the heat is on, my money is on the two Zimmermans and the rest of the T-E-A-M. And that is what will bring success to the Nationals under Davey Johnson if they are really headed down that same road as the Mets in the mid-80′s.

Most of those gathered to hear Torre might well have been at those old Senator’s games as the balding pates and silver manes bespoke a crowd of knowing veterans. By the end of the evening–almost a full two hours later–it was as if one had never left the den, as if a favorite uncle had dropped by to share the tales of his long and storied career.  Hochberg recognized Torre’s career as one that will likely carry him to Cooperstown in the next few years.

Torre is a living, breathing encyclopedia of baseball history, a witness who played as an All-Star alongside Hank Aaron and Warren Spahn and went on to become one of the most successful managers in the game, ranking historically among managers near the top in years of service and in total wins.

Phil Wood,Washington baseball savant and Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) commentator was a panelist along with fellow MASN broadcaster, Johnny Holiday and Washington Post sports writer, Mike Wise.  Wood asked Torre who his biggest influence was as a manager to start the questioning.

There was no equivocation.  Citing the moment when he became the captain of the St. Louis Cardinals after his 1969 trade as a game changer, Torre said he grew remarkably as a person under the tutelage of Red Schoendienst.  He quit being “so involved with himself,” and realized he could impact the players around him when he became captain of a team that had been to two World Series in a row.  It was the first time Joe Torre thought that managing might be something he wanted to do.

Torre said of Schoendienst, “He let the players play.”  And that approach is what he carried forward from Red.  Comparing himself with other famous managers of his era, he described himself as being more like Jim Leyland, who he said is one of the last to manage largely from his gut instincts.  Tony LaRussa he characterized as being more of a “by the book kind of guy. He controlled the game more,” said Torre of LaRussa.  But Torre acknowledged he was always more of a Schoendist kind of manager.  “I was in charge,” but he said that he felt he got the best from his players by giving them more control of the game.

Torre drew a round of applause when he said of the Moneyball trend in baseball, “Some of us don’t care for it.”  He acknowledged that for a small market team, the stats were a legitimate place for Billy Beane to look for an edge, and he offered that Brad Pitt in the movie nailed Beane as a character.  But Joe Torre as a manager used statistical information only in limited situations.

With many Yankee fans in the audience, Torre’s great success in NYC was a prominent focus of the evening. He  said he had not really considered managing the Yankees even when the job came open several times earlier in his career. But in 1995 he was interviewed for the job of GM for the Yankees and was offered the job.  Joe asked if there was any vacation that came with the job.  The answer: “working for George Steinbrenner there is no vacation.”  He turned that offer down because his wife was pregnant and wanted an assurance of time to be with her.

But shortly thereafter Torre was offered the job as Yankee manager.  He accepted that one, and the rest, as they say, “is history.”

Torre said that a remote consideration in evaluating the Yankee offer was knowing that after managing the Mets, Braves, and Cardinals for 15 years, he was 100 games below .500.  He knew how committed to winning Steinbrenner was, “but no one worked for George that long,” so he never actually thought his time with the Yankees would endure for him to become 5^th longest tenured among managers with a .538 winning percentage.

“It was a bonus for me,” Torre said as he described that unsuspected longevity.

Torre’s relationship with Steinbrenner was a touchstone several times during the evening.   Asked about his input into personnel decisions, Torre said he was consulted often but not always.  He said of Steinbrenner that when players were placed on irrevocable waivers, George often could not pass them up, taking them just so that, “no one else could have them.”

He described Steinbrenner as a generous man—”when people did not expect that he had to be.”  While “the Boss” did much to help kids of police and firefighters after 9-11 and much good work in Tampa, Torre said resolutely of Steinbrenner, “He was a bully.”

Torre said there was never any doubt who was in charge with the Yankees and there was no place worse to watch a game than in the owner’s box with the boss.  For all of that, Torre said,  ”We had a mutual respect for each other.”  Torre told a few humorous stories about his departed employer.

One anecdote was about a meeting following a very sloppy Yankee loss that particularly outraged “the Boss.”  The angry Steinbrenner called all the coaching and front office personnel to his office after the game and started the meeting by asking, “If anyone here feels they are doing the best they can, you can leave right now.”  Bench coach Don Zimmer immediately exited the room.  There was considerable fear that Zimmer would be fired on the spot, but Torre worked hard to explain to the outraged Steinbrenner that the way he had phrased the question had been less than artful.

Torre told many great stories from his playing days as well.  He said it was one of his great honors to catch Warren Spahn’s 300^th win as a 21-year old, but one of the best tales was about Bob Gibson. Gibson was widely known never to talk to opposing players in any circumstance. “The only hitters he would talk to were those wearing that Cardinal uniform,” Torre said.

Joe first encountered Gibson on supposedly equal terms when the two men were both National League All-Stars in 1965.  Joe was an All Star catcher with the Braves and he caught all nine innings of that 1965 game.  Manager Gene Mauch brought Gibson into the game in the eighth inning to close out the win.

Not only did Gibson not speak to Torre in the clubhouse, but would not even acknowledge Torre when he came to the mound in the ninth inning of the game to talk about Tony Oliva, the American League All-Star who was coming to the plate to lead off the final inning with a precarious one-run lead hanging in the balance.

“Oliva would wear the ball out down-and-in,” Torre recounted.  Gibson got two strikes on Oliva and Torre felt he had to go out to discuss what would be an important pitch to a great hitter.  Torre recounted that when he told Gibbie not to throw the next pitch down-and-in to Oliva, Gibson just stared through him as if he were not even there.

“When I got back behind the plate, I put down the sign for the fastball and Gibson threw one, but it was down-and-in and Oliva hit it to the wall for a leadoff double.”  Gibson struck out the next three batters to win the game, but even in the shower after the game, Gibson never said a word to Torre.

When Torre was traded to the Cardinals in 1969, Gibson was one of the first players he ran into.  Said Torre of that first encounter with Gibson , “I reamed his ass out good,” knowing Gibson would finally talk to him with Torre wearing the St. Louis uniform.

Torre talked several times about scurrilous writers and fans, but saved his greatest skepticism for the mental workings of Boston Red Sox fans.  He told a tale of one such fan he encountered in an elevator during the 2004 Championship Series, a series that got considerable attention during the evening.

The fan asked, “You’re Joe Torre, right?”  Torre nodded and the fan immediately told Joe, “We’re gonna beat you tonight.”  Torre smiled and was polite and they rode numerous floors with the fan staring intently at Torre.  When they were approaching the lobby floor, the fan had worked up his best line for the Yankee skipper and fired it off, “If I had the choice of beating the New York Yankees, or capturing Saddam Hussein, I would pick beating the Yankees.”

Torre was in NYC during 9-11 and recounted the tragedy and how he realized how much reach baseball had when those who had lost loved ones were cheered by Bernie Williams and other Yankee players who went down to visit near the site in the days after the tragedy.  Torre said that the Yankees got emotional welcomes that September in every ballpark, and  even in Boston there were signs that said, “We love NYC.”

Torre talked fondly of Nationals manager Davey Johnson, and expressed confidence that  Johnson will know how best to bring along Bryce Harper, who is not the first cocky young ball player who will be tested by failure at the big league level.

There was so much baseball, so much history, and the two hours were gone before you knew it.  But for someone who loves the game, it all comes down to passing that love along to a new generation.  Torre acknowledged that baseball had work to do to win back the trust of fans, but “it is so important to teach kids the love of the game.”

Torre was asked how baseball can reach today’s youth. “We have to find that nerve in the next generation of fans,” Torre said.  “We need to appeal to both genders…to put a face on the game,” Torre said as he spoke of the multiple fronts baseball needs to attack to help baseball better connect with a new generation of fans.  “We have to strike a nerve with them,” he repeated.

If only the kids could see the game through the eyes of Joe Torre.  If only he really could be a favorite uncle gesturing with those long fingers and huge hands to the kids of today as they seek to understand the game,. If only they could sit listening to 72-year old Joe Torre as he shares the tales of his playing days when baseball was king.

He certainly “struck a nerve” with the fans at Lisner Auditorium Wednesday night and whatever their ages, we can only hope he will continue to do so for many years to come.

Baseball Reference.com currently lists the standings from last year with payroll rather than wins. At first glance it is clear that the aggregate wealth the Yankees and Phillies brought to bear on the season purchased the most wins in the two leagues in 2011. Both teams outspent everyone else and the results seem predictable. But the long and winding road of the 162-game season led them not to a championship, but to first-round elimination. So what does money buy?

There is another correlation that is rarely mentioned. Money follows not only certain markets, but it also reflects the age of established, big-money names. So the Yankees put together a team of established stars, but the mean age of their starting lineup was 31.7. The Phillies, determined to keep their winning club together, spent almost as much money but were even older with an average age of 32.4

With the playoffs raging last October, Phil Van Horn and Mark Patrick opined on Seamheads Friday that the Yankees and Phillies were too old to play through the incredible grind of the season and still have anything left for the post-season. Their wisdom was belied by the relatively older Cardinals when they bested the youthful Rangers behind Lance Berkman, Pujols and Freese. But their maxim held for much of the playoffs and emphasizes the point that money buys established, older stars who tend to be at the back end of their prime playing years (28-32) or worse.

So how much of a shift of real power is there towards the AL? The heart of the Angels lineup will be Albert Pujols–32, Vernon Wells–33 and Tori Hunter–36. The rest of the team is young  and their star-studded rotation is in its prime. They are more like the Cardinals than the Yankees. Place them next to the Texas Rangers who are as young and talented as anyone for the past two seasons, and you have an AL West that has to be seen as one of the strongest divisions in the game.

What does the NL have to compare with THAT? For one thing the NL can claim the two most recent World Championships–just saying. And the AL was represented in the Championship for the past two years not by its wealthiest team, but by its youngest and hungriest–the Texas Rangers.

The formula that Texas is following is most closely being emulated by the Cincinnati Reds. With Jay Bruce, Joey Votto and Brandon Phillips, the Reds have a lineup that reminds one of Nelson Cruz, Josh Hamilton and Ian Kinsler. And Matt Latos, Johnny Cueto, Mike Leake and Aroldis Chapman are as young and talented a group as anything in the AL, reminiscent certainly of Lincecum, Cain and the Giants group that gelled in 2010.

And then the NL has the Miami Marlins who brought in Mark Buerhle to go with Josh Johnson and Anibal Sanchez; Jose Reyes to go with Mike Stanton.  The Nationals are the consummate young and hungry team who will have Stephen Strasburg back to go with Gio Gonzalez and Jordan Zimmermann.

What escapes notice so often is the team nature of baseball. Putting together the most expensive group of veteran talent makes good copy and good teams, but it does not win championships consistently. What the Texas Rangers had for the past two seasons was the most talented nine players on the diamond at the close of the season, the team that most wanted to win and still had the legs to do so in October.

Payroll is just one yardstick for weighing talent. There is no denying the correlation between payroll and winning percentage. But there is another measure that is gaining currency–so to speak.  Youth, talent and desire come together is ways that often age, wisdom and complacency do not.

Monte started as an 18-year-old kid, signing with Abe Manley to play with the Newark Eagles. By the time he was 22, he was one of the best players in the Negro Leagues, leading the Negro National League in batting in 1941. He was one of the pioneers in breaking the color barrier of Major League Baseball with the New York Giants.  So much history for one man to see.

Q. You mentioned to me that Washington, DC was one of your favorite places to play when you were with the Newark Eagles, could you share some of your memories from those years.

Monte Irvin. Yes, Washington was one of my favorite places to play. Number one you had great fans in Washington. We had some great games against the Homestead Grays. The team had moved there from Pennsylvania because they could draw better there. The Grays had a great team, some of the finest like Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Roy Partlow and their pitching star, Ray Brown. He was a great right-handed pitcher and a star of the Homestead Grays.

We always knew it was going to be a battle when we played the Grays. There weren’t many players better than Josh Gibson. One season he hit more home runs in Griffith Stadium than the rest of the entire American League. So he was a great home run hitter.

