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.

TL. In our email exchange, you described the recent SABR convention as approaching “Nirvana.”  Is that because of the trivia contest that you co-host or the experience overall?

DBB. I was referring to the entire convention experience overall, but the trivia contest is an entertaining part of the convention experience. We met this year in Long Beach, California. This was SABR’s 41st annual convention. The first was held as SABR was being organized in upstate New York in August of 1971.  It was attended by 16 media types along with Bob Davids and it has been held ever since then. I think the second convention may have been held in someone’s home in Arlington, Virginia in 1972.  I did not join until 1997, but I would have joined long ago had I known what SABR was or would become.

TL. You have attended ten straight conventions, is that correct?

DBB. Yes, I got to wear my 10-year ribbon this year.

TL. What were some of the highlights of this convention for you personally? Too few of us Seamheads get to go to the event very often, so could you share your experiences with us?

DBB. There were two highlights for me, one of which was the presentation by super agent Scott Boras.  There were probably five or six hundred people in the room for his speech and all of them were ready to hate him, rotten tomatoes at the ready, but an hour later we were completely charmed. He is very articulate as you might expect, but he is a ballplayer. He started as a ballplayer, talked about being a ballplayer, and talked about what he could and could not do as a player. Almost anyone who joins a baseball organization,or anyone who talks about it on the radio, or writes about it, has played baseball. And I think we all start there. Some of us were better than others, and we can relate to someone who is really good and that is why we are fans, because we love to watch people who are excellent at the game.

Well, Scott was “pretty good.” He played in the minor leagues. And he talked about that and about going to law school when he realized he was not going to get his chance to play major league ball. Through a set of circumstances, he had a chance to represent players. And he talked about his opportunity to help Greg Maddux get the first five-year contract and to help Kevin Brown get the first $100 million contract. What he did was he really out-prepared the people across the table from him. He did not out-prepare them by a few paragraphs; he out-prepared them by multiples. He prepared just like a lawyer would ready to go to court. He had every possible statistic. He was so ready for the trial that there was no way he could lose.

It is not hard to see why he is not liked by the baseball establishment, because he does the homework that they don’t. And he wins the negotiation. They may win the press conference afterwards, but his client, the player who is many times deemed unworthy by the press and the fans, has just walked away with an enormous contract. And that feeds into his success. He did not talk about this in a braggadocio way. It was almost a self-effacing way, as if to say, “What else would you expect me to do?”

He did not demean the competition, he just said “We have had some success and this is how we did it.” He got a rousing ovation and there was an extended question and answer period and frankly, we could have let him go on for another hour.

TL. We had a player rep on several weeks ago, Josh Kusnick, and he made the connection between the player rep and the union–how the player reps are certified by the union before they can represent big league players. As you were talking I could not help thinking about what he said. Did Boras mention that connection because you certainly have to admit they both win against ownership by out preparing for the negotiations. Did Boras mention the union?

DBB. No, he did not, but the thought I had as I listened to him was that these owners are typically people for whom baseball is not a full-time focus, they have businesses to run, they have means, reasons why they became wealthy enough to own a team and they continue in those pursuits.

But any CEO, industry captain let’s say, tends to be confident because they are not accustomed to losing.  But in this case you are going to lose if you don’t prepare. And I think that is what is going on and I think that is why Boras continues to win big contracts and why he continues to lose popularity with the average fan who says this has ruined baseball and the salaries are out of control and these are mind-bending numbers. Boras says, that is true, but we are going to continue to prepare and continue to win.

CG (Chip Greene). What team do you follow? Ted and I follow the two local teams, and I wonder which one you prefer?

DBB. Chip, do you mind if I talk a little about the Bob Davids Chapter of SABR a minute first. We were the first chapter formed when it became apparent that chapters would be an appropriate way to divide SABR.  We have been holding Chapter conventions ourselves since just after SABR began holding their own conventions. We hold ours at the end of January every year when people are ready for some baseball. We hold two other large meetings every year. We have a major league meeting every year where we attend a major league game–on a rotation between the Nationals and the Orioles each year. The meeting generally begins at 2 pm in the afternoon and we have a speaker from the team. We have had general managers, ball players and announcers. Those are well-attended sessions and then we go to the ball game together after being fed by the team.

Then we have a minor league game meeting each year that parallels that format. We try to rotate around to the various minor league affiliates in our chapter. Our geographic region includes central Pennsylvania, parts of West Virginia, all of Virginia, DC, Maryland and southern Delaware. So we have held these meetings in Richmond, in Harrisburg, and this year we were over in Delmarva to watch the Shorebirds.

Part of our intention is to use these meetings to bring SABR to people who don’t necessarily live near a center of population. They are still members; they are still baseball fans. With these three meetings, we get together a lot. We have smaller monthly meetings. We have “Hot Stove” in Arlington, VA. We have “Talkin Baseball” once a week in Columbia, MD where we have a baseball author come to talk. We had Jane Leavey just a month or so ago there. We are the largest chapter and the most active and that is because we are blessed with having two major league teams and a lot of great volunteers who love to get together and talk baseball.

CG. What is your impression of how SABR is received overall by organized baseball at the professional level, by major league teams, minor league teams?

DBB.  That is great question.  When representatives of the clubs address SABR groups, when they take the lectern, they say they are a little nervous to talk to you guys, because while they are typically the people in their circles who know the most about baseball, they are afraid that we know so much more than they do and of course that is just not true. We are social about it, but we are fans of the game. We are also researchers. People join SABR for a lot of different reasons. We have about 6,500 members world wide.

We are NOT just SABRmetricians; we are not just merely stat heads. There are people who might make that their specialty, but it was Bill James–who has been a SABR member for a long time–who invented the term SABRmetrician, and he said that almost as soon as it was out of his mouth he regretted it. It is a misnomer. People who are SABR members are baseball fans who congregate and are maybe one tick more serious than the average fan about their baseball. They are fans who keep score at games and who read three or four baseball books each year. It’s hard to build a profile of an average SABR member. I thought SABR was a bunch of mathematicians, but once I attended a meeting I came back and told my wife, “I have found my people.”

The perception of the baseball establishment is that we don’t know what it’s like; we don’t know the smell of the clubhouse, that we don’t know at all about real baseball.  That is going to be portrayed dramatically by the movie that is about to be released this September based on the book, Moneyball.

Different chapters enjoy different relationships with their ball clubs. The Nationals and Orioles are always accommodating when we ask them to host us.  When the chapters have a single team with which to build a relationship, there has been some success in building a relationship. I am thinking specifically about Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Colorado. Those chapters have tables set up at those ball parks where they solicit SABR membership. They hold meetings regularly with those teams. Ownership of those teams are very interested in SABR and in Pittsburgh’s case, they have come to SABR for analysis of prospects. Houston has a similar relationship.

In this area most of our membership is located closer to Washington than Baltimore and we would like to have a tighter relationship with the Nationals. I don’t know how that can be facilitated, but we certainly have many fans who welcomed the team back here when that similarly long-suffering Montreal franchise was moved here.

TL. You are actually a San Francisco Giants fan if I remember correctly, is that right?

DBB. That is correct. It is just an accident of geography. My dad was in graduate school at Berkeley when the Giants moved to San Francisco and I attended my first game at Candlestick Park in 1961. When I see a uniform of what I consider to be my home team, it’s no question who I am going to root for. It’s just visceral.

CG. So the World Series last year kind of made your day because the Orioles don’t look like they are headed that way for a long time?

DBB. I had always hoped the Orioles and the Giants would play in the World Series and we could have a completely Orange and Black World Series.

TL. From your objective perspective what are the two local teams doing right and…?

DBB. Let’s work at it from the other end. I have never seen two teams so linked by bad ownership. Both teams could do a lot more to promote baseball and enhance themselves in the community. Washington has the advantage of having one of the best newspapers in the country and some of the best and most observant baseball writers like Tom Boswell and Dave Sheinin. But Baltimore tends to let their senior sports writers go as soon as they achieve any experience.

TL/CG. Chip and I are both SABR members and hope to be more active in the local chapters in the near future.

DBB. We are going to hold your feet to the fire on that. We would certainly like to hear more about how Seamheads works and how podcasting works.

TL/CG. Sounds like a plan.  Thanks for coming on the show.

It was of June 1961 and Mickey Vernon’s recruits had traveled to Boston’s Fenway Park playing surprisingly well.  Their record stood at 30 wins and 30 losses as the series against Boston began and hope ran high for the new team.

The Senators lost the first two contests against Boston, but were ahead in the third game of the four-game series by a commanding 12-5 score going into the final inning. A win would have pulled them back to a game under .500, but with only a single out to go, Washington could not close the deal. The Red Sox–a lackluster bunch playing without Ted Williams for the first time–scored eight runs to win that game 13-12. The Senators were never the same, winning only twenty-five more times that season while losing sixty.

Philip Hochberg wondered aloud on the show whether a very similar loss by the Washington Nationals–last Thursday to the Cubs–could have a similar effect.  In this instance the Washington club had gained an 8-run advantage, but managed to lose by a 10-9 margin in the late innings. “I hope that doesn’t augur for the future on July 8th, 2011.”

