Bring on the Night

Is BallWonk a very, very bad person? Yes, he probably is. Why? Well, BW's mother is in town for the first time in fifteen months (and guess which son didn't get out to Iowa to visit the farm even once last year). The entire roster of living relatives on BW's mom's side are also all visiting DC this week, together, in a borrowed van, to take BW's adorable ten-year-old cousin to see the baby panda before Butterstick is shipped off to a Chinese reeducation camp this spring. (Didn't that movie just win some Oscars?) Ms. BallWonk only yesterday had a really painful minor surgery that limits her to a diet of antibiotics, hardcore painkillers, and BW's signature chocolate malts.

And in the midst of all this, the only thing on BallWonk's mind is how cool it is that tonight we get a night game. Against Atlanta. On MASN. And how to ditch said relatives in time for the game.

So yes, BallWonk is a very, very bad person.

But while waiting for the night to fall, a fan's fancy turns to Barry Svrluga's blog, on which he asks what we all think will be the storylines of 2007:

1. Manny Acta: The Development of a Manager. (He's scheduled to be on "Washington Post Live" tonight, following Zimm on Monday and Brian Schneider yesterday, making the Nationals 3 for 3 in at least one category.)

2. John Patterson: Ace of Staff? Or Ace Bandage Needed?

3. Stan the Man and His Plan: Will Kasten's much-discussed blueprint for building a winner show signs of succeeding this season?

4. The Ballpark: What will it be called? Will it be ready for '08? Will the cherry blossoms bloom? Will we like it?

5. Jim Bowden: Will he be able to make moves -- within the structure of the overall plan -- that set this team up for success in 2009 and beyond?

6. Cristian Guzman. Enough said.

7. Zimm 2.0. Can he approach the success of last season?

8. The rotation. Enough said.

9. The record. There is some buzz -- read Buster Olney on espn.com occasionally -- that this team could be (and here's a phrase I've written a few times, and may have to pull out again) "historically bad." That means, like, '62 Mets and '03 Tigers territory. Is that possible?

10. RFK's Swansong. Will anybody out there be misty-eyed on those last few days of September?

11. Aramark. Yes, an obvious plea to open up those old concession war stories.

12. Fill in the blank. What am I missing? You decide.

Open floor. BallWonk's notes:

1. Left to its own devices, this team is entirely capable of losing 100 or more games. How do you judge Mannyger's quality as a manager in a year the team probably couldn't win 75 games against the Texas League? Well, you look for whether Mannyger takes four seasons to learn how to do things like a double-switch, and whether he orders the sac bunt as often as Connie Mac, and whether he bothers to get the bullpen working when the starter is tiring but the game is still winnable. So really, it won't take much for Mannyger to prove he's an improvement over Frank. But beyond that? Wait for '08.

2. For the love of Walter, Barry, don't say stuff like that. At least not about Long John.

3. But isn't the Plan predicated on sacrificing the 2007 season? Sort of like in chess, where you offer your bishop for a pawn, and the other guy is all, "Oh, yes, I'll relieve you of that bishop in exchange for my pawn," but but really it just leads to another pawn exchange and then you put a fork down on his queen and now he has your bishop but you have his queen and you're totally winning. Which makes 2007 the bishop. If the Nationals lose 100 games this year, Stan the Plan will be able to say, "As you can see, the rest of the NL East has fallen into our trap. Now witness the firepower of this fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL championship team!"

4. This is sooooo a 2008 storyline.

5. P.T. Bowden has been saying that his mantra is "Pitching, pitching, pitching" for three years now. Over those three seasons, we've gone from a team entering Spring Training with five starters to a team entering Spring Training with one starter. Is Jim "Brownie" Bowden up to the job of general managing a professional baseball team? Obviously not. The real question is whether Stan the Plan is up to the job of micromanaging his GM to achieve reasonable results. Results that will have to include acquiring big-league-viable pitching talent through trades and free-agent signings. Which, if it happens, will lead all Nationals fans to say, in unison, "Well, that's a first."

6. All winter, BallWonk has encountered people, obviously none of them Twins fans, who say, "But Six-Three was good when he played for the Twins." Which has made BW, who is a Twins fan emeritus, want to bang his head against a rock. No, Six-Three wasn't good when he was a Twin. He was good in 2001 and a little bit of 2002. And not "great" or "fantastic," just "good." For a total of seven non-consecutive months. You know what? Herbert Hoover had seven quality months as president before the Great Depression started. Yet we're not adding Hoover to the Racing Presidents. (What is it about Six-Three that gets BallWonk thinking about painful four-year terms? Oh, right.)

7. "Approach," Barry? Approach? Seems the WaPo didn't get a copy of the script: Zimmerman is like those penny stocks in the spam emails: He can only go up. We've already demonstrated that Mike Schmidt wasn't half as good as the Z-Man at his age. The question is not whether Z-Man will "approach" his own 2006 performance, but whether he will "approach" the performance of a minor deity, or merely that of a Hall of Famer.

8. Can "the rotation" even be a storyline? Seriously, we're likely to use something like 25 different starters over the course of the season, thanks to most of them sucking and also to people like Barry totally jinxing Long John with the injury mojo up above. That's not a starting rotation. It's more like the starting quantum flux state. We'll be the first team to have a non-Euclidian pitching staff.

9. BallWonk believes in the pursuit of record achievement. Good or bad. If you're going to win, finish atop your division. If you're going to lose, lose big. 100 losses? Any chump can lose a century. But 120? Now that is something to be proud of. If we haven't won 10 games by the end of April, BW says, screw it. Go for 120. Monumental achievement is what baseball in DC should be all about, and besides, it will just make that NL East pennant all the sweeter when we get it in a couple of years. If you have to choose, better to be the '69 Mets or the '06 Tigers, to be a team that goes from historically bad to a pennant, than to finish in second place all the time. BW would rather lose 120 games then be the Phillies, you know?

10. Yes.

11. Go to the terrace, get yourself a bowl of Frito pie and a margarita, and skip the Aramark stalls entirely. Problem solved. Problem been solved since the middle of last season.

12. Here's what BallWonk is most anxious to see: Power Austin is good. Sometimes he shows flashes of very-goodness. Can Power Austin raise his game from being a good outfielder to being a very good outfielder?