We had some tough games with the Grays. Course we didn’t have any great love for one another when we were playing. We fought hard on the field, but after it was over we went out together and had a few beers. Washington had such great places to go after the game, good-looking women. We would stay at the Dunbar Hotel that was a great location, lots of big names stayed there. But there were clubs–I forget their names, it was such a long time ago. I think one of the places was called Facen’s where we used to hang out with Ray Brown. We could go to the Howard Theatre, which was known for hosting all of the big bands of the time. There were places like that to see some of the best entertainers of the day, Billie Holliday might be singing or Ella Fitzgerald, or someone like that.

Q. You were signed by Abe Manley when you were only 18, but by the time you were 22 you were an established star in the Negro League, one of the best players in the league. What are some of your memories of getting started as a professional ball player at such a young age?

Monte Irvin. Well, when I signed I was in school, at Lincoln University and I had to play under an assumed name, Jimmy Nelson, so I could continue to play at Lincoln. I made $150 dollars a month back then. It was a lot of money because that was the Depression. Doesn’t sound like much now but it went a long way. But yes I had some good seasons with the Eagles. We had some fine teams back then. We had Leon Day on the mound. There weren’t many better than him and we had Willie Wells at shortstop.

Q. You were an All-Star in the Negro Leagues in 1941 and after the war as well. Many people fail to appreciate how big an event the East-West Game—the Negro League All Star Game in Chicago—was. Could you share some of your memories of it.

Monte Irvin. Yes, the East-West Game at Comiskey Stadium drew better than the Major League All-Star Game some years. I know one year we had 52,000 fans for the game and it was a bigger crowd than what they had that same year for the Major League game. It was quite a spectacle, folks got dressed up and there were celebrities there, people like Joe Lewis, Lena Horne, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Count Basie. It was a huge event. Back then baseball was king, there wasn’t anything else like it. People don’t appreciate that any more.

Q. Bob Luke in his book on Effa Manley, makes the point that Negro League Baseball played an important role in the black community during its day. He suggested that other than the black church, there may not have been a more important institution in the community at the time. Do you agree with that assessment?

Monte Irvin. Oh, absolutely. The fans could look out at the games and see good-looking athletes, men of great ability playing the Great American Pastime. Sure it was important. The fans went to the ball games on the weekends, on a Saturday and a Sunday afternoon, and they could get away from all the racism and segregation that they put up with for the other five days of the week.  They could forget all of that and just watch a ball game and forget those other things. Watching those ball players perform gave them hope, gave them hope that someday things would change. They would go to those ball games and come away with a good feeling. Not just in DC, but in all the places we used to play, Indianapolis, Chicago, Atlanta.  We used to train in Savannah, Georgia. You ever hear of a place called Ogeechee Road? We used to train out there. But Negro League baseball had a great impact. It gave people hope.

And it was good for black businesses. It gave people money to spend in the neighborhood too.

Q. You played in the All-Star Game for the National League in 1952 as well, did you not?

Monte Irvin. No, no, I never played in that game. I played in the Negro League All-Star Games in 1941, 1946, 1947 and 1948, but in 1952, I broke my ankle in April. I was named to the team because of the season I had in 1951, but I did not even dress for the 1952 game, I just sat in the dugout in street clothes. It was a great honor, but nothing like playing in the games all those other years.

Q. You played in Mexico in 1942 and were the MVP of the Mexican League that year. What was life like in Mexico and what are some of your memories from that year?

Monte Irvin. I went down to Mexico for the money initially. I was paid $700 a month down there and I had a maid for my apartment. I had been making $150 a month playing for the Newark Eagles. I wanted to get married and start a family and so I needed more money. Abe and Effa Manley could not do that, so I left to play in Mexico. Lots of black ball players did.

What was more important than the money was the way you were treated. It was the first time in my life that I ever felt free. There was no discrimination in Mexico. You could walk down the street like anyone else. There were some Texans that would come down there sometimes and try to treat you like back home, but the Mexicans would have none of it. It was a special place for me.

Q. You played a good bit in Puerto Rico during the winters as well, did you not. Roberto Clemente saw you play and you became his idol when he was growing up, is that correct?

Monte Irvin. Clemente saw me when I could still throw. When I was playing in Puerto Rico, I was young and still in my prime. He told me he wanted to play like me. He was known for that great arm. I told him that if he wanted to throw like me, all he had to do was practice.

When I was playing my best ball, I lost some time to the war. I went in in March of 1943. I was stationed initially at Fort Eustis, which was close to Washington, DC. We could get a pass and go into town and watch a game. I remember going into Griffith Stadium while I was stationed there and seeing the Kansas City Monarchs play the Homestead Grays. I think we went in three times and every time we went to see a game.

Q. You were there when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record in Atlanta. Was that a special moment for you?

Monte Irvin. No, not really. I mean it was great to see him break the record and I was glad to be there for that. But I was representing the Commissioner’s Office at the time. I worked for Bowie Kuhn and he asked me to go to the game for him and I had to go. But Bowie Kuhn should have been there for that game. I don’t care what kind of speaking engagement he had, he should have been there for the event and I could not really appreciate it knowing that I was there instead of the Commissioner.

Q. Monte, I want to thank you for talking to me, it has been quite an honor for me and I appreciate the kind words about life here in Washington, DC back during the hey day of the Negro Leagues.

Monte Irvin. Well, I know you’ve got a good team there for the coming season. I hope you get back some of those guys who missed last season. If some of those players perform up to their capabilities, I think you will have a pretty good team there this year. I think your team will really be a surprise to a lot of people.

I want to thank Bob Luke, author of Effa Manley, the Most Famous Woman in Baseball, for providing the contact with Monte Irvin and Don Conway who assisted as well.  But most of all, my thanks to Monte Irvin, who is one of the most extraordinary men with whom I have had the pleasure to discuss the game. 

In the mind of the baseball everyman, or at least those committed to the NL East, the question is: “Does Fielder make the Nationals instantly into contenders?”

On the most superficial level Prince Fielder will add win shares to the Nationals lineup as few players could do in the NL. Equally important he will have significant positive spill over effects to others in the lineup that are relatively easy to calculate.

Prince Fielder was the fourth most valuable offensive force in the National League in 2011.  His Wins Above Replacement (WAR) of 5.9 was exceeded only by Matt Kemp, Ryan Braun and Jose Reyes.  His impressive six-year average slash line from Baseball Reference is .282/.390/.540–an average of 37 home runs and 103 RBI.

It is easy to calculate the aggregate WAR for each of the NL East teams for 2012 as they stand now.  With the Miami Marlins adding Jose Reyes to a starting lineup that already featured Mike Stanton–behind only Matt Kemp as one of the most dangerous hitters in the league–the Marlins become the most potent offense in the NL East, besting even Philadelphia.

If the Nationals can add Fielder he will help immensely, but a remake will need to be multi-dimensional.  In 2010, when the Nationals lineup featured both Adam Dunn and Ryan Zimmerman at its heart, the team managed only 4.04 runs per game compared to a league average of 4.33. They were the third worst team in scoring runs in the NL.

Yet in 2011, by subtracting Dunn and adding Jayson Werth, Danny Expinosa, Michael Morse and Wilson Ramos for full seasons, the Nationals raised their relative clout in the NL to closer to league average.  They managed only 3.88 runs per game but the league average dropped to  4.13.  All of those young hitters will be back and a little stronger.  Adding a hitter like Fielder will only help them. Another intangible is the pressure Fielder could take off Jayson Werth. A bounce back season for him would be a big addition.

One of the easiest comparisons for Washington fans will be between Adam Dunn and Prince Fielder. Both are prodigious sluggers and liabilities in the field. As MASN commentator Phil Wood argued on the Outta the Parkway Show several weeks ago, Fielder’s bat will do more than Dunn’s did because he strikes out less and makes better contact generally.  The difference can be seen in Dunn’s less impressive WAR for 2010 of 3.6 and Fielder’s much better lifetime batting average.

Regardless what happens to Werth and the younger Nationals hitters, the safest predictable side effect of adding Fielder to the lineup will accrue to Ryan Zimmerman. With Adam Dunn hitting behind the Z-man in 2009 and 2010, Zimmerman’s WAR of 5.2 was one of the best in the league. Last season, without that protection, it sank to a more pedestrian 2.3.  Raising Zimmerman back to his historic highs of 2009-2010 would add significant additional pop for the Nationals. IF Fielder can raise the offensive profiles of both Werth and Zimmerman, he can raise the teams aggregate WAR to within striking distance of the Phillies.

There is a down side. Fielder would be a defensive liability on a team that has prided itself on fielding. Most fielding metrics place Fielder in the bottom of the NL and his 15 errors in 2011 led the league for first basemen. He will have two fine defensive infielders to work with in Ryan Zimmerman and Danny Espinosa. Like Dunn, he is a large target to throw to at first base, but he will need to return to defensive performance levels like 2009 when he committed only four errors.

Assessing Fielder’s impact is a complex equation but one of the most difficult considerations is how good the other teams really are.  In 2011 the Philadelphia offense slipped markedly as Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins all had off-years. Is it the impact of age, too much time at the top, or a combination of the two?

Even if the Phillies can shrug off any complacency that may have slipped into their demeanor, they are not the same team as the one that scored 5.06 runs per game in 2009 to lead the National League.  They have been slipping every year. The aging trend cannot be reversed and the Philadelphia lineup will not return to its peak production when all is said and done in 2012.

If the trend line for the City of Brotherly Love is down, its opposite can be found in Miami. Jose Reyes should rebound in new environs and Mike Stanton is poised to have the kind of season that Matt Kemp had in 2011.  In slugging terms alone, Miami should take over as the beast of the East with Philadelphia and Washington somewhere just behind.

The NL East race will not be resolved solely on the basis of power. The Phillies still have the best pitching staff in the NL East and while neither Halladay, nor Lee is any younger, they have to be considered the best duo in the NL. Miami added Mark Buerhle and Heath Bell to one of the worst pitching staffs in the NL. Can they transform the Marlins staff? Ozzie Guillen has brought in Carlos Zambrano and the back end of the Florida rotation has real question marks, of which Zambrano is just one. Still the Marlins pitching should be good enough for the team to contend.

The Nationals added Gio Gonzalez to what was one of the better pitching units in the NL. The bullpen was the strength of the team and that will remain the case going forward. The Nationals finished strong in 2011 behind Stephen Strasburg who had six starts in September, 2011. Projecting roughly 170 innings for Strasburg and adding Gonzalez will make the Nationals rotation extremely formidable.

Regardless how it all shakes out, if the Nationals sign Prince Fielder, the influx of talent into the NL East will make it one of the best divisions in the game in 2012. The rise of the Nationals and Marlins will make the division one of the hardest to predict. The biggest losers are most obviously the Mets. The Braves have not done enough to bolster themselves to keep pace and could be looking up at the rest.

So, back to the original question. Does the addition of Prince Fielder make the Nationals into contenders? Yes it does, but not as a singular move. Only when evaluated as part of an emerging whole does Fielder make the difference. By placing Fielder into a young and developing lineup the impact is huge. Couple it with what could be the one of the best pitching staffs in the NL, and Washington is going to push both Philadelphia and Miami for the NL East title.

For a team that lost over 100 games in 2008-2009. that is about as good as it gets. If Prince Fielder is what pushes them over the top, he will be as popular a figure in DC as… Well, truth be told, Washington fans cannot remember back that far. But if Mike Rizzo and Mark Lerner can make it happen, it will be fun trying.

Presidents and baseball were once as apple pie as kissing babies and walking in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. When baseball came back to DC in 2005, George Bush tried to breath a little life back into a once proud tradition. For a moment it seemed as if all those intervening years after Richard Nixon threw out the last Opening Day pitch in 1971 had not happened. But then in 2007 Bush left the chore to Dick Cheney. After the Vice President came to Opening Day that year, it was as if a darkness settled over the idea and it has not really gone away.