Recounting the conversation with Hochberg to my tennis partner on Sunday morning, he remembered that same 1961 game against the Red Sox, even noting exactly where he was at the time–glued to a transistor radio in Ocean City as that horrid inning played out.  Clearly it was a game of some emotional impact–the kind not to be repeated for certain.

Hochberg lamented not only that defining game and the losing streak it foretold, but also his and other Washington fan’s long record of frustration. He was a young boy when he first started going to games at old Griffith Stadium in 1948.  ”And until today the Washington team has had two winning seasons,” he said. All those Cub fans talking about losing have no sympathetic ear from Hochberg. He believes that Washington fans have no rival when it comes to “that feeling of having a team on the way.”

I told Hochberg that I did not see any parallel between those teams and this one, that the old Senators are not today’s Nationals. I held forth bravely that this team is truly one on its way. But my confidence in that prediction was not overwhelming.

And so it was with special enthusiasm that I watched Drew Storen close out the first half of the 2011 season for the Nationals with a win against the Colorado Rockies. The 2-0 win on Sunday afternoon was typically close and hard-fought as fans sat on the edge of their seats wondering if Washington would find a way to cough up the lead in the bottom of the ninth. But Storen is another of those young players that mark a different trajectory for this team. His save of that game put the Nationals record at 46 wins and 46 losses heading to the All-Star Break.

Even Hochberg agreed that there is a different feel to the current Nationals team. It is not a team drawn from a hat like that ’61 team. This is a team that has been carefully constructed during the past few years by Mike Rizzo. It has some very fine pieces, not the least of which is Rookie of the Year candidate, Danny Espinosa.

Philip Hochberg also cited the young second baseman’s singular standing, saying “I am head over heals over this guy.” As Hochberg noted, it is not just the bat, but the exceptional glove work of Espinosa that makes him a legit candidate for honors at the end of the season. But he has company in Wilson Ramos, the young catcher who handles the pitching like a seasoned professional and has led the league in throwing out runners much of the first half.

The winning pitcher on Sunday, Jordan Zimmermann, shut out the Rockies for more than six innings. Like Ramos, Espinosa, Desmond, Bernadina, Clippard and Storen he is part of the up-the-middle defense that makes this team different.

New Nationals manager Davey Johnson said he took his 25-year old ace out of the game in the seventh because he did not want the young man to lose that ball game. Johnson saw it as a defining moment for Jordan Zimmermann, the Nationals season, and his own stewardship of the team. So he pulled the young pitcher when he could still get the win.

Johnson cited the emotional cost of so many close games and said one more loss could have sent the team stumbling into the second half. But Johnson and his young charges did not let it happen. The bullpen of Ryan Mattheus and Tyler Clipand shut the Rockies down to preserve the lead and Storen closed it.

The core of impressive young talent makes these Nationals different and there is more on the way. The Nationals organization will likely contribute new young players like Steve Lombardozzi and Brad Peacock next season regardless how much progress Bryce Harper makes.  The crucial variable is 22-year old Stephen Strasburg who is now re-habbing his arm and every report says he is on his way back.

Philip Hochberg admitted that he watches every game now, every pitch. “I have become a fan all over again,” he said with meaning in his voice. He and I are linked at the hip in our devotion to this team and its potential. They will not disappoint, of that I am certain. This newest century of baseball is going to be very different than the last for Washington baseball.

“It is un-requited,” Hochberg said of his long devotion to Washington baseball. For fans of his generation–and really all those that have followed–there has never been that romantic moment where the team returned the favor of their devotion with a run for the pennant.

Yet for all the cynics and realists who sit waiting for the other shoe to drop, for another defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, there is the reassurance that one of the most knowledgeable of fans–Philip Hochberg–shares their secret hope that they are wrong. And more importantly, he shares the hope that some day soon there will be a World Series played on both ends of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.  Now that is a report card even I could take hom.

Yet today that same Clark Griffith monument sits outside RFK Stadium where baseball has not been played for the past four seasons.  When old Griffith Stadium–near Howard University–was torn down, rather than load the monument in the truck taking his team to Minneapolis, the monument was aptly moved to RFK Stadium where the new professional baseball team, the expansion Washington Senators, played their games in 1961.

It was fitting for Clark Griffith’s monument to stay because Washington, DC was his home. His widow Addie Griffith said of her husband in 1957 when rumors about the possible move of the team first surfaced, “He would never have moved the team. He put every dollar he had into the team. He mortgaged and borrowed, but he kept baseball in Washington, DC.” Indeed, Griffith’s estate was valued at only $250,000 after his debts were paid. His business was baseball, winning baseball, and though he failed to deliver a winner for the last 21 years of his tenure in DC, he never quit spending every nickel–including money he did not really have–to field a winner.

So it is regrettable to see the old monument still at RFK, to witness the kind of disrepair and isolation in which the monument sits now, the sidewalks cracked and grass growing through the pavement as nature tries to take back what is hers.

By contrast, there are three brand new statues that were commissioned for the new Nationals Park and they greet fans as they come through the main gate in center field. Walter Johnson is there–the Big Train whose career reached the heights after Clark Griffith became his manager in 1912. Griff made Walter Johnson the leader of a winning team, not the best player on a perennial loser. He led him to a World Championship and two American League pennants.

The other two statues are of Frank Howard and Josh Gibson. Howard is a sentimental favorite in Washington. He was the last hero, the warm and personable home run leader who was still playing when Bob Short moved the team a second time.  Josh Gibson played in Washington only briefly at the end of his amazing career, just a few seasons before his tragic death.

Brad Snyder, in his book, The Homestead Grays, Playing in the Shadow of the Senators, said that Griffith could have signed Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard in 1943 and changed the course of baseball history, made winners of the Washington Nationals in Griffith’s last years.  It is a sentimental view of a deeply complex period in our nation’s history.  While I have great respect for Snyder and believe his book on Curt Floot to be one of the best books on baseball, I believe his book on the Grays has done a great disservice to Clark Griffith.

Snyder said in his book on the Homestead Grays that “Griffith’s opposition to integration was rooted in both prejudice and greed.”  In the book, Clark Griffith is made the bad guy. Branch Rickey is the hero. As a fan I cannot help but believe those who determine which statues are placed at Nationals Park see history in similarly simplistic terms. They are saying, ‘We would have signed Josh Gibson. We are not Clark Griffith.’

President John F. Kennedy famously characterized Washington, DC as two cities, one the sleepy southern town, the other the home to the Nation’s capitol and the federal workforce. African Americans were blessed to have the latter because it provided equal employment opportunities that would not have existed otherwise. Clark Griffith was yoked by the former.

In 1937 Clark Griffith gave an interview to Sam Lacy, one of the most outspoken African American journalists of his day and an unceasing advocate for integration of the game. Griffith told Lacy, “the time is not far off when colored players will take their place beside those of other races in the major leagues.” The words proved prescient, and like everything else Griffith said, they reveal no prejudice in his heart. Yet Clark Griffith did not integrate the Washington Nationals until 1954 and even then it was a halfway measure.

For all of his fine research, I believe Brad Snyder is wrong in his characterization of Griffith both as a greedy owner and a racist. Clark Griffith did not integrate his team for the same reasons that he refused night games, beer sales, and many other things that became standard fare at other stadiums long before the Old Fox acceded to them at Griffith Stadium. Change was a risky business for an old man whose tiny stadium was in disrepair, and whose business was operating on a shoe string.

Snyder characterizes Griffith not within the context of baseball in the 1940′s and ’50′s, but uses the modern baseball economy to insinuate that Griffith paid salaries to his entire family to mask the hefty profits being raked in by renting the stadium to the Negro League team, the Grays. He is wrong on the money being made and the nature of the family business. Snyder’s inference is that the salaries were akin to modern accounting gimmicks used by owners to hide profits. It is deeply unfair.

Griffith’s family were all Robertsons, related only to his wife, affectionately known as Aunt Addie. He had no children of his own. The Robertson boys ran the farm system and the concessions while the girls manned the executive offices. The did it all except perhaps the score board–where Bowie Kuhn and Ted Lerner learned the game.

It was a family business in the oldest and best use of the term. Everyone pitched in to make it work. There was no greed involved, just hard work.

I interviewed Hal Keller who played for the Nationals in the late 1940′s and early 50′s and went on to work in the organization for two decades, running the minor league organization for the expansion Senators before he became GM for the Seattle Mariners. He remembered the family business in very warm terms, recalling how all of them ate lunch together around a common table beneath the stadium.

Shirley Povich shared that view. He said Clark Griffth, “expected Calvin (his nephew and heir) to work and Calvin did work. In the same manner he did so by his brothers. While they were privileged, there was always the sense that there was work to do. Nobody had a free ride.” Povich knew Clark Griffith better than anyone and he was consistent in portraying Griffith’s team as a “Mom and Pop” operation that could not compete in the modern business world. Rather than a ruse to hide money, the family aspect of the business seems more like a way to stretch a dime than a way to hide profits that in the end are impossible to find.

