Saturday, March 16th, was our last day at the Nationals Spring Training in the Viera/Melbourne area. The game was on MASN and was scheduled for 6pm so we spent a mostly leisurely time during the day. Of course, leisurely for me meant working on grading participation in my UMUC class.
We had lunch at one of the restaurants that has become a favorite of ours when we visit, Cedar’s Café, http://www.cedarscafe.com/. This is really a wonderful middle-eastern restaurant. We have met the family who owns it and does much of the cooking a number of times. They spent some time showing Ellen how they made the food which has made our visits a bit more special.
By game time it had actually gotten a bit cool but as we reminded ourselves it was still warmer than in the Washington DC area (re-enforced when we got back to DC the next day).
The competition was Houston which in the best of times this year is sort of half a triple-A minor league team. As was typical with visiting spring training games, most starting roster players stay home and those who come are generally designated for being sent down by the end of spring training except perhaps for some of the pitchers. Thus the Nationals were facing the backups to a lightly better than triple-A team.
Starting for us was Stephen Strasburg and the entire expected starting lineup. Ryan Zimmerman was at third base for the first time (he had been the designated hitter up until then) and the pitchers were for the first time going to bat.
Naturally, of course, the Nationals lost 4-2 with the Nationals starting lineup doing absolutely nothing which is not so unusual for spring training.
There were a few highlights. Strasburg was almost overwhelming, even considering who he was facing. He went six innings, giving up one run, a home-run to former National Rick Ankiel. He has such a natural motion that one does not realize how fast his pitches are and how much the ball is moving around when he throws off-speed curves. The Houston batters rarely hit anything solidly and in a number of cases just looked at third strikes.
Strasburg remains one of the really intense players. Each time he would come into the dugout regardless of the results of the inning he pitched, he always had a scowl on his face and looked annoyed that any batter had touched any pitch he made, even if only a foul or out.
Zimmerman made only one play at third, charging a ground ball and thus having to throw it sidearm to catch the runner so we did not get a chance to see how the surgically repaired Zimmerman threw overhand.
The wind blew the ball around a lot with fly balls so outfield fly balls and even high infield popups were an adventure for both teams.
Before the game I was able to talk briefly to Tom Boswell one of my favorite baseball writers. I had sent him a copy of my write-up on the last Nationals season, https://www.ourownlittlecorner.com/2012/10/02/turning-a-page/. I mentioned that my father had the ability to put two fingers in his mouth and doing so whistle very loudly, a talent I have never been able to duplicate. Boswell wrote back telling me that was true of his father and him also.
We also were able to spend a few minutes with F. P. Santangelo, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP_Santangelo, the Nationals current color guy for TV broadcasts. We reminded him that we met him on the elevator at the Hampton Inn the first day he worked for the Nationals. He was very nervous that day, holding multiple briefing books trying to learn more about the then Nationals ball players.
I told him that while I looked at his first year as very much a learner curve, over the last few years he had really become a very strong color guy, providing insider analysis that I rarely heard from other radio and TV announcers. We all agreed that the improvement of the Nationals over the last three years was remarkable.
One of the common themes one hears over and over again is how good a clubhouse the Nationals have right now. How the veterans are teaching the younger players how to act ‘right’ and how well everyone seems to get along. Having read about the serious dysfunction that goes on with a number of other clubs in baseball and other professional sports, we should consider ourselves lucky to have this be true of the Nationals.