President Obama confounded the problem when he went to Chicago for his first Opening Day. The South Side team is all Joe Lunch Bucket and maybe that made sense back then. But when the President finally made an appearance in DC for Opening Day, he had that silly White Sox hat on. Was there ever a President to come to Opening Day in DC with another team’s hat on? Historic Presidency indeed!

Maybe someone at the White House should check out the box scores. Mr. President, do you realize that Larry Summers could well be playing first base on the South Side of Chicago before the 2012 season is over? Wear that White Sox hat if you want but there is such a better team playing literally within earshot.

For those of you not from or familiar with Washington, the President literally can look out from the rear of the White House, over the clearing that is the Ellipse, and see the lights of Nationals Park in the night sky calling to him. “The Nationals are playing tonight and they are winning,” the lights call out from not so far away. “Stephen Strasburg has a no-hitter going into the ninth and you could be on every national sports program in the country if you were there,” the sky voices whisper to Plouffe and Axelrod.

And maybe the President wants to get a little of that action–the winning part, I mean. Again, it’s an election year as I recall. He’s likely running against a guy more at home on a polo poney than with a “Mitt” in his hand. Doesn’t someone at the White House smell that apple pie cooling on the sill? And by the way, isn’t that a wide open window of opportunity just above it? Eli Gold could figure this one out.

The clincher is the dynamite focus group that Mike Rizzo is putting together for the coming season. Getting the President interested should be a relatively easy matter. He’s a Harvard guy, a policy wonk, and there is real substance as entry point for just that special someone looking to become a knowledgeable Nationals fan. He can put in his dime on the Prince Fielder question for example.

Frame it–that’s what pols do–like it’s the essay question for the LSAT writing sample this year and it goes like this. You are a baseball GM for a National League team and you want to know whether it is worth $20-25 million a year for a first baseman who doesn’t own a mitt, but whose name is Fielder. You already have an slick fielding first baseman named LaRoche but one who will likely hit a dozen fewer home runs and drive in 40 fewer runs.  Should you spend your money on a one-dimensional slugger or first try first to land a long-shot Cuban center fielder who may hit almost as many home runs and fills the biggest hole in your lineup for less than half the money??  You have two weeks to frame your answer.

I would slip a note to the President to think hard about Cespedes. The Cuban phenom–or not so phenom–can be had for $10 million annually or less on a contract that is probably shorter term; five years is a good winning bet. And there is a bonus that only a savvy pol will see. The Marlins are your chief rival for Cespedes as well as the team pushing you hard to be the next big thing in the NL East. There is a real concern that if the Cuban center fielder becomes a star in Miami he cements the Cuban vote for your opponent for years to come.

It’s like on Hollywood Squares. You bid on Cespedes not just for the potential outfield of Cespedes, Harper and Werth for the next four years, but to “block” the Miami Marlins.

Sure, Fielder will put fans in the stadium and is a relative sure thing. You know he is going to hit those moon shots and provide cover for Ryan Zimmerman in the lineup. You can trade LaRoche to the Rays for pitching prospects to replace some of the depth you gave up in your last trade. You may have to pay some of LaRoche’s salary to do that, but you will recoup that money in Fielder’s ticket sales and peripherals. Tough call, but these are the complexities that make baseball such a great game. It’s like figuring out the health care debate–or at least something close.

So, Mr. President, Calvin Coolidge got hooked on the Nationals back in the 1920′s and it was really his finest hour. You have accomplished far more than he ever did, done many impressive things in only your first three years.

There is a chance here to touch all the bases while you can and do it during an election year. Get involved with your local team while they are on the rise. Maybe they let you down, maybe they make you proud. That’s what it’s all about. Since you are going to be here another four years, get on board now.

Of course it’s good politics too, as American as apple pie. And let’s be real, it works with a demographic that you need some help with. So think about it. Pitchers and catchers report in little more than a month, and the season lasts til almost election day. What’s not to like?

There is real baseball value from adding the hard throwing Oakland left-hander who averaged almost a strikeout an inning last season. The Nationals rotation–fronting Strasburg, Gonzalez and Zimmermann–will feature the “K” this season like no DC team has since 2005. It was in that first year that Esteban Loaiza and John Patterson put up gaudy numbers, each approaching a strikeout an inning before their careers faded into sepia-toned memories.

Gio Gonzalez transforms the Nationals rotation from having just two of the best young arms in the National League: Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann, into one of the deepest and most dangerous. As real as that value is, its importance compounds when stacked up against the moves of the NL East Florida Marlins. When they signed Jose Reyes and outbid the Nationals for Mark Buerhle, the value of adding Gonzalez became critical.

Playing eighteen games next year against NL East teams like the Phillies and Braves was daunting enough, but when Florida added Reyes to a lineup that boasts Hanley Ramirez and Mike Stanton, Washington’s standing as a team on the rise was suddenly in jeopardy. Gio Gonzalez was Mike Rizzo saying to the Marlins, “I see your Mark Buerhle and raise you a Gio Gonzalez.”  Mark Buerhle is one of the most consistent pitchers in the game today, but adding Gonzalez is a substantial raise indeed.

The Nationals finished third in the NL East last season, winning 21 more games than they did in their back-to-back, 100-loss seasons in 2009-2010. The true value of Jayson Werth for the 2011 Nationals cannot be calculated in his OPS or BPA, but rather comes from the validation he and Adam LaRoche gave to a young team searching for identity.

Gio Gonzalez has similar potential. He ranked in the top ten in strikeouts, wins, and ERA among all American League pitchers and is only 26, just entering the prime of his career. He has proven himself in ways that Zimmermann and Strasburg hope to do in 2012.

It is difficult to determine which of the two: Jordan Zimmermann or Stephen Strasburg, is more driven to succeed. Each has shown remarkable resilience in battling back from arm surgery in the shortest possible time. Halladay, Hamels and Lee are money in the bank, but Davey Johnson must feel pretty good about who he will slot into the lineup against the best in the NL and how dependable they will be.

Chien-Ming Wang pitched well at the end of the 2011 season, getting stronger every time he went out. He appeared to be reaching the form he had in his two 19-win seasons with the Yankees. There was enough there to hope that along with John Lannan and Ross Detwiler, the Nationals can throw some of the best arms in the NL East every game they play.

Most talent scouts believe the Nationals gave up more than they should have to get Gonzalez. It is a fair point that anyone who followed the emergence of Brad Peacock last season would readily concede. The four players Oakland received were all among the best in the Nationals vastly improved farm system.

But at some point you quit building for tomorrow and GM Mike Rizzo decided it is time to make the move for today.

Gonzalez is just one part of a Nationals payroll that will be considerably higher in 2012. When raises for other emerging stars like Michael Morse and Tyler Clippard are factored in, the total is likely to be in the $80 million range. Yet there is still plenty of room to add one more offensive weapon. The Nationals appear to be in the running for Yeonis Cespedes along with the ever pesky Marlins. Do the Fish have enough left in the bank for one more big signing?

Whether the Nationals get the Youtube wunderkind or not, they are likely to add a center fielder and someone who can run down fly balls in the out field expanse of Nationals Park. One thing that is certain, whoever Mike Rizzo signs, he will fit the very demanding mold Rizzo works from. The Nationals GM has been out bid when the numbers started to spiral out of control for C.J. Wilson and Buerhle, but he kept his chips for the right move when it came along.

He cannot trade away any more of the future talent. Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon are not going anywhere. But Rizzo has some coin left. The book is still out on Yeonis Cespedes. He hit 33 home runs in his last season in Cuba and has an exciting profile that comes largely from a power bat. But is he ready to play every day in the majors though? The answers to that question vary. However, there is one variable with less guess work. Anyone who has seen the videos know that Cespedes could add the same kind of electricity to the Nationals lineup that Strasburg did on the mound. That may well be worth the gamble.

So will the end game for Washington be to go all in on both Cespedes and Jorge Soler? Nationals scouts have watched Cespedes work out more than a dozen times and have invested nearly as much time in Soler. Are they the kind of players Rizzo wants? The answer will come early in 2012.

Regardless the verdict, Nationals fans are likely to walk through the gates this coming April with that magic feeling–the same one they had in March 2008 when Nationals Park opened for the first time and there was something shiny and new to explore. Gio Gonzalez may have cost a fortune in loot, but he could be worth the cost.  Adding him to this young Washington team says in bold letters, “Its going to be a very Happy New Year.”

One hundred years ago there were no GM’s, no director of minor league operations or director of scouting.  There were just veterans of the baseball wars, men like John McGraw, Connie Mack and Clark Griffith who managed a complex baseball operation from the dugout. They were one-man operations that could be labeled a cult of personality without repercussion.

As  1911 drew to a close, Clark Griffith began a process of remaking the Washington Nationals into a competitor.  In the decade after the founding of the American League in 1901, the Washington Nationals had finished with remarkable consistency at the bottom of the league.  They were eighth in an eight-team league four times, seventh four times, and sixth place only twice. The team was known as a place where veteran players went to end their careers.

Griffith announced on December 9, 1911 in the Washington Post, “If anybody has any young ball players to dispose of, whose record makes them look like men with a chance to prove of value…I will be prepared to talk business.” True to his word Griffith quickly dispatched the veterans to quiet pastures and called up young players. He had a star in Clyde Milan in center field, but he added two rookies, Howie Shanks–only 21–and Danny Moeller, 27 to the corner outfield spots.

He had veteran George McBride at shortstop, whom he made his team captain.  But the rest of the infield were all new and averaged 24 years of age.  Chick Gandil at first base and Eddie Foster at third were probably the best of the new players, but together they fashioned a smart, fast baseball nine that played good defense and quick, efficient baseball generally.

Of course there was Walter Johnson and it is easy to focus on the star of the team, although the Big Train would have never allowed it back in the day. Ever the modest giant among his peers, Johnson’s career would take off with a new team playing behind him. The 1912 season was really his breakout and from then onward, he led the league in ERA, wins, strikeouts and numerous other categories frequently.

Would he have prospered without Griffith? Like any academic question the answer is complicated, but after nullifying his jump to the Federal League in 1915, Johnson gave credit to Griff as his mentor and the two men re-united to remain the stalwarts of Washington baseball for two decades. And what a time it was in Washington.

In 1912, Griffith’s first year, the newly formed Nationals finished second in the American League, spending the year in the pennant race until the final month. Their record of 91 wins and 61 losses is a difficult standard for current Washington fans to imagine. If Davey Johnson can pilot the Nationals to a finish 30 games over .500 in 2012, he will be carried off the field on the shoulders of the gathered fans at the last game.

Griffith’s new charges finished in second again in 1913 just to prove it was no fluke. It was Walter Johnson’s best year as a pitcher and player. For the next dozen years the team was in the first division consistently and dropped to seventh only twice.

The remaking of the Nationals 100 years ago was largely accomplished through the vision and hard work of a single man, Clark Griffith. Ultimately he remade his original lineup–with the exception of Johnson–into the 1924 World Series winners  (I encourage fans in DC to go online with their local libraries and use ProQuest to examine the history of that year’s Series triumph).

Yet baseball changed remarkably during Griffith’s era. Men like Babe Ruth and Branch Rickey rewrote the history of the game and painted men like Clark Griffith–who refused to change–into a corner. But for two decades–from 1912 until 1933–Griffith won three American League pennants and a World Series title. From 1923 to 1933–the greatest decade of baseball in DC–the Nationals finished fifth once but were otherwise in the pennant race most years.

Today the mantle of Clark Griffith is worn by Mike Rizzo, the GM, and Davey Johnson, the dugout manager. Rizzo failed to sign any of the free agent stars at the recent winter meetings. The inflated salaries for Pujols, Buerhle and C.J. Wilson were jaw-dropping. Closed out of those markets, Rizzo will continue to be aggressive in the off-season to improve the team, but ultimately he must depend on a core of young players to mature and improve their games.

On the Seamheads “Outta the Parkway” podcast show last Friday, Ian Desmond–the dean of young talent in Washington–said that all they can do is “to keep on getting better.” It was an acknowledgement that the team’s best baseball is still to come and an honest commitment that echoes the ethic of Clark Griffith from a time long ago.