Snyder does not address the racial climate of Washington, DC during the last years of Clark Griffith’s life. Washington was not completely engulfed by the deep South of my childhood, but there was plenty of it for everyone to see. Arch McDonald was the announcer for both the Washington Redskins and Nationals and he was openly and loudly a racist, barely keeping his ugly opinions off the air.

George Preston Marshall, the owner of the Redskins, vowed never to have an African American on his team. Both McDonald and Marshall were very popular figures on the local sports scene in DC. It was a risky venture to stand against prejudice and it is all too easy to make judgments from the safe distance of time. Washington was not the Deep South, but it was not Brooklyn either.

Could the white southern fan base in DC have embraced Larry Doby without any falloff in attendance? Perhaps so. But if an 80-year old owner without deep pockets did not want to find out does that make him a racist?

Few want to talk about those days. It is easier to forget, certainly easier to find a  scapegoat and blame the whole mess  on him.  But why Clark Griffith? He never said  an unkind word about  members of other races  at a time when it was  not only allowable to do  so, but it was  actually popular in far too many circles.

There is so much more to Clark Griffith than  questions about his final decade in  Washington. There is more than 40 years of baseball history to celebrate. This fall will  mark 100 years since Clark Griffith first negotiated with Tom Noyes about the managerial position with the Washington Nationals–the name of the team officially declared in 1905 and now restored. When the 1912 season begins next spring it will be a century since the Old Fox first walked onto a baseball field in this town and turned a perennial loser into one of the most consistent winners in the American League. The ones who beat the “Damn Yankees.”

It is time to re-furbish the Clark Griffith monument, to bring the Old Fox home to where serious baseball is being played. He was a giant of a man and for that he deserves not to be forgotten and left in the crumbling ruins of yesterday. Nationals Park should have a statue of Clark Griffith, the Old Fox, welcoming fans. He was celebrated rightly as a warm and generous man and the monument at RFK rightly celebrates the humanitarian. He was a gritty competitor who fought against the odds to craft the only World Champions ever in DC. Washington should remember that 100 years after the Old Fox came to town.

Quotes in this article are from John Kerr’s book, Calvin, Baseball’s Last Dinosaur, Snyder’s book mentioned above, and my new book, Clark Griffith, the Old Fox of Washington Baseball. The book will be discussed with Philip Hochberg, former Senators’ announcer during the 1960′s on the “Outta the Parkway” podcast, Friday, July 8 at 7pm.

If Davey Johnson had been the manager in waiting, the sword of Damocles hanging over Jim Riggleman’s head, then he would have been given the long-term contract Riggleman was asking for, but did not deserve. So, Nationals fans are still left to wonder who is in charge. Like kids in the back seat, fans are left to ask, “Are we there yet?” What does the hiring of Davey Johnson really say about that?

What Johnson represents is one more brick in a well-constructed foundation wall. Since the departure of Jim Bowden the Nationals have slowly, but with increasing certainty, been shoring up what they found after the last vestiges of the MLB, Inc. management team left town. They replaced Cristian Guzman with Ian Desmond. Jose Vidro is now Danny Espinosa. Brian Schneider is Wilson Ramos.

Move around the diamond and the team has consistently upgraded the pieces. Based on the recent trends it looks as if they are building a winner. Davey Johnson, regardless his tenure, only continues that process.

There are aspects of Johnson as manager that will be a welcome change for the team. He has a southerner’s gracious demeanor, sharply contrasting the tight-lipped–though another word could just as easily apply–approach that prevailed under Manny Acta and Jim Riggleman.

I met Johnson this spring. Chip Greene, Greene’s daughter, and I were on the field at Hagerstown, MD for the ‘meet and greet’ that featured Bryce Harper just days before the beginning of the 2011 season. Also on the field that day were some of the Nationals brass including Davey Johnson. The kids were all over Harper and so Chip and I maneuvered ourselves into range of the famous Orioles 2nd baseman hoping to get our shot.

Johnson saw us coming and gave us a big smile that put Chip and I immediately at ease. We shook hands and Chip peppered Johnson with questions about Davey’s playing days in Baltimore. I just grinned and nodded a lot.

If I had a brain in my head, I would have asked him about playing with Hank Aaron the year the great slugger broke the Babe’s record. When I got home I rehearsed all the things I “might” have said. “What was it like to be on the field that day?” Or “What was it like to hit more home runs in 1973 than one of the greatest sluggers ever to play the game?”

Davey Johnson started his career as a winner, playing his rookie season on the 1966 Baltimore Orioles who won the American League pennant and World Series championship. He shared the infield with Luis Aparicio and Brooks Robinson, two of the finest ever to play the game. His career was notable for the four World Series appearances he made with the Orioles during their great run.

As a manager he has been similarly associated with winning organizations, leading the Mets during their best years in the 1980′s and the Orioles when they briefly flirted with contender status in the 1990′s.

When you look at the current managers, few have a better record than Johnson’s. His .564 winning percentage is better than any existing manager’s, except Joe Girardi’s and it ranks him among the top 20 in Major League history. He has not managed as long and successfully as Tony LaRussa, but among the current crop of MLB managers, Davey Johnson has few peers.

Having Johnson as manager cannot be a bad thing even if only for half a season.

We discussed the issue of Johnson as manager with several people that day in Hagerstown. The consensus was that he would be crazy to take on the headaches of managing when he had the perfect job right now. He can dictate his schedule to some degree, work in a golf game whenever he wants one. I expect he gives that up grudgingly and only if the next few months are satisfying will Davey Johnson consider taking the job on a longer term basis.

I hope that proves the case, that the Nationals play well under Johnson and a bond forms that cannot so easily be broken. But whether Davey Johnson starts the 2012 season in the Washington dugout or not, he will have paved the way for a better manager than Jim Riggleman. And whoever is in charge to start the 2012 season will have a pretty fair chance of competing in the NL East for the work Johnson puts in to instill a winning spirit among the young Nationals players this season.

Will we be there yet?  Maybe not, but we are definitely getting closer all the time.

Riggleman was not a particularly good manager.  He had his good qualities: his straight-shooter, old school approach that seemed to emphasize defense and solid play above any thing else had its pluses. But his lineups were odd and have only gotten odder. But he was winning and everyone was willing to forget about the quirky stuff.

Like Rick Ankiel as leadoff hitter. That seemed hard to understand, but as Ankiel continued to hit around .200 and there was a young guy named Roger Bernadina gathering dust while he did it, the question was really what is Riggleman thinking?

We never found out because Riggleman never said much in the hundreds of press interviews he gave. And I liked how he danced around the questions without answering them. I said as much in a column about Riggleman who was remembered by his old dance partner from Richard Montgomery High School.

But in the end he was tight-lipped to a fault. There was something simmering inside and maybe it would have been better to get a little more of it off his chest. Dan Steinberg of the Post noted as much this morning talking about Riggleman’s response to Boswell. Steinberg was as shocked as I was to see Riggleman on a radio show baring his soul.

Now the tight as a drum Riggo is all over the place calling Boswell a hack. Wow, that is news!! So many bridges have not been on fire on a single day since Sherman torched Atlanta.

In the radio interview Steinberg is quoting in his Post blog, Riggleman says he is not a quitter, that he would have been a quitter if he had continued to drag his bad attitude around the clubhouse and influence the team unfairly because he was mad about his treatment by Rizzo and the Lerners–Nationals team owners.

So let’s see. He couldn’t keep his bad attitude to himself and rather than harm the team he quit. He could refuse to explain to anyone why Rick Ankiel was his starting center fielder for almost two months and Matt Stairs was still pinch-hitting in crucial situations despite being 43 and having a .085 batting average.  But he couldn’t hide that bad attitude any longer. Hard to believe, even harder to swallow. Something else may be going on and maybe in a few days we will learn that Riggleman is managing the Marlins.

But at the end of the day, it all looks pretty much the same, regardless how you dress it up.

Quitting by any other name is still the same. And that is what Jim Riggleman did. But that fails to describe the full pathetic sense of it. He did not just quit the team.

No, it’s more like this. The team is a bunch of young guys charging up San Juan Hill. They have taken some fire but have just taken the first set of prisoners and are ready to rush on enthusiastically when their leader, Jimmy Riggleman says, “You boys keep on up the hill, I am stopping here to get some tea.” He starts back down the hill with them looking on incredulously.

And why is that okay? Because he was dis-respected by having a contract almost identical to what most managers of bad teams have. Because as a manager who had never brought home any bacon of note, he did not have the kind of contract that Mike Scioscia has–he of the ten-year $1.7 million agreement?

Bruce Bochy and Ron Washington were big winners last year and based on what I could learn, neither has any more contract security than Riggleman. Have they quit yet? Did I miss something?

“I don’t use the word quit” Riggleman said on the radio according to Steinberg. Well, listen up, bud. You may be built like a brick outhouse, but you are a quitter. Q-U-I-T-T-E-R.  Can you think back to your days at Richard Montgomery High School–just up the road here–and remember the spelling bees you did so well in.

Here is what it says: “Local boy quits the fight!!”  That is the headline.  The fact that Tom Boswell did not say it emphatically is because he is too classy a guy.  Let me do it for him. Jim Riggleman quit in the line of fire. Deserted the team, let them down. Dance around that Jimmy boy, if you can.

