A View from the Capital
Opening Day for the 2008 MLB season showcased the Nationals’ new stadium, but who knew that Ryan Zimmerman’s walk off homerun to win that game would be the high point of a very long season in DC.
There was not a fan in the house who left that first game in the new Nationals Ballpark thinking they were watching the worst team in baseball. No Nationals fan would have believed after the team won its first three games that they would go on to lose 102 during the rest of the season. Last year’s cut-and-paste pitching staff had held together well. In early April Nick Johnson looked healthy again, so it was easy for visions of repeating the 2005 season to creep into the psyche of fans in the Nation’s capital.
Now fast forward to Philadelphia and the last game of the season in the newest Camden Yards look-alike. The Congress is meeting in long sessions every night of the weekend to bail out Wall Street and their globe-trotting CEOs, but no reprieve can be found for the failure of DC baseball. The standings show Washington and Seattle with over one hundred losses–move over Bear Stearns executives. It all came down to the Nationals’ last game of the season against Philadelphia to settle whether Seattle or Washington would be the worst team in 2008.
It was Fan Appreciation Day on Sunday afternoon in Philly. There were autographed Mike Schmidt and Robin Roberts jerseys going to lucky ticket holders all day long. In the end the Washington Nationals walked away with their own prize, the rights to Stephen Strasburg in next year’s amateur draft. The Phillies were kind enough to send Kyle Kendrick to the mound, but still the Nationals came out on the short end of an 8-3 score to clinch the worst record for the 2008 season.
A ritual house cleaning was announced on Sunday but it extended only to the coaching staff. Firing hitting coach Lenny Harris and some of the support personal like third base coach Tim Tolman does not acknowledge that the newest team in baseball has finally hit bottom.
Like dirty politics, denial is hard to root out in Washington. There have been many bad baseball teams in Washington. The first edition of Washington baseball–the 1901-1960 Senators–managed to lose 100 games only five times, but it was the fledgling teams that were the worst. In 1904, 1907, and 1909, the Senators–generally playing less than 154 games–still managed to lose over 100. They went 42-110 in 1909. The expansion Senators started in 1961 and lost more than 100 games four times in a row before leaving town in 1971.
DC fans have forgotten the history of baseball failure in Washington and were little prepared for this level of frustration when the Expos came south in 2005. The pundits who examined the picked-clean carcass of the Expos predicted it and since taking over as the Nationals President in 2006, Stan Kasten has never offered any hope that quick fixes were in the offing. But few fans believed that it would get this bad before it got better.
Stan Kasten is largely standing pat and will wait until the farm system begins to turn out winners. Then and only then will the Nationals be competitive at the major league level. The spin doctors are selling the many young players now on the Nationals roster, but DC fans have seen many of them play this season and there is not a game changer among them. The Nationals will be young, but they will continue to be unproven, with only a handful of players more than 27 years old.
The 2009 rotation is likely to include Colin Balester (23), John Lannan (24), and Shairon Martis (22), all of whom are young and inexperienced. The newly minted closer, Joel Hanrahan, will be a senior member at 27. The Washington front office hints at trying to land a front line starter to show the way, but DC fans are likely to remain skeptical until it happens.
The outfield will include Lastings Milledge (24) and Elijah Dukes (24), both of whom deserve credit for quieting their critics–myself among them–while playing good baseball all season long. There will be competition for the last spot from minor league All-Stars Roger Bernadina (25) and Leonard Davis (25). The bottom line is that the Nationals may start an outfield in 2009 that is very young, very fast, can chase down balls with the best of them, but has yet to prove it can provide the offensive punch needed to win ballgames. Again, the front office says it will try to land the left-handed power hitting first baseman needed to show the way to all of the youngsters, but fans will only believe it when they see it.
The Lerners are charging prices to attend games that embarrass the committed fan. A trip to Philly or Baltimore can be paid for by the marginal price difference in tickets and concessions. Dave Sheinin in the Washington Post asserted Sunday that the Lerners are frugal but wise businessmen. Baseball in DC, however, is not some suburban property they can hold until the market catches up to it. Fans will be in open revolt next season if prices are among the highest in the majors and the product looks no better than it does at the close of the worst season in Washington since 1964.
There has been a strong tide of failure running against DC baseball since 1933, when Joe Cronin left town headed to Boston. The dismal forecast for the future will scatter the casual fans like so many fall leaves on a windy day. Maybe Stephen Strasburg will be the prophet to rise from the streets, maybe the Winter Meetings will show a new philanthropic side to DC ownership, but it is more likely that the old stove this offseason will have fewer hands around. There is no bail out looming for baseball in Washington unless the Lerners look into the mirror and realize they have hit rock bottom. Regardless, the road back will be long and it looks like a chilly winter in DC with a spring thaw that may come very, very late.