The DC youth movement may seem a mundane prescription for the future. Teams like the Angels have been anointed champs in December. Yet history is really our best guide to the future. Stephen Strasburg, like Walter Johnson, will improve dramatically in 2012 and could be on the verge of establishing himself as one of the dominant forces in the game.

Conversely, many of the players who reaped the giant bonuses in recent days are at a stage where their careers can only decline. Tom Boswell had an excellent historical analysis of the likely scenario for Albert Pujols’ tenure in Los Angeles. The title for Boswell’s column might well have been, “The Race Is to the Young.”

Washington has a roster filled with players like Jordan Zimmerman, Brad Peacock, Drew Storen Wilson Ramos and Danny Espinosa, all of whom are heading into their peak playing years. They will provide Davey Johnson considerable fire power in his first full year at the helm.

Is it 1912 all over again? Only time will tell. But Davey Johnson and Mike Rizzo have the ghost of Clark Griffith for inspiration. Griffith worked through out the winter and spring of 1912 filling out his roster. One hundred years on and the game is still the same, just played up on a higher level.

Ted Leavengood is the Author of Clark Griffith, The Old Fox of Washington Baseball, from McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, available from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com where holiday discounts may apply.

There is the issue of center field with so many options there that even Santa’s head must be spinning. And finding a package big enough for Yeonis Cespedes could be difficult. Will the team that signs him have to display a rolling version of the video at the ballpark?

For relief from the grind of pulling up the various rumor sites every two or three hours, there is consideration of Jim Riggleman. Our favorite Washington manager of 2010 is back in the saddle again, having signed with the Cincinnati Reds to manage their Double-A affiliate in Pensacola.

My friend Marc Hall opined that it is poetic justice for Riggleman to be managing a team called the “Blue Wahoos.” I mean no disrespect for the people of Pensacola and they can call their Double-A baseball team whatever pays the rent. But don’t count on Riggleman to help much in that regard. The grass grow doesn’t grow under his feet long enough to pay for much of any thing.

The real poetic justice in the hiring of Riggleman is the idea, surfaced in a Cincinnati Reds blog, that he will be putting pressure on Dusty Baker, the reigning Cincinnati manager. Riggleman was driven crazy last season by the idea that Davey Johnson, hired as a “special assistant” to Washington GM Mike Rizzo, would take his job at season’s end. For Riggleman to be the manager waiting in the wings might offer some consolation if it were true.

Realistic comparison of the two situations is strained at best. First, Dusty Baker is actually a fine manager who has had remarkable success over the years. He was a consistent winner with the San Francisco Giants during the Barry Bonds years and has had success elsewhere including winning the NL Central for the Reds in 2010. His win-loss percentage is well above .500.

Compare that to Riggleman who brought in two winners on the north side of Chicago, but whose overall won-loss record is relatively anemic at .445. That record spans 12 seasons, but includes six partial seasons. Other than his tenure with the Cubs in the second half of the 1990′s, Riggleman has been brought in most often to clean up a mess as precursor to a permanent hire. He had seen all too often the situation that unfolded in Washington. He knew what Davey Johnson was doing sitting with Rizzo at games.

There are many here in DC that can only wish Riggleman well however his situation evolves with the Reds. He is a local guy who has made good. Would he have had better options for this year had he been the one who piloted the Nationals to a 80-81 record at season’s end? Even if after that success he had been displaced by Davey Johnson I think he would be able to find something better than the Blue Wahoos.

One thing for certain, he would have put more pressure on the Nationals had he stayed and succeeded, than he is likely to put on Dusty Baker from Pensacola. Baker is in the last year of his contract and if he leaves and Riggleman takes over in the off-season, my bet is that Jim is once again a transitional figure. He might get the Cincinnati job, but he won’t have it for long. Things just haven’t worked that way for Jim Riggleman very often

I wish I could worry longer about Riggleman but there is rumor central to check out. By the way, Santa, we have been very, very good here in DC.   Either way, Happy Holidays!!

LaRussa joins Joe Torre and Bobby Cox as long-tenured managers who have hung it up. Their names were synonymous with winning baseball and there are few names of equal gravitas to replace them. Those three retirees account for eight World Series wins in the past two decades. Add Cito Gaston to the list–who also retired in 2010–and there are ten WS rings accounted for in the past 22 years. Add Lou Piniella who left in 2010 and you have half of them.

So many familiar names gone, so much change at the top of baseball in the past few years. Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post pointed out on Tuesday that Davey Johnson is the oldest manager in the game currently at 68. When Frank Robinson came over as manager of the Washington Nationals in 2005, he was 70. It seemed an advanced age but then there were other similar managers from his generation. Bobby Cox and Torre were both 64 at the time and Jack McKeon was 74. Charley Manuel may seem older than dirt, but he is only 67.

Those men would have tipped the average age of managers well above the current figure of 54 years. LaRussa by himself would tip the average tenure of managers well past the current eight years.

Today’s managers are generally not only younger, but do not have the experience in the game that Davey Johnson has. Manny Acta and Freddi Gonzalez define a youth movement of men who did not have to end long and successful playing careers to begin managing. Neither made it to the majors and both started managing early after their minor league careers ended.  Acta is the youngest manager at 42, but Eric Wedge is only 43. Joe Girardi, Freddi Gonzalez and Ozzie Guillen are all 47 and anchor the youth movement.

Davey Johnson is the oldest manager, but Jim Leyland is the longest tenured of the remaining senior managers. He has 20 years of experience, primarily with the Pirates and Tigers. There are only two other managers with service time to rival Leyland and Johnson: Dusty Baker and Bruce Bochy with eighteen and seventeen years of service respectively.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman did a number on Art Howe in “Moneyball” that cannot be good for the overall reputation of the job title. He was only working off Michael Lewis’ harsh assessment of the role of manager in the book.  When Lewis introduces Art Howe in the book, it is to say–on page 109–”as in all personnel decisions…Howe has been…left entirely in the dark.” In the book Howe’s greatest talent is his ability to look comforting to his players standing rock-like on the upper dugout steps. Even his position in the dugout is dictated, according to Lewis, by Beane. In Moneyball, Howe fares only slightly better than a life-size blow up doll.

Then there are managers like Davey Johnson, Jim Leyland and Dusty Baker. They carry the torch of Connie Mack and Clark Griffith. Leyland has another fine team in Detroit for 2012, but Baker will be hard-pressed to compete in the NL Central. Baker’s job will be made easier because personnel will come from Walt Jocketty, one of the game’s best GMs over the years–the one who preceded Beane in Oakland.

While Baker will not have an easy task in Cincinnati, Davey Johnson’s job in Washington is made easy only because of the low expectations. Finishing this season at a single game below .500–and not quitting halfway through the season–has put considerable stars by his name in DC. But what is different is the apparent relationship with Mike Rizzo. This spring when the Nationals were visiting other parks, Rizzo sat in the first row behind the plate with owner Mark Lerner. Then immediately behind him came Davey Johnson. When Bryce Harper took the field for the first time in Hagerstown, MD, Davey Johnson was there watching and evaluating.

Davey Johnson has the confidence of GM Mike Rizzo and will play a far different role with the team than Art Howe. Johnson may not make the personnel decisions, but he has not been hired because he looks good, his jaw jutting forward “like Washington crossing the Delaware.” Johnson knows the Nationals players from the developmental side of the game and will be key to the team’s success in 2012.

As numerous WashPo articles asserted, Johnson is not only close to Rizzo, the two men share a fierce competitiveness that was on display when Rizzo was fined for arguing balls and strikes with an umpire in September. It may be the first time a GM has had that particular line added to his curriculum vitae. Johnson will not be thrown out of as many games as Bobby Cox, but he exudes an intensity in the dugout. That closed demeanor opens in a quick and genuine smile, however, when his charges succeed.

If as expected, Mike Rizzo is successful in the off-season in adding key pieces to the Washington Nationals, there will be added pressure for the team to win in 2012. Getting key players like Mark Buerhle or Grady Sizemore signed will be Rizzo’s job. If that happens, the pressure will switch to Davey Johnson. He could have a lineup almost as good as when he managed a few miles up the Parkway in Baltimore; when he was last named Manager of the Year for the Orioles in 1997.

Expectations will likely be higher for Davey Johnson in 2012 than when Clark Griffith took over in the Washington dugout 100 years ago. The Old Fox knew the expectations would be low and it was why he took the job. Davey Johnson may not have quite the same cushion. But he will have the same opportunity to define his place in the history of the game. Success in Washington could be more than a feather in the cap for Davey Johnson. It could cement his place as one of the best managers in the history of the game.

He stands deadlocked with Charley Manuel with a winning percentage of .561 and the contest between those two men will define much of the 2012 season. But it is not only this season, but the longer view that must intrigue Davey Johnson. Almost all of the managers who made 20 years in the game are in the Hall of Fame. Those that are not, likely will be in the future. This is Davey Johnson’s chance: to add the capstone to his career, to go out a winner where everyone else has failed.

Five years from now, when Davey Johnson logs his 20th season, will his winning percentage still be there? If it is he will be celebrated in this town like no other manager since Clark Griffith or Bucky Harris, just to name a couple of other DC Hall of Fame managers.

Yes, Tony LaRussa and Joe Torre have walked off the mound. They have left a huge hole in the game. On their way out they handed the ball to Davey Johnson. They can only watch. Davey’s in the spotlight now; it’s his game to win.

The many external dramas that have plagued the sport for the last fifty years–drugs, labor strife, and greed–have diminished it and that has meant fewer fans watching for the love of the sport itself. Yet increasing attendance figures for the game overall and excellent ratings for the post season indicate that the game is reaching new audiences. It has found an eminence not seen since the late 1050′s and early 1960′s when most would agree the Golden Age of the game was on the wane.

The great players of the Dodgers and Yankees once seemed so much larger than life. It wasn’t just DiMaggio, Mantle and Jackie Robinson. There was Carl Furrilo, Duke Snyder, and Roy Campanella–such graceful sluggers–who walked across history’s stage with equal aplomb.  It was so easy for a young kid to sit glued to the television and watch their every move, to pour over the box scores and examine the games in a whole new way.

Those box score fans grew up to be Bill James fans which is a segue to another indication of baseball’s resurgence: the huge box office success of “Moneyball.” Some would say that the movie’s main character was Brad Pitt–he was a big draw. But the main character in “Moneyball“ is baseball and the game is playing itself, no stunt doubles needed.

Both the movie and the book are flawed as the critics have been quick to assert. David Maranniss is correct in saying that the best thing about the 2002 Oakland A’s was not the accomplishments of Billy Beane, but rather those of Miguel Tejada, the AL MVP, and Barry Zito, the AL Cy Young winners, as well as all the other fine talent drafted and developed the old-fashioned way.

But the changes that Beane set in motion that year, so ably narrated by Michael Lewis, have taken on a life of their own and made the game richer in the doing. And that is what is different about baseball. It is the nuance of the game that feeds the abundant analysis of Bill James and belies the claim of the uninitiated that the game is “boring.”

Yes, it takes a longer attention span than death-pit simulations available from football or computer games. But we should be proud to see the complexity of baseball finding new audiences. To see so many Americans mesmerized by the inherent intellectual contest within the contest that Moneyball touts can only bode well for the sport. And it is reason why the real star of the movie is the game itself.

Tom Boswell said it extremely well this morning when he said in the Washington Post, “The Romance Is Back.” Boswell was largely documenting the appeal of the just completed victory by the Cardinals, but he also was quick to point out that the Series has been enhanced by the earlier start times for the games and the compacted schedule for the playoffs overall.  Baseball, like no other sport, has been finding ways to appeal to fans and listening to their concerns.

The lack of partisan discord between players and owners offers opportunities for wider emulation as well. The principals have learned that the game is the sum of its parts: players, owners, media and fans. They all matter and the commissioner and those who run the game have been more cognizant of that fact in recent years.

My own personal sense of pride is enhanced by what is going on here in Washington, DC. The remove of the game from the nation’s capital, both in 1960 and in 1971, was a harbingers of a wider malaise within the sport. The unfettered greed that moved teams about like chess pieces ignored the fans and soon the players themselves were shifting about in ways that left fans wondering what was really the point.