Wilderness days may be coming to an end in Washington, DC. The Nationals have reached .500 and are in third place in the NL East, something that has not been said in June since that great run in the first year of the team’s move from Montreal.

They have found their team defense, that’s for certain. Based on team fielding percentage, double-plays turned and whatever indicator you may wish to trot out, the Nationals are in the top five defensively in the NL. The double play combination of Ian Desmond and Danny Espinosa has to rank with the best in the game, at least for the last month or so. They look like keepers.

There is a lot of baseball left and the dog days are still ahead. In 2005 the knees of Livan Hernandez gave out and Nick Johnson began what was the first of many trips to the disabled list at the end of June. But this year the anchor of the team offensively is coming off the DL, not going on it.

Ryan Zimmerman has probably rushed himself back to the lineup before he is really game ready. As his throws from third base have shown, he is still feeling the effects of abdominal surgery. He has thrown 15 feet wide and high of second base on routine double-play balls and missed first base by almost as wide a margin on deep throws from third.

But Wall Street can rest easy. Zimmerman will regain his form. A bail out is not required. Defense is going to be the strong point for this team moving forward. Wilson Ramos has emerged as one of the best defensive catchers in the league under the watchful eye of Pudge, and while the outfield is not exemplary, neither is it shabby.

In 2005 the Nationals had a pitching threesome of John Patterson, Esteban Loaiza and Livan Hernandez. The team had a chance to win in every game those three took the mound and Chad Cordero–the Chief–was an All-Star. Washington had maybe the best pitching in the league at the break. Hard to remember, even harder to believe, but just the same, true.

Six years later and the team ERA is even lower. It is a down year for offense, as if the college bats were in use in the bigs. But the Washington staff is deeper overall and definitely holds more promise for the future.

Jordan Zimmermann is showing why Mike Rizzo turned down every trade offer for the young man in the off-season. He is near the top of the league in ERA–3.08–and also among the leaders in fewest walks allowed and most strikeouts per nine innings. Drew Storen is reminiscent of Chad Cordero in his efficiency in the ninth inning and he has emerged as one of the best closers in the NL, much as the Chief did in 2005.

Which is where Ryan Zimmerman comes in again. As good as the Nationals have been in the field and on the mound, they have been every bit as bad with the stick. Their team batting average was the worst in the league until their recent offensive surge. “Surge,” one of the great Washington, DC terms employed whenever things are going poorly.

Losing your mojo? What you need is a surge, baby!! And it is not cheaper in Canada, it is available over the counter, right here in DC. Ask any politician.

And that is what Ryan Zimmerman is going to deliver to the Nationals: a surge in offense. He is trying his best to keep up with the rest of the infield with the leather, but when he has the bat in hand, his game is much closer to game ready. Since his return from the DL on June 14, Zimmerman has had a hit in every game–until last night when he went 0-for-3 with a walk. The rust is there, but by the second half of the season, Zimmerman should be slugging the long ball along with Michael Morse and Danny Espinosa.

Will the Nationals be sellers or buyers at the trade deadline? It is the mantra of the trade rumor blogs, but Mike Rizzo recently said that the Nationals will not treat this trading deadline any differently than those in the past. If there is an offer that will improve the team, they will pull the trigger, but the Nationals are still building for next season.

In 1912 the Washington Nationals turned the corner from being the worst team in the American League to being among the league leaders. Clark Griffith built a winner in his first year with great team defense and a scrappy offense behind the best pitcher in the game, Walter Johnson. One hundred years later and the formula should look much the same. Great young pitching, defense and a consistent ability to score runs should make the Nationals into contenders going forward.

Will the wilderness years yield fond memories? Remembering Carlos Baerga writing his telephone number on baseballs and tossing them to the best looking young women behind the dugout will always be there for me. But would I trade those years for a winning team. Name your price. Just bring on the surge, Mr. Zimmerman. The Washington Nationals are here to stay, and you can put that one on the board, baby.

However, he is known in these parts as the center fielder for the Baltimore Orioles from 1989 to 1994, during the heart of the Cal Ripken years. He had his best year in 1992 when he led the team in many categories. He came back for a year in 1996 when the Orioles had one of their best teams in the past 15 years. I talked to Mike about those Oriole years in an interview that will air Friday night on “Outta the Parkway,” on the Seamheads Podcast Network. Here is the heart of the interview:

Q. Mike, what are your fondest memories of those Oriole teams back in the day?

Mike Devereaux: My favorite team was the 1989 team when we had the youngest team in the league. Opening Day everyone expected Roger Clemens to throw a no-hitter against us but we beat him when Cal hit a home run. That year we really took great pride in our defense. We knew we weren’t going to out hit a lot of teams. It was a lot of fun being on that team. We were called the “Why Not Team.” We came close to winning the league, right down to the last week. I think we finished just a game or two back.

Q. You’re the hitting instructor now for the Frederick Keys, the high-A affiliate for the Orioles, you must be pretty pleased with the progress of Tyler Townsend, who is tearing the cover off the ball so far.

Mike Devereaux: I had Tyler last season at Delmarva, the low-A team for the Orioles. He played real well for us there as well and was called up to Frederick at the end of the 2010 season. Tyler is someone who opens the door up for other players in the lineup. Hitting is contagious and when he hits the rest of the team hits. He is really a talented ball player. He can hit in any count. He can hit the first pitch or wait it out. He uses the whole field too. He can hit it out to any part of the park.

Q. He’s hitting a lot more home runs this year. His slugging percentage is pretty much the same, but more balls are going over the fence. Is there something that he is doing different or just his natural growth as a hitter?

Mike Devereaux: No, Tyler squares up on the ball real well. I tell him to hit through the ball and he is just driving the ball further this year. With his stroke the home runs are going to come, but I don’t try to teach power hitting to players. If he ends up hitting 30-40 home runs that’s the way it goes.

Q. How did you get into coaching. You were out of the game for a few years. Was coaching always something you wanted to do?

Mike Devereaux: I have always wanted to coach and I heard there was an opening here. I contacted David Stockstill when he was in charge of the Oriole’s minor league system a few years back. He told me the job was available to me if I wanted it. I jumped right on it. I have really wanted to get back into the game. I have been out of it way too long and I plan on staying in it as long as possible. That is my plan. I missed the game. It is the greatest there is.

Q. Do you have any coaches from your playing days that you want to emulate?

Mike Devereaux: Absolutely. Frank Robinson was one of my managers and Tom McCraw my hitting coach. Curt Motton, may he rest in peace, taught me a lot. He was a great friend and helped me out through my rookie years. Those guys really brought me through the game. Johnny Oates also.  Just coming up through the Orioles organization and the way they play the game.  The crowds, the fans that supported us, all of that was important to me, whether it was Memorial Stadium or Camden Yards, the fans supported us and I really respect that about the Orioles.

Q. There’s been a little bit of a shake up in the Orioles organization this year. Jim Presley who had a lot of success with the Marlins and Diamondbacks has been brought in as the hitting coach. Does that filter down throughout the organization? Is there a new hitting philosophy?

Mike Devereaux: Yes there is. It starts with Buck Showalter and his people coming in, and that certainly trickles down throughout the organization. We are all on the same page, the same plane philosophically. And it’s definitely a plus to have these guys in the organization.

Q. Is there any difference in approach between a major league hitting instructor like Presley–who is working with ball players who have proven they can hit–and you, who is functioning more as a teacher, working with younger unproven players?

Mike Devereaux: Those players at the major league level have all been through what these players are going through and it is certainly  more of a learning experience here in the minors. When you talk about Low-A and High-A this is the first experience some of these guys have had, playing baseball all year long. They have to get accustomed to playing every day and it is a whole new atmosphere for them. Most of these guys have never really been in any kind of hitting slump. If they are coming out of high school or college, they are always at the top of their game. So they have never really struggled and every ball player goes through that. It is the way this game is. You have to learn to deal with failure which is what this game is all about.

Q. You have another young player here in Frederick in his first full year, Trent Mummey. He was a relatively high draft pick coming out of Auburn University last year. What are you doing to help him adjust?

Mike Devereaux: I had Trent last year in Delmarva when he first joined the Orioles. Again, the adjustment is playing every day. And the ball comes off the bat differently, they are accustomed to the aluminum bats for the most part, and they are playing with better athletes overall than they did in college. Trent is a great outfielder, but he has improved so much from last year, just that time he has been with us. He is a hard worker and a great student of the game. Trent is quite coachable and that is important. I can see good things from him. He can hit for power, again, not that I am trying to coach him to hit for power. He is very quick from the left side, has a good time to first base, so it is not just power with him. He is still young in the game. This is his first full year and I am expecting good things from him.

Q. Who else are do you see making real progress here at Frederick? This team can hit.

Mike Devereaux: LJ Hoes has just gone up to Double-A and he is a fine talent. He came in as an outfielder but has been playing second base. He is a line drive hitter and a fine talent. Steve Bumbry–Al Bumbry’s son–is here. Once he makes the adjustments that we think he can, he is going to be a fine player. I was impressed with Buck Britton who was hitting real well with runners in scoring position before he was called up.

There is more to the interview, but I don’t want to give the entire interview away. Listen in on Friday to “Outta the Parkway,” to hear Mike talk about Vladimir Guerrero’s approach at the plate, more about Mike’s hitting philosophy and whether the hitting game has been over-thought and broken down too much into its component parts.

Then there were the other possibilities that either Trevor Bauer or Dylan Bundy might fall. It looked possible that there could be another star pitcher to go with a healthy Strasburg and the emerging Jordan Zimmermann.

What no one–not a single mock draft–anticipated was Anthony Rendon lasting past the first two or three picks. Rendon himself seemed primed for one of the top spots. But as the names were called the obvious questions was what had happened to the best bat in the draft?

Pitching was the certainly the name of the game for the 2011 first year player draft. Some opined that the new “engineered” college bats are making the pitchers play up and perhaps muting the performance of college hitters. But fifteen minutes and five picks in and suddenly Rice third baseman Rendon was the center of discussion because he was still un-selected. “His medicals must have come back negative,” opined the analysts at MLB, Inc. as everyone began to anticipate a possible long slide down the draft listings.

Pitchers Gerrit Cole, Danny Hultzen, Trevor Bauer and Dylan Bundy were the first four picks and then the player that many thought would slip to Washington, Bubba Starling, went home to Kansas City.

Jim Callis at Baseball America said that the Nationals would just wait and see which of the “Super Six” fell to them.  There he was, the best player left on the board and despite Ryan Zimmerman’s presence at third base, the Nationals made Jim Callis look good by jumping all over Anthony Rendon. A sigh of relief was breathed by everyone who lives by reading the draft tea leaves.

Groucho Marx said that he wouldn’t want to join any club that would have him as a member. There has to be some of that feeling among the Washington brain trust as they wonder how they ended up with Rendon. If he was number one or number two, why did we get him at number six? What is wrong with him? There must be something wrong with him.

The obvious problem, acknowledged by Rendon in the interview shortly after his selection, is Ryan Zimmerman. The face plate of the Nationals organization blocks the way for Rice’s flashy fielding third baseman. Regardless the problems with his health, he has always been a flashy glove man although he has been a DH this season because of his ankle problems.

Asked about the issue Rendon said he was open to playing, “anywhere on the field.” It was surprising to see the normally cocky young man stressing his small physique as something that may play well at second base, or some place, anywhere on the diamond.

Bubba Starling was the Scott Boras agent that many felt was a natural fit for the Nationals who have been deft in negotiating with the uber agent. But it falls to Kansas City to convince Starling that patrolling center field in Kaufmann Stadium is better than suiting up next fall for college football with the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

But not to worry, Rendon is also represented by Boras and he will not come cheap. It will be the Nationals job to make him feel good about going number six instead of number one or two and he may wait to see if he can get number one or two money late in the evening on August 15th.

After the drama of Rendon, the rest of the night for Washington belonged to Adam Dunn. It was his free agency that handed the Nationals the 23rd and 34th picks in the evening. Yes, Arizona got two of the first seven, Tampa got ten overall. But Washington had more picks than most courtesy of the free agent first baseman that every pundit in DC was moaning about as Rizzo let him walk.

It will fall to Alex Meyer, a college righthander, and Brian Goodwin, a 20-year old college outfielder to determine whether it was worth it. They and much of Jayson Werth’s salary are what is left of the big first baseman.

For that matter, Meyer is bigger than even Dunn. Meyer stands 6′ – 9,” and it is that height that has made harnessing his plus stuff so difficult. But he has started to do so in this his junior year at the University of Kentucky. His draft stock shot up down the stretch as he beat two of the best college teams in the country, out-pitching Sonny Gray and Vanderbilt one weekend and then turning around and beating the Florida Gators in Gainseville. Shortly after Meyer’s win against Florida, the Nationals were rumored to be willing to use their 6th pick on Meyer, but they realized late he would be available for their second pick of the evening.

Many scouts believe that Meyer’s stuff is the equal of anyone in the draft if he can learn to do more than just throw hard. He can hit 100 mph with his fastball, but he has shown in 2011 that he is learning to keep the ball in the strike zone. He is learning to pitch and to compete effectively. Some believe he will ultimately be a reliever. His presence on the mound throwing extreme hard stuff would certainly strike fear into hearts of batters the way Randy Johnson once did.

Brian Goodwin, the Nationals pick at number 34, is a five tool player who had problems as a freshman at North Carolina and went to Miami-Dade Junior College. He has plus skills across the board including surprising power that should improve as he matures. For now he is a prototypical top of the order hitter who gets on base and has the speed to score runs in front of the big bats. He is projected as a center fielder, but it is uncertain whether he gets reads off the bat to make that work.

In the end the Nationals picked three college players as they have done in recent years. There will be no Bubba Starling roaming center field next to Bryce Harper. For now the team has two gold glove third basemen, but also a minor league organization that continues to deepen in talent.

I asked Jim Callis of Baseball America when he appeared on our podcast, Outta the Parkway, whether the improved ranking for the Nationals by BA–13th overall–was a function of Bryce Harper alone or better talent overall.  He said that the successful signing of Harper was a huge lift for the team–answer: “Harper.”

But in truth the team is developing more talent than it has since the golden days when the Expos were the envy of every development team. A.J. Cole and Bobby Ray are pitching as well at Hagerstown as Harper is hitting. Tyler Moore, Steve Lombardozzi, and Brad Peacock are leading a very good Harrisburg Senators team. There is pitching help in Syracuse in the Brad Meyer and Tom Milone along with a rebounding Matt Antonelli in the middle infield.

Where does Anthony Rendon fit in that system? It’s baseball. You take it one day at a time, one game at a time. For now Mr. Rendon has to be happy that Washington kept his status as one of the “super six” in tact. After all, it is also a business and that status will translate to a lot of “business” for the young man.

Photoshop Mike Rizzo, Jayson Werth or Jim Riggleman into the Brando body and have them mutter the same lines about the Washington Nationals.  ”We coulda been contenders instead of bums, which is what we are.”

Give all three men credit, each in his own way got out of the car and went looking for someone to punch, hoping to prove there was still competitive fire in the belly. It was uncharacteristic in a town where losing is such a way of life. Werth’s relatively mild comments about his team’s latest distress caused a furor that rippled outward from one corner of the local press.  ”Werth Rips Nats on the Sly” was the headline across page one of the sports page given to a Washington Post columnist.  Anxious to find distant signs of life still emanating from the slouching rank and file Nationals, I went to Werth’s comments.

Whoa baby, what an earful.  He actually said that? There it was in language anyone could understand.”Things need to change.” It practically jumped off the page. He–Werth–was letting it all go. Not content with mere ill-tempered remarks, Werth added, “It’s pretty obvious what is going on around here.” Sly devil indeed. Then he clobbered his team mates with “We are better than this.” The fires of Watergate still burn bright at the Washington Post.

Mike Rizzo took a more cerebral approach. Rizzo came up with a new analysis that showed restraint–though it drew a handsome fine. He merely called the overall umpiring scheme of baseball into question. Angry over an egregiously errant call at first base, Rizzo postulated that the umpires play a larger role in creating the winners and losers than anyone will admit, that they play a role like Brando’s brother Charlie who throws his own brother’s fight unaware of the complicated family psychology thus revealed.

Rizzo claims that the mental game encompasses the umpires and the favored treatment they give favored teams like the Phillies, the Yankees, and the Red Sox. They get all the breaks denied to bums like Brando: the close calls on the bases, the wider strike zone that extends for the favorite while the chumps get squeezed so their pitchers have to lay in a fat one that gets knocked into Palookaville, which is where teams like the Nationals have become comfortable residing.

Before Werth swung for the fences with his outrageous comments, Jason Marquis set the tone for the team. Marquis–normally a quiet sort of guy–beat up a water cooler with a bat. It does not make anger management counseling mandatory, but when the team goes on to win the game by a 17-5 margin the veteran pitcher’s ongoing rants and brooding demeanor were blamed for dispelling any good karma that might have come from the convincing win over the cross-town rivals in Baltimore.

What to do with all the head games being played in Washington? How do we cool down the angry veterans who once saw themselves as “contenders,” and even played for them. Creating silly drama out of nothing seems to be the answer for now.

But the Padres are in town for three games and they are throwing a starting rotation at the Nationals that is a combined 3-15. And that is not the only game in town.

There is good baseball in Hagerstown and Frederick, both easy driving time from the DC suburbs in Maryland. The low-A Hagerstown Suns have Bryce Harper, A.J. Cole and Robbie Ray and are leading the Sally League. Frederick and Potomac are the local high-A affiliates for Baltimore and Washington and their hard fought slugging contests have been a delight. In a great metropolitan area like this one, there is enough baseball for just about anyone, plenty for the depressed fan to wrap their “head” around.

Bryce Harper hit his 10th homer in Hagerstown yesterday and is on a pace to reach 35 home runs in his first professional season unless the competition at higher levels slows him down. The question is whither goest Harper? The most common wisdom has him earning a quick promotion to Potomac and Washington’s high-A affiliate.  Others believe he will play the first half in Hagerstown and appear in the Sally League All-Star Game alongside Manny Machado.  Then he will jump to Harrisburg to see if he can handle the competition at that level as an 18-year old.