Watching the growth of enthusiasm for the game in Washington is heartening and certainly an antidote to earlier alienation. New fans have been given a chance to develop that hometown loyalty and a very localized pride in the game. Watching it take root and grow with kids here should be a required course for the Commissioner and the myopic, self-interested owners when the issue of growing the game into new markets arises in coming years.

Which brings us round to the many things that remain to be done to restore the game more fully. Attending a major league game in person is fast becoming a luxury of the 1 percent. Women remain too much at arm’s length from the game. Those are only two of the imperfections and striving to fix all of them  should not be ignored. The off-season is a great time to ruminate on those concerns as well as the coming season.

But more than anything it is a time when you appreciate the old maxim, “you don’t miss the water t’il your well runs dry.” The off-season is long, though it provides a well-deserved rest. Yet here in Washington the yearning for next season is more ardent than at the end of any October in memory.

Once it was just a few old timers wearing scruffy Senators hats to Camden yards. Now there is pride in the local team that can be seen in movie goers wearing their Nationals gear to see “Moneyball.” More than that local thing, one can take pride in the game overall as all those beaming faces emerge from theaters where the movie continues to show weeks after it debuted.

Taken together–the movies and the wonderful reality of the past month–the market indicators are very bullish for the game. It means that baseball matters again. It is playing a larger role than it has for many a year. Maybe it would be fitting for the game to garner an Academy nomination for best sport in a starring role.  I’m just saying.

But will results like those prevent MLB ownership from digging deep for the current crop of free agents? I’m thinking not. C.C. Sabathia and C.J. Wilson will walk away with big money, long-term deals and both will end up in high-end markets. Will either of them deign to grace the lowly Nationals and pitch Washington into the playoffs??  Dreams–especially cold winter ones–are made of this.

The rumor mills keep opining that the Washington Nationals “may” be willing to “make a big splash” by signing someone like Wilson or Sabathia. Does that mean that Jayson Werth’s splash was worth the effort? It DID give the team credibility or was that only with rumor blogs.

Werth certainly did not make the team a winner. So rather than looking for more splash, hopefully Mike Rizzo is looking for winners when shopping the free agent aisles or evaluating trades. Is C.J. Wilson still hungry for more and as motivated as Cliff Lee? Is Sabathia overweight and thus an injury waiting to happen, or a Livan Hernadez who can pitch until he is 40 without cease?

The Nationals strong September means they will have to part with a first round draft pick for any Type A free agent signing this off season. Rizzo may be more inclined to trade for his needs rather than use the credit card.  Werth, Crawford and Dunn have a lot of GMs talking trade, but many of them have so depleted their organizations that there is hardly anything left to trade. And even the trade market is fairly thin.

Rizzo has talked trade frequently when asked how he will approach the off-season. During the season the most frequent rumors had Rizzo talking with the Rays and Twins. Rizzo liked the Twins’ Denard Span, but Span never was able to return to the field after a concussion in June. Rizzo was interested in B.J. Upton, but the Rays can hardly afford to shed offense, so the price tag there is going to be prohibitive. So how does the puzzle fit?

As much as Rizzo might wish to avoid signing free agents, finding the right trading partner and getting the right puzzle piece at an affordable price is much more difficult than opening the check book. After all, the Nationals have had one of the lowest team salaries for several years and their attendance has remained steady at just under 2 million, but was almost 3 million when the team was winning in 2005. Even “Mad Money’s” Jim Cramer could love that growth potential.

The Twins should be the right trading partner. They need pitching help, both in the bullpen and in the rotation. Rizzo may have enough of both to deal. If Denard Span were healthy, the two teams could resume negotiations, but Span was never able to achieve the form he had before the concussion. It will be impossible to evaluate Span during the off-season, so Denard Span as the everyday center fielder and leadoff hitter for Washington looks like a long shot.

The Nationals bullpen has been one of their strengths for the past two seasons, based on the emergence of Tyler Clippard and Drew Storen. But there is more. Henry Rodriguez, a 24-year old Venezuelan, was acquired for Josh Willingham from Oakland. His 101 mph fastball intrigued Rizzo but his command was limited at best. During the second half of 2011, Rodriguez began to harness his very nasty stuff, posting two saves in September and a 2.19 ERA, with 14 Ks to only 4 BBs in 12 innings to finish out the season looking every bit like a closer.

The other team looking for bullpen help is Tampa Bay. Other than Kyle Farnsworth the Rays will be building a new bullpen from scratch once again. Rodriguez and Storen are both affordable, something attractive to the Rays. If they could shed James Shields’ $7 million contract for a possible closer with a price tag at under $1 million, that would free up money to go after the bat they desperately need hitting behind Evan Longoria.

The Rays have three of the best young hurlers in baseball in Matt Moore, Jeremy Hellickson, and David Price. Despite their protests about not trading pitching last season, their post season performance will increase the pressure to add offense with Shields’ $7 million.

And Shields is their best trade bait. He is coming off his best season and has thrown 200+ innings for each of the last five seasons. It is that kind of consistency that might convince Mike Rizzo to pull the switch.

But trading his very talented bullpen pieces may be too painful for Rizzo and Tampa may balk again, deciding it can find another Joel Peralta on the cheap again in the off season. With Span a risky venture and Tampa a finicky partner, Rizzo may have to settle for a second best option, but one that may work the best overall.

Free agency may be Rizzo’s path of least resistence even if it costs him draft picks. After all, the amateur draft is not the only way to build a better mouse trap. But more importantly, the ability to find a good fit for the Nationals very specific needs is easiest by squeezing the melons in aisle A.

If the Nationals want a top tier starting pitcher, C.J. Wilson is not the only one available. The Nationals could use the left-handed strength that he would bring and he is certainly enough to push them into the playoffs and a very exciting possibility. But Edwin Jackson or Mark Buerhle would work just as well at the top of a rotation that fronts Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann.

Washington can sign Chien- ming Wang without penalty and negotiations have supposedly begun with Wang willing to give the Nationals a better deal because of their support during the past few seasons. An incentive-laden contract seems reasonable. Assuming Wang returns to DC, the Nationals would have a rotation of Strasburg, Zimmermann, Wang, and John Lannan. Even the addition of durable starter like Buerhle or Jackson, and keeping the very talented bullpen in tact, would give the Nationals a top tier pitching staff that can compete with Philadelphia or Atlanta.

The problem is Washington’s offense that was one of the worst in the National League. The need is to add fifty to seventy-five runs and get to the 700 run threshold that all four NL playoff teams managed. Part of that–at least 25 runs–will come from having a healthy Ryan Zimmerman for at least most of the 2012 season. A resurgence of Jayson Werth to something closer to his performance with the Phillies would help. But adding a reliable stick that exceeds Rick Ankiel and Roger Bernadina–both less than league average outfielders–is a must.

The “big splash” is to sign Jose Reyes to a Carl Crawford contract and hope Reyes stays healthy and that his wheels don’t lose anything in the process. But signing Reyes or even Jimmy Rollins–a popular option that pokes a stick in the eyes of the Phillies–means trading Ian Desmond. Desmond is a popular and able player–though a vexing one. And the other concern is that neither Reyes nor Rollins play center field.

Reyes did something that no Nationals player accomplished this season. He scored 101 runs. On paper, Reyes instantly makes the Nationals a contender by adding approximately fifty runs all by himself. But he leaves the Nationals with Rick Ankiel in center.

And there is something troubling about the electric shortstop for the Mets. He has yet to play with a team that converts on its potential. All of those late summer disasters in Flushing Meadows are troubling.

Adding an additional outfielder may be the best fit. There are easy options on this front as well. Coco Crisp is option one. He is on the downside of his prime and does not play as well in center field as he once did, but his offensive numbers kept pace last year in Oakland. His .275 career batting average and his .330 OBP are an upgrade over Ankiel, though a tepid one. He translate into no more than 25 additional runs over the 2011 totals.

Michael Cuddyer does not hit lead-off, but can play numerous positions on the diamond. He is best in right field and would mean that Jayson Werth moves to center field. With Zimmerman healthy all season and Adam LaRoche returning at first base, Cuddyer becomes another potent bat and insurance against injury almost any where on the diamond. Cuddyer–a Virginia native–is a more potent upgrade than Crisp, though he fits less well at the top of the lineup. His career .273/.343/.459 slash line would likely add 30-35 runs to the Nationals offensive production.

A lineup of Desmond, Werth, Zimmerman, Morse, LaRoche, Cuddyer, Espinosa and Ramos is capable of scoring 700 runs and pushing the Nationals into the playoffs, and one of Crisp, Werth Zimmerman, Morse, LaRoche, Espinosa, Desmond and Ramos is only slightly less good. With an additional starter, either of those rosters provide good defense and a legitimate chance at the playoffs.

The downside of free agency is losing draft picks. If the Nationals add two Type A free agents, they have shot holes in their June amateur draft. But there is more than one way to build a better mouse trap.

Signing a pitcher will block the path for young pitchers Ross Detwiler, Tom Milone and Brad Peacock. Peacock demonstrated in a handful of September starts that he is probably ready for the show, but could use the extra seasoning. Milone may pitch his best out of the bullpen and as a spot starter.

The one pitcher most blocked by a free agent signing is Ross Detwiler. He needs a chance to show what he can do if given a chance to pitch every fifth day. In the second half of 2011 Detwiler often looked like he had found the potential that made the Nationals expend a sixth overall pick on him in the 2007 draft. Trading Detwiler and other extra pieces like Roger Bernadina could recoup some of the organization strength that will be lost by signing free agents. The 2012 draft is not as strong as the last one where the Nationals were extremely successful, so it might be the perfect time to draw a bye during the early rounds next June.

What is certain is that the Nationals are just a few pieces away from being in a spot to contend in the NL East. There are numerous options available for Mike Rizzo to make Washington a legitimate playoff contender for 2012. There hasn’t been as much reason for excitement in Washington since 1932 when Joe Cronin and Clark Griffith went to the ownership meetings in December and returned with Earl Whitehill and Lefty Stewart (see Gary Sarnoff’s Wrecking Crew of ’33).

Does that mean that Mike Rizzo needs to add a dominant lefty like C.J. Wilson or Mark Buerhle between now and next April? Hot stove questions like those abound this year in DC. Baseball fans will be watching Rizzo like the paparazzi watch Paris Hilton. Or maybe not. But this off-season could get exciting in a hurry regardless what floats your boat. Stay tuned.

Baseball’s literature tends to the non-fiction where excellent biographies of Clemente, Gehrig, and Koufax detail the history of the game and its greatest players. Most of these works are finely crafted, but they almost always leave much of life’s emotional mess at the door. It falls to baseball fiction to fill in the holes and those downside risks are much in view in Harbach’s tale of the quixotic knight of pure heart bent on slaying dragons.

Harbach sets his story at a small liberal arts college that plays its baseball at the Division III level. It is a relatively high level of competition, but one where the hope for a professional career or financial remuneration is remote at best. It is the quintessential laboratory for discovering baseball purity. Yet it is one that has given us numerous talents, no less than Joe Maddon himself, who played his ball at tiny Lafayette College.

Harbach’s Westish College nine are a hapless lot who have been mired in the cellar of their modest athletic conference for decades. Henry Skrimshander is their unlikely deliverance. He is both the simplest and most complex of a compelling cast of characters. “Skrimmer” finds that if “baseball is an art, to excel at it you must become a machine.” The captain of the team, Mike Schwartz, sees in Skrimshander the spark of unique excellence and is determined to nurture it into the most refined of baseball machines.

Unpon his arrival at school, Skrimmer already possesses a golden glove and a rifle arm. He carries his own bible, a guide to playing shortstop by one of the greatest, Aparicio Rodriguez, a fictional Hall of Famer whose book on playing the position–the Art of Fielding–is a zen master’s explanation of the game.