Harper is not the only prospect opening eyes in Hagerstown.  Blake Kelso, tagged as a utility infielder, has kept pace with Harper’s batting average that now stands at .365. Kelso is right behind Harper at .355. More impressive has been right-handed pitcher Robbie Ray who has looked extremely sharp in his first three starts.  After promotion from the Nationals rookie league team, the 19-year old Ray has posted 17 Ks to one walk, and a 0.53 ERA over his first seventeen innings. He signed for $800,000 as a 12th round pick in the 2010 draft. The money lured the left-handed, Tennessee high schooler away from a commitment to the University of Arkansas, a perennial SEC baseball front-runner. Money well-spent by the Nationals so far.

The big club set offensive records against the Orioles on Friday night, scoring more runs than at any point since moving from Montreal in 2005. Behind six home runs–also a club record–the Nationals pounded Baltimore in inter-league play, 17-5. Danny Espinosa and Jayson Werth found the short right- and left-field walls in Camden Yards appealing as they launched three and Espinosa missed his second of the night by inches as he settled for a triple.

The explosion came after the team failed to score a single run in two games against the New York Mets. They wasted fine pitching by Livan Hernandez  who lost 1-0. Livo’s record now stands at 3-6 despite a 3.64 ERA. The Nationals team batting average stands at .229, dead last in the NL even after the 19 hits Friday night in Baltimore. Which makes carrying Matt Stairs as dead weight even more difficult.

A fine hitter through out his long career, Stairs has looked ever day of his 42 years so far in the 2011 season. He is 2-for-26 but that has not kept him out of the lineup. He was the starting DH in Baltimore and batted fifth where he stranded five base runners. He was the only person in the lineup who failed to scratch in the 17-run game where Washington poled 19 hits as a team. He is posted as the DH again this afternoon, batting fifth.

On Friday Stairs was ostensibly batting in the place of pitcher Jason Marquis who sports a hefty .333 batting average and has three RBI. Stairs has hit in the middle of the order as a starter and come up in numerous key situations with runners aboard and still has yet to drive any Washington base runner across the plate.

Roger Bernadina followed up one of the great catches of the season with one that just made you cringe. Losing his footing as he approached the wall on a Matt Wieters drive, Bernadina tripped over his own feet and had the ball strike him squarely in the glove. He lost the ball as he fell awkwardly against the wall. Bernadina did manage to atone with the bat, garnering a key single in the go-ahead rally and later adding a two-run homer.

For all the hype of inter-league play, the Friday night game between Washington and Baltimore had a paid attendance of only 24,000. It is easy to find villains over the course of the season, but Bud Selig doesn’t seem to be able to manufacture them, unless of course he adds another wild card team. Then he will have done so for many fans who eschew the loss of post-season drama in the name of television revenues and owner profits.

Watching that day in Harrisburg it was impossible not to see how the ball jumped off his bat and how smooth and graceful he was in the outfield. He made a sensational play tracking a ball into the right field corner–where he played giving center to Maxwell. He turned after corralling the ball and threw on a belt line into third base to hold the runner to a double.  I asked Stearns who the young man was and was told the story of his late arrival to baseball, that he had been a soccer player who was still learning the game but had real potential if he worked hard.  Four years later and Bernadina is making catches like this one to save a game against the Marlins that Washington found a way to lose regardless.

The catch has been called one of the best of this season by anyone who has seen it. Bernadina does not leap just to cushion himself as he catches the ball. It is one of those catches that is possible only because the player leaps. It is the extension that allows him to reach the ball just before it rockets over his head. Few mortals would have the athleticism to track the ball well enough to reach the it, let alone the ability to time the leap closely enough and get a glove on the ball. Not only does the ball settle into his glove, but he hangs on as he makes hard contact with the ground.

Back in 2007 John Stearns told me that Bernadina’s mother was an international volley ball player of some reputation. It is impossible not to see her athleticism showing in the plays that the young outfielder makes for Washington. The question really is why such a talent has had to fight so hard to prove he can play center field in the major leagues when plays like this recent one have occurred with relative frequency.

Bernadina played 134 games last season–primarily in left field–for the Nationals. Riggleman indicated that he felt most comfortable with Bernadina in left and the rookie played well. His first season was deferred because of an all-out hustle play in center field he made to begin the 2009 season when a collision with the center field wall broke his wrist.  Wrist injuries can rob the strength of a player as any one who has watched Nick Johnson in recent years can attest. There are few players in Nationals history who have put out more constant effort on the field than Bernadina and Nick Johnson, yet Bernadina is still struggling to convince manager Jim Riggleman that he belongs.

I talked to Riggleman in Spring Training last year and asked him in particular about Bernadina who had burned up Triple-A showing both power and speed.  Riggleman was polite but did not wax poetic about his young outfielder and this year, despite outplaying both Nyjer Morgan and Rick Ankiel in spring training, Bernadina was ticketed for Triple-A Syracuse once again because he “needed to play every day.” Indeed he did, only as it turns out, Washington needed him playing every day with the big club. The Nationals preferred to experiment with Rick Eckstein tutoring Ankiel rather than give the job to Bernadina. But Eckstein has been hard-pressed to demonstrate any magic this season with his charges and when a wrist injury sidelined the former pitching phenom from St. Louis, Bernadina was recalled to replace him.

As “the catch” demonstrates Bernadina’s speed is handy in running down fly balls in the outfield. Ultimately it is more useful on the base paths.

When Roger Bernadina takes his lead at first base and peers carefully at the pitcher he reminds one of the youthful Lou Brock. In taking their leads from first base both men have the same lean and trim look, gazing in at at the pitcher in the same way a cat does when watching a bird. Both Brock and Bernadina have eyes that seem ablaze with intensity from within their coal black faces.

Bernadina has converted 25 of 30 stolen base attempts in the majors in 526 major league at bats. It is indicative of the cautious approach he has taken. The 40+ steals in several of his minor league seasons are more telling of where his talent can lead–so to speak–if he can stick at the top of the order for the Nationals.

Which is where the rub really is. Washington has remarkable young talent up and down the order from catcher Wilson Ramos to shortstop Ian Desmond. Yet the team has been struggling all season to get men on base at the top of the batting order and it has undermined what has been an otherwise good start. Yet for a team so in need of a lead off hitter, so challenged by the neediness of Nyjer Morgan and the lack of fit with Ian Desmond or any other hitter Riggleman has batted lead-off, why has it taken the first six weeks of the season for Bernadina to get a shot?

So get over it already, I tell myself. There is plenty of baseball to play. Plenty of games left when I can say, “I told you so,” to those with whom I share season tickets. They have been saying for weeks now, “well other than having Roger Bernadina back up with the team, what else could we be doing?”

For now I am at a loss. But Brad Meyers was just promoted to Syracuse where Yunesky Maya is pitching well and Ross Detwiler is just a tick away from putting it all together. Michael Aubrey hit four home runs in a single game this weekend for the Chiefs, so who knows what the future may hold? It is baseball after all, where fine margins define success and failure like no other sport there is.

Brad Peacock was taken in the 41st round of the 2006 draft as a “draft and follow” pick by the Washington Nationals. For Washington the 2006 draft was a disaster. Conducted when the team was still under management by Bud Selig and MLB, Inc., it might serve as a tutorial on all of the things not to do in building a team from the amateur draft.

There are only 50 rounds in the draft so Peacock was not exactly a name on the lips of every scout in 2006. Tim Lincecum and Evan Longoria were two of the top players to come out of that draft. Peacock may yet join those who are just now arriving, first round talent like Hank Conger, the Angels rookie catcher who debuted in April.

Washington has only a handful of players from that 2006 draft still remaining in the organization. None of them has had even a cup of coffee in the majors. Yet as we enter May 2011, Brad Peacock is emerging as the only player not named Bryce Harper to generate any buzz for the Nationals minor league affiliates.

Peacock sits atop many of the Eastern League pitching boards this season.  He has a record of 4-1 in five starts and an ERA of 2.29. But the real eye-popping numbers are the strikeout to walk ratio. In 35 innings he has struck out 42 and walked only six. Command is as important as velocity for minor league pitchers and Peacock seems to have both now.

Baseball America (BA) actually rated Peacock ahead of Bryce Harper in its weekly “Prospect Hot Sheet,” for last week’s performance when he shutout Bowie for seven plus innings.  He followed it up with a disappointing outing against Reading, but his numbers are still noteworthy.

BA points to Peacock’s fastball that has gained in velocity since he signed out of high school. “Projectability” is the watch word for high school picks like Peacock and he has filled out well from the kid who pitched in the high-80′s when he was drafted.  He now tops out in the mid-90′s with a plus curve as well. The only question is whether he has enough of a repertoire to survive in the majors as a starter.  BA rates him as having middle of the rotation starter stuff now largely on the basis of his command of his two plus offerings.

There is a long way from Harrisburg to Washington, but Peacock has covered a lot more ground than almost any other 2006 pick for the Nationals.