A very fine college shortstop, Carroll Minick, who played his ball for the University of Georgia in the early 1960′s, brought this book to my attention, just as it had been reviewed in the New Yorker Magazine. I will let the New Yorker review  speak to the quality of the literary endeavor. There is no denying the descriptive wealth of this book as Harbach describes “the unfair beauty of a professional ballfield, the expensive riotous green of the grass, the scalloped cutouts around the bases, the whole place groomed like living art.”

Use the New Yorker review as a first compass point for beginning this book. It is useful to know the book’s homage to Melville, though there are no reeling oaken decks beneath this book’s Ahab. There is however, Skrimshander’s and Mike Schwartz’s battle for supremacy in the Upper Midwestern Conference, and through it all is the obsession of Harbach’s hero with baseball, one that would make the good captain proud.

Skrimshander–reminiscent of scrimshaw, the whale bone art of the nineteenth century–has his own “excalibur,” a glove he names, “Zero.” As in Malamud’s The Natural, a gut-wrenching game changer occurs that derails the brave knight from his quest. As in The Natural, professional scouts find the boy wonder in his bucolic D-III setting, which is quickly is undone by money and greed.

Harbach’s characters are vivid and alive; their story compelling and gripping. Mike Schwartz, the captain of the Westish Harpooners, Guert Affenlight, the College president, his daughter Pella, and Skrimshaw’s roomate Owen Dunne, forge a friendship not only among themselves but with the reader.

One of the great lines in the book is also a summation of it. Harbach says late in the book, “a soul isn’t something a person is born with but something that must be built, by effort and error, study and love.” This book is a soulful construction. It is a fine baseball book. But more than that it is as fine a novel as I have read in a while. If you approach it as literature first and baseball second, you will be rewarded on two levels. And moving forward you will have the opportunity to argue at which it succeeds more convincingly.

But remember and cheerish that grin, because the Nationals don’t just “hear that train a coming,” It’s not just “rolling round the bend,” No, the Nationals are on that train, they have busted out of Folsom Prison and the hungry, happy bunch are headed for town. So be watchful, might want to lock the doors and windows starting in 2012.

Stephen Strasburg put the exclamation point on the end of the season yesterday with ten strikeouts over six innings of one-hit ball. He hit the 100 mph mark for one of the few times this season, late in the game. Then the bullpen shut down the Marlins–who are escaping their own prison–and with a 3-1 triumph the Nationals finished just a single game under .500 with 80 wins.

What was memorable was the finish. After a dreadful August swoon that saw the team lose nine of ten games, suddenly they started believing Davey Johnson’s lament that, “this team is better than this.” It started remarkably enough with the return of Strazz.

Strasburg made his first start on September 6. The buzz of that game spread throughout the team and got them to see what they might look like in 2012 with a rotation headed by the very talented, goateed wonder from San Diego.

Not since the Washington Senators of 1969 finished with a flourish that put the team ten games over .500 has another DC baseball team finished as well. That team found itself in the second half and Frank Howard and Mike Epstein provided awesome punch and Dick Bosman won the ERA title over Jim Palmer.  Their September record was almost identical to that of the 2011 Nationals as each team was strongest in the final month.

I know a little something about the 1969 Senators team. Ted Williams was the manager and he thought he had found the spark to get guys like Howard and Bosman to play to their full potential. At the end of that miracle season, Williams went to the owner, Bob Short, with a list of trades he wanted to make. If Short had really wanted to build a winner, he would have listened.  But that was then, this is now. The Lerner family do not intend to make their money in baseball by selling the team to the highest out-of-town bidder. They intend to make it the old-fashioned way.

They proved they wanted a winner when they signed Stephen Strasburg. He can be even better than Dick Bosman was in 1969 as his 1.50 ERA attests for his short season stint in 2011.  The rest of Nationals rotation–most of them only a year removed from surgury–has similar potential. Chien-Ming Wang may be almost as key as Strasburg. The former Yankee star won his last three starts for Washington and flashed that old form as he gave up only six runs over 18 innings. It is hoped and expected that Wang will sign with the Nationals for 2012.

Jordan Zimmermann is the last piece. He began to look dominant as well in 2011 and if these three pitchers can stay healthy for much of the 2012 season, they will give the Nationals as good a threesome as almost anyone in the National League. They have John Lannan and young pitchers like Ross Detwiler and Brad Peacock to fill out the rest of the rotation more than ably. There is even more certainty in a bullpen of Drew Storen, Tyler Clippard and Henry Rodriguez.

So what do the Nationals need other than the return of Stephen Strasburg to anchor the rotation?

They need the offense that finally began to form in the final weeks of the season. They need Ryan Zimmerman to be healthy all season to man the three-hole in front of Michael Morse of the 31 homers in 2011. But more than anything they need players like Danny Espinosa, Ian Desmond, and Wilson Ramos to continue to grow and mature into the star potential they flashed at times.

Desmond hit .303/.336/.450 in September, but hit .223/.264/.308 for the first half. Danny Espinosa hit 16 of his 21 homers in the first half and slumped thereafter. So the youngsters need to find consistency and find it on the plus side.

The off-season will hold considerable excitement for the Nationals. Will they re-sign Wang or go after C.J. Wilson? Can they do both? Will they trade for the leadoff hitter they so badly need, or just sign another outfield bat?  How these questions are answered will spell the future for the Nationals.

But whatever changes are made, the team is gathering steam. When the 1969 Senators pulled into Union Station, thousands were on hand to cheer. Since then there hasn’t been anything like it, but I swear I can hear the jaws hitting the ground in Boston and Philly even now.

Swimming against that tide have been excellent plot lines like the  ”last to first” tag. When Jim Leyland led the 2006 Detroit Tigers to the World Series, he pioneered the concept. Those Tigers had risen from historic futility–a .265 winning percentage in 2003–to the top of the American League in a scant three seasons. This year we have the Arizona Diamondbacks who failed badly in 2010 but lead the NL West and have to be the most unlikely team to make the October playoffs looming on the horizon.

The Arizona Diamondbacks have done all of the right things quietly. Their August trade for Aaron Hill did not so much ignite the team as fan the flame. He was traded to Arizona on August 23rd. Since then, the team has won 17 and lost only 3.  It is a sizzling pace and the best in baseball for that span of games. Peaking at the right time?

The Diamondbacks went from being a good team giving the San Francisco Giants a run for their money in early August to a dead lock cinch to win the NL West with an 8.5 game lead as of this morning. Faced with the daunting challenge of Stephen Drew out for the season and Kelly Johnson having a miserable year at the plate, GM Josh Byrnes dealt for Hill and some how it has clicked.

Hill has thrived with his new team and his presence coincides with the remarkable turnaround. He has hit .318 since the trade, slugged .482, provided important punch at the top of the order, and played a very steady second base. Maybe it is the return to his roots in the southwest, or just that he is healthy again, but he has turned around his season as well as that of the Diamondbacks.

In recent years, the Tampa Bay Rays have been the perennial dragon slayers, competing successfully against the Yankees and Red Sox in the best division in baseball. Their recent winning streak was the only thing that even remotely smelled like pennant fever and they are still four full games back for the American League Wild Card slot. Could they beat the Red Sox coming down the wire and upstage Arizona? Yes, but it will take a lot of things going their way in the last weeks.

If the Rays falter, that  leaves Arizona standing alone wearing the mantle of dark horse. It is one they have earned the old fashioned way. They have been wandering in the desert for the past two seasons. They dropped to a .401 winning percentage in 2010–the third worst record in baseball. In June of that year, with the major league club playing dismally,  they compounded their problems by being unable to sign first round draft pick Barrett Loux because he failed his physical.

But the makeover has been complete. This year they used a compensation pick for Loux to take two of the best pitching talents, Trevor Bauer and Archie Bradley, in June, 2011. Bauer was chosen third overall and is thought to be an advanced prospect who could be pitching in the majors next June. Bradley is one of the best high school pitchers to come along in several years, but it is Bauer who could join Ian Kennedy at the top of the rotation in 2012 and provide Arizona with their best one-two combination since Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling.

There really is no need to project next year’s team. The 2011 Diamondbacks are perfectly good as they stand. Ian Kennedy is one of the best best young pitchers in the NL and with Dan Hudson they give the team plenty of top-of-the-rotation magic already. Hudson is 24 and Kennedy 26. Can they compete with Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay? I doubt the odds will favor them in a head-to-head matchup, but they will still play the games.

The Diamondbacks offense has been as good as anyone’s in the NL.  Justin Upton is having a huge year. Upton broke out in 2009, but slumped last year. This season he is one of the top offensive players not named Pujols or Matt Kemp. He has reached the 30 home run mark and has 21 steals. He will end up with close to 100 runs batted in.  Miguel Montero bats in the cleanup spot and while he does not instill fear as a Pujols, Ryan Howard, or Prince Fielder would, he has produced in the clutch with 81 RBI.

It may just be that the balls are dropping for the Diamondbacks. They may plummet to earth at the end of September and be gone from the playoffs as quickly as the summer heat. But they have a manager named Kirk Gibson and there is no one who exudes playoff drama like Gibson. So I am going to be watching them, waiting to see if this is the year.

Regardless how they do in October, this looks like a team that could be around for the long term. I like a rotation of Kennedy, Hudson and Bauer next September. And with a manager like Kirk Gibson, there is that sense of excitement lurking just around the corner. That’s the way the best plots unfold, with bold but unlikely heroes. Baseball has never tired of those guys. I am betting there are a few more waiting in the wings this October.

The second time round looks like it will be very different, like it will have more staying power. Leaving the stadium last night as the rain came pelting down with no sense of let up, there was not the giddy feeling of last June. It felt good though. My very wet Strasburg tee-shirt felt like it had better days yet to come.

There was a sense of depth to Strasburg’s first season because it caromed off so many bumpers, from Altoona to Harrisburg, the pinball lighting up every stop along the way to Syracuse. Every pitch was tracked carefully by a spellbound press. I saw the first start in Altoona, several in Harrisburg and then the historic first start at Nationals Park. The last of those games–that first one in DC–took on mythic proportion for Nationals fans, one that will go down with the grounder that bounced over Freddy Lindstrom’s shoulder in 1924. It was a great moment of Washington baseball lore.

But I fear we will not see it again, not in that same way at least. There looks to be just as much high drama in the Strasburg that was unveiled last night. Yet it will be different, and I believe, new and improved. Certainly he will not be less for the changes he is making, but he may not be quite as electric on the surface and that could prove a good thing.

Strasburg told the press that he felt stronger after his extensive rehab work and the medical book on Tommy John surgery–provided in great detail by Adam Kilgore of the Post–is that pitchers are stronger and in that sense better for the surgery. The new Strasburg is certainly no less confident that he is an exceptional talent. He worked hard to get to June 2010 and he has worked at least as hard to get back, to stand once again on the mound at Nationals Park a short year later.

The work has been on using more than just the fastball. As the article points out, he has spent his time building up those parts of his pitching motion that will help him avoid injury again. He seems also to be working on throwing his other pitches to better effect.

Still, it was the fastball that got Matt Kemp in the fourth inning and it was exciting. It was good to see the score board light up at 99 mph again. But we have seen Henry Rodriguez hit 102 this season and while he is another talent of considerable potential, it is readily apparent that something more is needed.

For Strasburg last night the real story is how little the Dodgers were able to make contact with the other stuff: the change-up that was used so much more and was almost 15 mph less than the fast ball.  Then there was the other secondary stuff–whatever it was–that sat anywhere from 87 to 94. It made the eye-popping fastball look that much better. But when they got wood on the ball, they popped it up weakly or they grounded it to the infield.  Only on four occasions did they put the barrel of the bat solidly on the ball.  Two good hits to show for it, nothing more.

Dee Gordon led off the evening with a double and after watching Flash Gordon’s son struggle at the plate against John Lannan in the prior game against the Dodgers, it was grounds for concern.  But it proved to be just a little rust showing. Straz escaped and got the next three in less than extraordinary fashion to end his first inning back.

Fifty-six pitches after his evening began–an extremely efficient outing–he was done. He gave up only two hits, nary a run, and no walks. The four strike outs may look like a note of caution, but I think not. They are really a note of warning.