One other player is showing similar promise.  Cole Kimball is the closer in waiting for the Nationals, racking up saves in Syracuse which in baseball terms is actually closer to Washington than Harrisburg. Kimball is downright scary. He throws a 100 mph fastball, but has spotty command that strikes fear in the heart of batters.

I saw Kimball pitch against the Houston Astros in Kissimee, Florida during Spring Training. He hit a batter and buzzed another. Even Kimball himself seemed shaken and a little worried about what his big heater might do. Writing from a safe distance it appears he has gained at least a modicum of control as the season has progressed. In 14 innings he has only walked eight and has yet to be scored upon with five saves. Kimball will need to improve on those numbers, but he is not far removed from pitching in the majors.

So as Bryce Harper burns his way through the Nationals organizational ladder, there are others working their way as well. Eighteen-year olds with once-in-a-lifetime power and skill warrant the attention, but it is encouraging to the dedicated fan to see those who have to work a little harder at the game succeeding as well.

Kimball and Peacock may not think of themselves as Selig men, drafted when the owners were putting only peanuts into an organization that they were really hoping would just go away. They are proof that even the worst intentions can sometimes have an upside when players with heart are concerned.

Q. You started playing baseball rather than softball as is usually the case for young girls, how did that occur?

Barbara: I grew up in a working class town in northern Ohio and all there was was baseball.  There was a big steel mill nearby and a lot of empty lots where kids played baseball.  My uncle plowed up a field in a more rural area as well, and he laid out a standard little league field and we played there often tool.  But girls played with boys.  There was never an issue of girls not playing.  We ruled ourselves and just chose sides and played as we decided.    I was never even introduced to softball until I was 16 and by then it was too late.  I loved baseball.

Q.  In your book, Women at Play, many of the women who made a name for themselves in baseball were quite independent minded, is that a fair characterization?

Barbara: Yes, they were strong women many of whom came from rural backgrounds or lived on farms where they were required to take a very responsible role within the family.  When I interviewed many of these women they came from that background, so when they wanted to play baseball, they had the independence to pursue it and that is just what they did.

Q.  Maud Nelson, from the Bloomer Era of Women’s Baseball History, was a defining character in getting women started in the game, much the way Rube Foster was for the early Negro Leagues, could you tell us some of Maud’s history?

Barbara: Maud began playing baseball at a very early age, around 14, and she first played for Bloomer teams that were organized and run by men, but by 1911–when she was thirty–she began to form her own teams.  By the time she was done in 1934 she had formed many, many teams that were then sold to other people, which is why I called her the Johnny Appleseed of women’s baseball.  She gave many different women a chance to play baseball on those teams including Rose Gacioch who was herself so important a player on several women’s teams.

Q.  Who were the other key figures from the Bloomer Era?

Barbara:  Margaret Nable started the New York Bloomer Girl team that was the most professional and most successful of the Bloomer girl teams.

Q.  In the modern era one of the women umpires, Pam Postema summed up some of the frustrations of women in baseball when she said, “it is easier for a female to become an astronaut, or cop, or fire fighter, or soldier, or Supreme Court Justice than it is to become a major league umpire.” Has there been any progress in this area?

Barbara: Since Pam left baseball there have been many women who have achieved success in the minor leagues, but no one has moved up to the Triple-A or major league level.  I don’t follow the umpiring of women in baseball, but to my knowledge there have been no women beyond that level.

Q.  I took my daughters to see the Silver Bullets play quite a few years ago and that occurred right after your first book was published.  What happened to Julie Croteau who was one of the more well-known players from that team?

Barbara: Julie was a coach and manager at the college level and has retired and is married and raising a family.

Q.  The ere of the All-American Girls Baseball League was captured in the movie, “A League of Their Own,” but there is so much more history about those teams.  Who were some of the best real world characters from that era?

Barbara:  They were all so wonderful to interview, so articulate and so knowledgeable. Jean Faut was one who remembered every pitch she ever threw and how she became a very strong pitcher. She attributed it to growing up on a farm and having to chop wood every day and that gave her wonderfully strong wrists and control.  I remember Sophie Kurys who holds the record for most stolen bases in one season, I think it was 201 steals out of 203 attempts. She was wonderful to interview. They were so articulate about their baseball skills and where they stood as women. Then there was Rose Gacioch who I mentioned earlier. She spanned two different eras, playing both as a bloomer girl and then ten years later playing in the All-American Girls Baseball League.  She saw that league evolve from softball into baseball and saw her skills change as well.

Q. What have you been doing to follow up on the careers of these women?

Barbara: I thought about donating all of my notes and interviews to the Baseball Hall of Fame and I intend to do that, but I decided to publish my research notes as I started updating them and realized they might be helpful to others. I had been contacted by so many people who wanted information and provided additional information on those players. So I decided to organize the original newspaper articles and provide them as research notes to Women at Play.  I decided to self-publish that as an additional book and it came out several months ago as Volume I, Research Notes, Women at Play and researchers have been contacting me and saying how helpful it is to learn how women lived, how they were treated in newspapers and how they were reported on at the time. I envision about three volumes total. I would like to publish all of my interviews with all of the people as well, but I am not certain about the copyright laws on interviews, so I will need to look into that before publishing those.

Q.  One of my favorite figures was Toni Stone who actually played at a “professional” level with men, having played in the Negro Leagues just when they were beginning to fade. What were your talks with her like?

Barbara: She was taught to play in a baseball school in Minnesota by Gabby Street. There is an entire book about Toni Stone out called Curveball by Martha Ackmann about her career in New Orleans and with the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro Major Leagues, although I don’t think the Negro Leagues made those distinctions.

Q. There was so much resistance to women like Julie Croteau and Toni Stone who actually played with men, has anything happened to make that easier?

Barbara: Justine Siegal who runs “Baseball for All,” things are being made easier (use link to learn more).  Justine made history this spring by pitching batting practice for five or six teams, one of which was the Cleveland Indians, in both Florida and Arizona. And of course there have been interesting things going on with women playing professional baseball like the Silver Bullets.  But that team was always on the road and they had such a tough time. They could never train like they could if they had a gym of their own.  Justine was a high school student at the time Women at Play was published and I remember a friend from Cleveland sent me a clipping about Justine the same time as the book was published.

Q. Does that mean there are leagues for women to play in this area? If someone like my girls wanted to play baseball where would they go to try out?

Barbara: There is the Little League experience and girls play at a high level competing at Cooperstown now in the championships. Then there are these non-professional leagues all around the country. And women play there well into their thirties and forties.  And there is what Justine Segal and John Kovach are doing that allows women to play baseball how ever they want to, on either integrated teams or all-women teams. So I think the attempts by women to get into baseball is coming from all directions and I think it is stronger because of that.

Q. Are there women’s leagues in the Mid-Atlantic area?

Barbara: You can log onto the internet and google “women’s baseball” and the first couple of things will probably lead you to some of that. I think there are teams playing in the Virginia area.

Barbara was right.  I found the following women’s baseball site  in my search where girls and women can play the game we all love. And thanks to Barbara for sharing her knowledge of the game with me and so many others.

What will the 2012 draft look like after the two sides hammer out new rules for the game? And more important, just how good will this one be? Baseball America says this years draft will be as good as the 2005 draft when 26 of the first 30 players chosen made it to the major leagues–names that include current stars such as Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Braun, Troy Tulowitzki, and Justin Upton.

Answers about the depth of quality talent in this draft will take time to unfold. However, speculating on what appears to be a record number of high end players has huge implications for franchises that live and die by the infusion of new talent–the ones whose payrolls are annually well south of $100 million.  The surging Tampa Bay Rays will have an amazing 10 picks among the first 60 selections in the draft.  As Branch Rickey–the great dean of building championship organizations–knew, there is no substitute for quantity.  Great talents need to be gathered in quantity because the failure rate is so high.  Tampa will add the kind of quantity to their already top tier organization that would bring a smile to the “Mahatma’s” fierce countenance.

In the negotiations that will lead to a new CBA, Bud Selig’s team–the Commissioners Office–will be pushing for what they have been unable to weedle and cajole: hard and fast slotting of the Rule 4 draft.  Selig has pushed baseball’s ownership to adhere to annual projections for what each “slot” in the draft is worth. Each year the Commissioners Office has sent to teams a comprehensive listing of suggested values for each pick in the draft. Owners that curry favor with the Commissioner or otherwise believed in his wisdom followed the “slotting” recommendations as closely as possible. Yet as teams have realized the import of signing amateur talent, more and more they have come to ignore them completely.

Teams like the Yankees and Tigers have paid them no heed from the beginning and made a mockery of the system. The result was that players like Rick Porcello–who should have been a top selection in the 2007 draft–fell through the first round unchosen because of “signability” concerns. Porcello wanted a bonus commensurate with his value–one well over “slot.” He was taken 27th overall by the Detroit Tigers because none of the teams drafting in front of the Tigers wanted to waste a pick if they could not get him to sign a contract. The Tigers turned the logic of the draft on its head by signing Porcello to a $3.6 million bonus–the fourth highest in 2007–after taking him near the end of the first round.

In 2006 the Tigers were the American League champions. The amateur draft has always been one of the key mechanisms for maintaining competitive balance in baseball.  The worst draft first. But Porcello is exhibit A in the case for how that system has been subverted by the Yankees and other teams. Championship teams continued to garner the top talent because they were willing to pay top price and ignored the Commissioner’s slotting demands.

Next year–2012–will be different. Or at least that is the conventional wisdom. Bud Selig wants to remake the amateur draft completely as his final mark on the game, one that takes a giant leap for competitive balance and will be his last hurrah before retiring. Supposedly the demands from management will be for hard slotting that cannot be ignored by teams like the Tigers and Yankees. A cap will be set for each pick. More importantly, there is a push to make the draft comprehensive across the board, encompassing international talent as well as American amateurs. Latin and Asian players could be required to enter the draft in June as well.

To organize the international signings and coordinate them as part of the June draft strikes me as overly ambitious, but it might get done. What seems more certain–in the uncertain world of baseball–is that there will be hard slotting requirements that limit bonus money to levels far below the near $10 million level to which they have climbed. And there will be a signing deadline that occurs much earlier in the summer.

For the last two seasons the signing deadline has been in mid-August.  Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg and the rest of the Scott Boras talent waited until the stroke of midnight as the deadline approached before finalizing their first professional payday. Now the deadline is likely to be moved up by at least a month. As a result, the Harpers and Strasburgs will report to minor league camp before the season is over and will get just that much more training time after signing.

These looming changes for 2012 will have huge impacts on this year’s draft. High school players like Porcello were given large bonuses to lure them away from college commitments. Now they will be unable to negotiate beyond a set amount. Smaller bonuses will mean they are more likely to attend college. And maybe that is a good thing for all concerned.

One certainty is that slotting suggestions from the Commissioner’s office for this last draft–to held in slightly more than five weeks–will be completely ignored by almost everyone–except maybe Jerry Reinsdorf. Teams like San Diego and Toronto that have five picks in the top sixty selections, will not chance having any of them walk away unsigned. Not only is the level of talent likely to be less in 2012, but if teams fail to sign a player this summer they may not be compensated in next year’s draft. Currently if a team fails to sign a top pick they receive a bonus pick in the next draft. San Diego failed to sign Karsten Whitson last year with the ninth pick and has a top pick this year as a result. The 2012 draft may not include that provision.

So all bets are on spending as much as necessary to bring in a record catch this summer. The gluttony will be ugly to watch as record signing bonuses are registered on that last night before the clock strikes 12 times.

Washington has three picks at the top of the draft, going sixth, 23rd, and 34th before picking again at number 61. They gained two of those picks by letting Adam Dunn walk.  When the White Sox signed him they gave up their 23rd pick and Washington gained the 34th as well. Tampa Bay’s entire 2010 bullpen signed elsewhere and it is those free agents that netted them their numerous picks. Teams like Tampa and Washington will be putting as much money as possible into this draft.

So where do you find out who is going where and when. Baseball America is the best industry source. This week, Jim Callis, Executive Editor of Baseball America will provide an early look at the draft and other organizational issues during the Seamheads Podcast Network’s “Outta the Parkway” show.  The show will air this Friday at 7 pm eastern time and it’s gonna be a good one.

With the Nationals barely scratching the Mendoza line as a team, the games can go by fast. Pitchers breeze through the order pretty quickly and so on Friday night the game was in the final two frames before the clock struck nine times. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Sunday doubleheader. The Nationals won a squeaker against the Brewers and were once again knocking on the door of respectable play, though it was heated debate to be sure.

But getting two games for the price of one put the Sunday afternoon crowd in a good mood.  The sun was out, the temperature in the mid-60′s and the beer was dark and mysterious.  The first game had Washington written all over it as Jason Marquis was knocked around for eight hits in the first four innings. Somehow he managed to keep the Brewers from scoring more than two runs and he kept it together through seven innings trailing only by a run at 2-1.

Danny Espinosa is the youngest Nationals regular, still just 23 years old. When he stepped to the plate with Marquis and Joey Cora on board, his .250 batting average was second on the team to the other rookie, Wilson Ramos. He turned on an inside fastball from Yovani Gallardo and belted  it off the back of the bullpen wall to give the  Nationals a 4-2 lead. Suddenly the Sunday crowd  was really into this whole doubleheader thing.

Pudge Rodriguez hit a three-run home run in the next inning and the Nationals went on to win by  an 8-4 margin to climb to .500 for the first time in a very long time. Many of the fans went home,  but several thousand stayed for the second game. I don’t know if only the dedicated fans used to  make both ends of a doubleheader back in the day, but there was no “last call for alcohol” today    in the seventh inning so there were added incentives to stay to see if the Nationals could do the  impossible–climb  above .500 behind the  craftiest pitcher in the game today, Livan Hernandez.

When Hernandez, “Cuban Relaxation” in the flesh, threw the first pitch, there were murmurs of contentment in the stands. When he had breezed through the lineup the first time with only a single hit, the murmurs became casual recollections of the 2005 season when no one could hit the big Cuban for love or money. He pitched just that way on this beautiful Sunday afternoon and took a 1-1 tie into the bottom of the seventh inning when the bottom of the Washington batting order once again turned it over for that new lead off hitter, that Danny Espinosa guy from game one.

This time the bases were loaded and there was only one out. The fans were willing to settle for a sac fly and the lead, but Espinosa rocked one into left field to clear the bases.  Even old Matt Stairs managed to come around from first base and once again Espinosa pushed the Nationals out in front with three RBI.  Adam LaRoche added a solo home run in the eighth. Drew Storen pitched two scoreless innings for the save and Washington baseball took a step toward that 2005 feeling when just about anything seemed possible.

Yes it is only the third week of April, and at this time last year the Nationals won-loss was exactly the same at 8-7.  Yet that team managed to finish miserably and sink to last in the NL East again. However unrealistic, there are others dreaming the same dream. The fans in Kansas City and Cleveland are paying attention for a change as they square off atop the heap in the AL Central. Heck, even the Pittsburgh Pirates got game in April of 2011.

So don’t crown the Rangers and Phillies quite yet. The Rockies may be leading the charge of the also rans, but so far they have company and if the Sunday doubleheader crowd in Washington is any test, it is fine company indeed.

Not only was the Philadelphia radio station giving away tickets to the Nationals game last week, but the seats were in the first row, right field bleachers closest to Jayson Werth.  And Werth got an earful from the Philly faithful. Every time he touched the ball it set them off.

Suze Orman couldn’t have provided more inspiration as Jayson Werth responded to all of the motivational speakers out in right field with a rally igniting double in the fourth inning.  Werth came around to score the go-ahead run two batters later and the Nationals had a lead they would not relinquish on their way to a 7-4 win.

It was hardly a one-man show.  Livan Hernandez was at his best taking advantage of a stiff wind blowing in from right field that knocked down several fly balls that looked like they were headed for the wall.  Werth ran them all down and Hernandez pitched smart baseball going six and two-thirds before leaving with a 5-1 lead.  One of the best plays of the night came in that same fourth inning rally. Livan showed what a truly marvelous athlete he is by executing the safety squeeze to perfection to provide the Nationals with a 4-1 lead.

Wilson Ramos is cut from the same cloth as Werth, the former catcher.  If ever there was a player who deserved the moniker “Rock” it is Ramos.  It was the clutch double from “Rock” Ramos that brought Werth in to score and his line for the evening–two-for-three, two runs and a RBI–was hardly shabby.

The evening provided a good filter for the Nationals front office as well.  There were players who stepped forward and those that did not.  Werth said that the game was important in defining who the Nationals are as a team, proving that they could fight back against the Phillies and win. Point taken and in assessing the play of the team on the field a couple of players left something to be desired.

Joey Cora had problems at third base and has yet to do anything with the bat.  The trade of last year’s utility player, Alberto Gonzalez, to San Diego may have netted a nice minor league arm, but watching Cora play third base and flounder with the bat, memories of Alberto’s glove and bat glowed warmer by the minute.

And Matt Stairs hasn’t made much of an impression either.  He could be Bryce Harper’s mother’s brother for all I care, but if he can no longer swing the bat with authority, there are plenty of guys in Syracuse who can and most of them can still play in the field without wearing camouflage gear. Jerry Hairston who misplayed a fly ball into a game winning hit over the weekend made the plays at third and contributed a key single in the fourth inning that plated the winning runs. He made amends for past sins and Cora and Stairs could do likewise.

But in the end the night belonged to Jayson Werth. His fifth inning solo home run was a dagger in the heart of all the boo birds that flew in from Philly. More importantly, it proved to be the winning run. The right field stands were alive with Washington fans standing and applauding their new hero every time he took the field.

But the Philly fanatics will be back tonight. One good night does not a season make.  Roy Halladay will give the boo birds voice in ways not seen since last season. There will be plenty of chances to the Nationals to prove that the change has taken, that Rock Ramos and Jayson Werth are not the only hard-nosed players taking the field for the Nationals.

There is motivation a plenty in the stands when Philadelphia is in town and it needs to spread a little farther if Washington is going to take the opening series against the NL East Champs.