Strasburg looked far more a master of his own fate last night and perhaps a much better pitcher than the one who wowed the crowds in the summer of 2010. The new Strasburg had the crowd on their feet yelling for more as he pounded the 99 mph heater past hitters to get to strike two. It was just like June of 2010 when the crowd got him amped up and he responded by blowing away the last six batters he faced with high heat that often hit triple digits.

But last night there was a smarter and more confident Stephen Strasburg on the mound. He changed up in the second inning to get Andre Ethier swinging. When the crowd challenged him to strike out his last batter, there was no 100 mph fastball, just a weak pop-pop and the night was done.

The new Strasburg seems to be more about pitching and that can only be a good thing for the young man, and a bad thing for opposing hitters. As the Washington Post pointed out this morning, last year Strasburg had only one outing where he shut out the opposing team. He was masterful, but his stuff was hittable. After settling in last night in the second inning, the stuff did not look over-powering as much as it looked hard to square up.

The Strasburg that we saw last night is just the beginning. The new Straz will get better as he masters those secondary pitches that were more for show last year. So bring on Strasburg Part Deux. This is no comedy except in the most classical sense of the word. There was a story with a happy ending last night and all of the paying customers walked away with a smile of their face. Every one of them will be back for the repeat performances.

There are going to be more very memorable moments in this drama. There is more history to come. Strasburg was once again center stage, very most definitely back, with much, much more on the way.

There were two big ladder trucks from the DC Fire Department parked outside the main gate and the ladders were extended skyward with a cable strung between them and a gi-normous flag fluttering toward the ground. It was clearly intended to evoke the memories of 9-11. That attempt to tug at patriotic heart strings continued into the game.

Labor Day is the day when we celebrate working Americans, not 9-11. It is a holiday brought to you by the Labor Movement, of which the Major League Baseball Players Association is a part. Many might argue that the players union is hardly part of the same labor movement that probably represents those firefighters outside the park. Many Americans would place a huge asterisk by the MLBPA, maybe even a dollar sign. If they say that, you can bet they are not part of the brotherhood–and sisterhood–of organized labor.

Yes, professional baseball players make very good money, but they do so because they finally banded together and formed a union. Unlike many other working Americans they don’t let anybody screw around with their union, either. So it was hardly surprising when the Lerners–the billionaires who own the Washington Nationals–forgot to celebrate Labor Day and tried to make everyone in attendance think that something else entirely was going on.

As Labor Day draws to a close around the two leagues, I thought it would be nice to try to swim against the tide created by ownership. This is a day to celebrate the players, the coaches, the vendors, the ticket sellers, all of the personnel who make major league baseball and minor league baseball possible. It is all those people who together make a wonderful enterprise work for the fans, of which I am one.

None of those working stiffs own any part of the game. They probably should since many of them give their lives to it.  I know a Yankees vendor who has been selling stuff around NYC since the late 1950′s and he still does it because he loves the game, not because he makes big money doing it. He is retired from a good job, but cannot stand to be away from the game.

However you view the people who work in the game, of one thing I am certain. If the Lerners, the Reinsdorfs, and the Steinbrnenners had their way, the whole lot of them would make a lot less. And I know that because that is exactly how it was before there was a players union.

Ballplayers once played for six or so months of the year and then had jobs in the off season because they did not make enough to support their families during the regular season. They had no retirement to speak of, no health care–certainly not for their families and not in the off-season.

That was all changed because the players listened to a man who belongs in the Hall of Fame–Marvin Miller. He was probably one of those horrid socialists, though the owners might call him a terrorist. But he convinced the players to stick with the union and in doing so the players got what all Americans deserve–fair representation with management, better pay, and better working conditions.

When Miller was close to election to the Hall, the number of players voting on election of non-players was reduced and the chances of him taking his rightful place as one of the most important souls to affect the game in a century shrank to zero. The Lerners and the Reinsdorfs and the Steinbrenners will not let it happen.

And they will not let Americans celebrate Labor Day at the ballpark, because they are the ones pulling the plug on the labor movement across this fair land. So don’t begrudge the baseball players their union. They got theirs the old fashioned way; they went on strike for it. They listened to grizzled veterans of the movement and said public opinion be damned, we deserve our fair share. And that is how they got it.

It should be that way for all working Americans and that is what we celebrate on Labor Day. So whether you celebrated Labor Day at a major league ballpark or a picnic ground with a softball game in full swing, it was a holiday brought to you by Organized Labor. So Play ball!! and wherever you are watching it or playing it, ‘look for the union label.’ You will be glad you did.

The Pirates will not make the playoffs this year and manager Clint Hurdle–angry or not–will have to wait until next season. But the Pirates continue to stock their organization with blue chip talent as do other notable organizations like the Blue Jays. The Pirates picked up two of the best young players in the recent draft in Josh Bell and Gerrit Cole. Cole could be pitching in the major league rotation by June of next year and could anchor their staff Justin Verlander-style for years to come. He could be enough to keep Pittsburgh in contention next year in the weak NL Central.

Of course such speculation is easy when one is well away from the pennant races and the media frenzy. But one might look beneath the surface of that Phillies lineup at the ages of all their stars. They go into the playoffs as one of the favorites, but they are almost to a man in their mid-thirties and the cupboard is bare once the feast is over.

The Yankees rotation puts on more weight every day and there are a few senior citizens on the Yankee roster as well. Maybe Mick Jagger crooning the old Rolling Stones tune, “Time-i–i-ime is on our side,” is a better picture to make the point than Little Nicky at the UN. However you paint it, there are several major league organizations, like Pittsburgh and Toronto, that are building for a future that may be a lot closer than anyone might imagine this September.

The gold standard for minor league organizations has been the Atlanta Braves. They have developed talent as well as anyone so that over the past two decades they have been in the middle of almost every pennant fight.  The Tampa Bay Rays for the past few years have been almost as good. While the Braves have Julio Teheran, I think I could be happy with new Durham Bulls ace, Matt Moore. Tampa’s rotation of Moore, Jeremy Hellickson and David Price may soon be better than Halladay, Hamels and Lee.

Teams like the Braves and the Rays have enough pieces that even a challenging conundrum like smoothing the exit of a star like Chipper Jones can occur with the slow ascension of a replacement piece like Freddie Freeman in the middle of the batting order.

The Washington Nationals are not in the same league with Atlanta or Tampa Bay–the latter at least not literally. But when the talent in each organization is evaluated during the off season to come, Washington will rank with the best of them, ahead of Pittsburgh and Toronto perhaps.

Several years ago the Washington Nationals organization was rated 29th overall by Keith Law at ESPN. Baseball America has consistently been more sanguine about the new kids on the block, cutting them some slack and ranking them number 13 last spring. Law was not convinced and placed them 19^th. I asked Jim Callis of Baseball America if BA’s positioning of the Nationals were a function of depth of talent or just Bryce Harper.  His answer rhymed with Splice Marker.

But now Harper is in danger of losing top billing even within the organization. Does Anthony Rendon have more power potential than Harper? Where does highly touted college pitcher Alex Meyer fit in an organization that has Tom Milone as its top pitcher by the numbers. Do you bump Milone aside just on the strength of Meyer’s “large” potential? And newly acquired center fielder Brian Goodwin fits in where vis-a-vis Steve Lombardozzi? Which one—if either—will be hitting leadoff for the Nationals in 2013?

The questions are far more intriguing than anything on the table just a few short years ago when the topic of the day was why the Nationals failed to sign Aaron Crow and just how old was that skinny kid from the DR?

GM Mike Rizzo has managed to turn things around in remarkably short order. Bryce Harper has friends now atop the prospect rankings that will be compiled during the off season. Rendon will likely be there and Matt Purke could rise to the top quickly as well. And there is more. If a Top 100 prospects were announced tomorrow, Brad Peacock, Steve Lombardozzi, and Tom Milone would belong there whether they make the cut or not. A.J Cole and Robbie Ray were just drafted in 2010 but looked impressive in their first exposure at Hagerstown in the Low-A Sally League. They are the truly quality depth that lurks just behind the bigger names at the top of the organization.

Then there is Tyler Moore who has 30 home runs for Double-A Harrisburg. He looks to be leading them to the Eastern League Championship just like he did last season when his 31 home runs at High-A Potomac brought home the Carolina League Championship. His prodigious power ranks among the best across the minors. Of course there is no shortage of guys with 30 home run seasons in the minors who barely played a game in the majors. But Moore’s teams somehow manage to win, a trait that might transplant well to DC.

Harrisburg leads the Eastern Division of the Eastern League and swept four games from Western Division leaders New Hampshire last week.  They did it not with the bat of Moore so much as with their pitching. Their best pitcher is probably Shairon Martis who has rebounded from being promoted to the majors too soon in 2009. How good is he? The gaudy strikeout totals–148 in 128 innings–and the third best ERA in the league give the twenty-four year old credibility. He has a no-hitter under his belt this year as well. He is just a tick behind Brad Peacock and Milone when quality arms are discussed.

The success that players like Peacock, Martis and Lombardozzi are having speaks well for the coaching that players are getting along the way as they move up the food chain for the Nationals. None of them were high draft picks. Lombardozzi as a 19th rounder was the highest of the trio. Tyler Moore was a 16th round pick and Milone a 1oth rounder. So they may not make the Top 100 because their upside will always be handicapped by their relatively low initial evaluations. But major league rosters are filled with stars who never made Baseball America’s top 100.  Jim Thome was a 13^th round pick and 600 homers later, he is hardly waiting for a better initial scouting report to come in.

But how do all of the pieces in the puzzle fit for Washington? DC loyalists wonder how Rendon fits into an infield anchored by Ryan Zimmerman. The Z-man was just in the papers yesterday talking about the need to renew his contract. Since coming back from surgery, he has regained much of gold glove form and is hitting over .300, slugging.460. He has not regained the slugging form of 2009 when he hit 33 homers, but he is headed back in that direction.

Rendon was not drafted to put pressure on Zimmerman, but he will start the season at third base next spring according to the Nationals’ brass. Baseball is a business and it is fueled by winning teams.  How Washington will get to that point is still open to question.

There is no doubt however, that for now the gold standard is Zimmerman and Strasburg. Yet soon there may be enough talent to push even the best. And that is hardly a bad thing. And the kids are learning to win. Harrisburg is the only Nationals affiliate sitting atop their league. Yet it was just five years ago that the overall organization had a winning percentage hovering at .400.  Now the minor league affiliates have a winning record overall and it is not even close.

The pieces are there. The Nationals have only to develop them. Harrisburg has taken the championship baton passed on by the Potomac Nationals from 2010. Next year it should be in Syracuse and after that…

It is still baseball. There are still plenty of games to play. But watching the games not being played in New York or Boston is just as much fun. Some would argue that away from the big city lights and all the hype, you can almost see the game as it was meant to be. I am going to take in those Eastern League playoffs. Bowie==the Orioles Double-A affiliate may be playing Harrisburg in one of the early rounds.

The PA system will just tell you who is batting. There is no sound track, no powerfully modulated voice booming out a version of “Heeeeeere’s Johnny.” No, there is just the noise of the fans in the stadium. Bring on that old fashioned baseball, where you can hear the crickets chirping between innings as if they are just out there waiting for a ball to fly over the fence, where you can see the kids tearing off into the dark in search of a foul ball, a treasured keepsake to take home from a game they love.

As the horses hit the club house turn and head down the September stretch, it looks like a long climb to get back in the race. Well off the pace for 2011, the Washington Nationals are evaluating talent for next year. Ross Detwiler and Chien-ming Wang are trying out for the starting rotation. Ian Desmond is hitting leadoff to see if his inability to do so early in the year was Riggleman or some other force of nature.

The experiments looked promising when the Nationals took two of three from the Phillies.  But the Diamondbacks and Reds limited the offense to less than two runs per game and the DC nine lost five in a row to show where the biggest problems lie.  Scoring runs has been a challenge for Washington like no other team in the National League that does not have Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain at the head of the rotation. Jayson Werth is just the highest paid bust on the team, but he has plenty of company as five of the starting nine are hitting less than .250

So where will the team look to add punch in 2012? Jayson Werth has probably given free agent signings a bad name in DC and it is unlikely the team will look to that avenue first as it seeks to rebuild for 2012.  Jose Reyes is one of the big names that will be available and his lack of intensity on the field and frequent trips to the dl are a red flag across which Jayson Werth is writ large. The Nationals are the favorite team thought to have claimed B.J. Upton on waivers at the end of last week and may work out a deal before tomorrow.  But if not, it is likely just the beginning of negotiations between the two teams that are likely to carry into the winter.

The rumors about Upton point to two of the most likely places the Nationals can add offense, center field and short stop.  B.J. Upton could add punch and speed without any slack off in defense from the current office holder: Rick Ankiel. Ankiel opened the season in center, lost the job like a Democrat at a Tea Party hanging, then regained it only to fall back to the mean. He has handled the glove flawlessly, but his bat is one of the least potent in the lineup.

Shortstop Ian Desmond has done even less after his fine rookie season. Like Ankiel there are glimpses of the player that the Nationals wanedt to see consistently.  But Desmond’s prodigious strikeout rate makes belief in his long term viability problematic. He has hit for neither power nor average and cannot get on base. If he were not so young that would be the end of it. But Desmond is a good team player who has always been willing to work on his game, so there are still believers in his talent.

With so little to cheer as the season heads into the final month, Nationals fans are content to wonder whether Strasburg will return at 100 percent.  Every thing the young man has said about his rehab starts tell you he will be not only the same pitcher but better.  His velocity is much the same.  He is pitching at 96-98 mph most of the time in his rehab starts. Velocity has not been the issue, rather command of his secondary stuff. His command was so absolute in 2010 and it is easier to see that returning than anything else. He believes he will be better because of the strength he has added by working out during his rehab.

So he joins a long list of talented candidates for the 2012 rotation, headed by Jordan Zimmermann.  Brad Peacock and Tom Milone have been among the best pitchers in the minors with Peacock named the Eastern League Pitcher of the Year, and Milone leading the International League in strikeouts and sporting one of the best ERA in the league. John Lannan will be back along with Detwiler.  Wang may be willing to sign, but the Nationals put him on waivers in hopes of trading him, so it is not certain whether he figures into the 2012 plans. But it is easy to see how the Nationals could put together a pitching staff that is better than the one that will finish among the National League leaders in 2011.

No, pitching is not the problem. And for the first time, there are no problems with defensively challenged players from the Adam Dunn, Josh Willingham (read as Jim Bowden) era. The enduring problems are the ones that Jayson Werth was supposed to solve and has not. It was filling in for Dunn like Adam LaRoche was supposed to do, but did not.

The problem has been the lack of offensive muscle, whether it is from the transplants like Werth and LaRoche, or from those coming up through the organization. Desmond and Danny Espinosa have been a great double-play combination and Espinosa vacuums every thing hit to the right side of the infield. But his hitting has dropped off severely in the second half and leaves a big question mark.  There is Steve Lombardozzi who is tearing up the minors along with Tyler Moore.  But how good are they and are they the answers for 2012.

Which brings us to this week’s “Outta the Parkway” Show. Our guest will be Jim Callis of Baseball America.  He will be talking about Anthony Rendon and the other new Nationals signed several weeks ago.  How do they impact the organization’s depth? Will Alex Meyer be a closer or quality starter? How good is the Nationals organization now that it is fronted by something more than just Bryce Harper. How good was the kid’s first year?

When you are running back in the pack and looking up at the Tampa Bay Rays, you remember all of those many years that Tampa (sic) wandered in the desert before becoming a regular contender in the very tough AL East. They did it with a great minor league organization, but it took time.

So Callis should have more answers about the Nationals’ future than most others could provide.  He may have a few for the Orioles as well and they are running even further back than the Nats.  So I encourage all fans of Nationals baseball–and the Orioles as well–who want to understand just how bright the future may be to call in this Friday night (347-945-7172). Jim takes questions frequently about baseball prospects over at Baseball America.  This is a chance to focus on the Mid-Atlantic only, so make the most of it. Join Chip Greene and I as we enjoy getting the latest from Jim and his friends at Baseball America.

Desmond had but to put the ball in play and a run would score. As one of the fastest players on the team, doubling him up would be tough. In many ways, Davey Johnson had one of the better options at the plate. But in oh so many ways, he had the worst.

Desmond has turned himself into one of the better fielding shortstops in the National League and with Danny Espinosa is one of the best double-play combinations in the league. Mike Rizzo wanted a plus infield so that his “pitch to contact” staff might fare reasonably well in 2011. Yet for all of the improvement in Desmond’s glove work in 2011, for the many dazzling plays and the scant errors committed since May—his bat has regressed to disturbing levels.

At one point in the season he was on a pace to strike out more than 150 times by October. He swung at pitches so far from the strike zone that they were sharing a cab with Carlos Marmol. And if he swung at a pitch off the plate for strike one, pitchers learned to keep throwing it there because Desmond would keep swinging–as if to prove the forces of nature wrong.

We share a common friend, someone that Desmond met in the minors and I have learned much about the young man. He is a fine human being, one of the first to take maternity leave to be with his wife when his first child was born. In an era of inflated egos among players, he is remarkably sane and normal.

But unfortunately Marmol was perfectly paired with Desmond in the ninth inning yesterday. The pitcher who cannot throw strikes, trying desperately to hold onto his closer role, faces the batter who cannot lay off bad pitches, trying with equal determination to prove that he still deserves an everyday gig in the majors.

Marmol’s anxiety was evident. He missed the zone and then was forced to put the ball over the plate to Desmond. Ian could manage only to foul off numerous pitches. They were hittable pitches, pitches Desmond should have been able to put in play and drive in a run even if they had been caught. But with two balls and two strikes Marmol could afford to waste one.

So there it was: the pitch so dramatically far from the plate that swinging at it truly was a fool’s errand. It was six inches off the plate horizontally and low enough that it might have gotten away from the catcher—a good three inches below the strike zone. Desmond swung at it and missed it by so much that only my geometry teacher in high school could calculate the distance ( six-squared plus three-squared = the square root of 45), almost seven inches.

It was a magic moment for me. It was when I quit being an Ian Desmond fan. Suddenly all of the MLB Rumors insinuations that the Nationals were in the mix for Jose Reyes took on new meaning. Reyes is one of the more flamboyant players in the league with a persona that has a touch of the Manny Ramirez. But Reyes has none of the lackadaisical air that infuriates many with Ramirez.

Jose Reyes could bring an excitement to Washington baseball that only one other player has. He is a Stephen Strasburg who plays every day. For all of the great play that Ryan Zimmerman provides, Reyes would provide more. He could fill the huge hole at the top of the Washington batting order in a way that no one else can in the National League. Bill James gives Reyes 24-28 win shares a season in his prime. The same analysis gives 21 win shares to Ryan Zimmerman at his peak performance several seasons ago. So the Nationals would have a shortstop who would do more to improve the team than Ryan Zimmerman.

There is only one concern. How long would he last and how much would he cost?

Atlanta let Rafael Furcal walk at exactly the same point in his career. Furcal and Reyes are excellent Dominican shortstops and Furcal was twenty-eight when he left the Braves for Los Angeles—exactly how old Reyes is now.

Although Reyes is a better player than Furcal, the chances are that the Nationals would get similar longevity from the Mets middle infielder. He still has a couple of seasons at the premier level. So when the pundits start comparing the Nationals pursuit of Reyes to Jayson Werth, bring it on. Werth was last year’s man, the player we needed to add a level of seriousness to the franchise, to show that we mean to be competitive. Reyes will actually take the team to that level. With Jose Reyes at the top of the order and Zimmerman, Morse and Werth hitting in the middle of the order, the Nationals become a formidable lineup. He will cost as much as Carl Crawford, but the chance that he will continue to perform at premium levels make him a better risk.

There are six weeks left in the season. It hardly seems enough time for Ian Desmond to turn it around. But I am still pulling for him in the same way that a St. Louis Cardinal uniform brings a hint of nostalgia for the teams of my youth when Curt Flood and Lou Brock played the same outfield, Bob Gibson was on the mound and Kenny Boyer was at third. It is a funny game and what makes it great is how full of surprises it always turns out to be.

Every Washingtonian’s favorite sports writer–Jim Bowden–outlined the deal for Denard Span as likely costing the Nationals Drew Storen, Roger Bernadina, and Steve Lombardozzi. The Nationals would have gotten Span and a low level prospect in return. Such a deal would have left the Nationals organization reeling. Drew Storen for Denard Span straight up or Roger Bernadina and Lombardozzi for Span were reasonable deals, but the Twins were asking way too much. Perhaps they are still smarting from the loss of Wilson Ramos, wondering what life would be like with Ramos backing up the fragile Joe Mauer instead of Drew Butera.

The trade deadline passed with the Nationals adding only Johnny Gomes to an anemic attack. But there is another looming deadline, one where the Nationals could walk away big winners once again.

If it is August, then the signing deadline for players selected in the June amateur draft is right around the corner. Washington has three Scott Boras clients who are likely to go right up to the final day before putting pen to paper. Among those likely to sign is Brian Goodwin, an outfielder compared to another Minnesota alumni, Jacque Jones. Goodwin may not possess the defensive skill set of Denard Span, but he is the prototypical leadoff hitter the Nationals have been looking for since 2005. His college career has been marked by speed, and the ability to get on base. Those two assets could make him the long sought leadoff hitter, but he can hit for power as well. Once signed, it is unlikely he will require extensive seasoning in the minors.

The star of Washington’s 2011 draft class is Anthony Rendon, who will likely convert to either the outfield or second base. He is rated a plus defender in the infield, so it is likely he will play second and third base in the minors. Scouts have compared Rendon to Hank Aaron in that he generates his plus-plus power with off-the-charts wrist action. Projecting a 2013 infield of Michael Morse, Rendon, Danny Espinosa and Ryan Zimmerman, would put Washington in the mix with anyone for power and defense.

So the trade deadline comes with consolation prizes for the Nationals. Washington has no ready replacement for Drew Storen and while Denard Span may have solved Rizzo’s centerfield/leadoff quandry, he has to look at Wilson Ramos and remember that trade evaluation is a long term game.  Giving the Twins three chances for glory against one just for the Nationals was a fools bargain.

Wilson Ramos is a case study in how trades can play out. In the first half of the 2011 season Ramos made the trade for Matt Capps look like a lightning strike in its brilliance. Hitting over .300 and throwing out runners at a league-leading clip, he seemed a match for his tutor, Pudge Rodriguez, in almost every category.

But the average has dipped to .235 and while he has shown consistent power, his defense has slipped a notch as well. Baseball Info Solutions rates his defense as league average using their metric, Defensive Runs Saved. While Ramos may grow and mature into a better than league average catcher, his value is being re-examined in his first full year in the majors.

So Denard Span may have looked every bit the answer to the Nationals crying need in center, but how well he would have worked out long term with concussion worries called the question. And even if he thrived at Nationals Park, filling one hole only sprang another in the bullpen if Drew Storen was the keystone of the trade. And including Bernadina and dirt-dog Lombardozzi as well?  Not even close to the kind of balanced trade that Minnesota made in July 2010.

The failure to land Span will increase the pressure to sign all of the talent circling Nationals Park like jets at Dulles. And that is a good thing. Besides Goodwin and Rendon, the Nationals drafted impressive pitching talents in Alex Meyer and Mathew Purke. Landing all four of those very plus talents will line Mike Rizzo’s pockets for trade deadlines to come.

Adding all four of them to an organization that is fronted already by Bryce Harper will give Mike Rizzo the kind of depth that will allow him to make the outrageous demands in years to come. Mike Rizzo folded his hand at just the right time. Holding onto Drew Storen and the rest of the players the Twins wanted pushed into the middle of the table is a wise move.

Now Rizzo can push all his chips into the game for Anthony Rendon, Alex Meyer, Brian Goodwin and Matthew Purke. Those are more than table stakes. Raking them in will fill the coffers for years to come.