Cleared for Takeoff

It's a long story, but suffice it to say that a hazily remembered sequence involving a Colt's .45 sixgun, an unexpected circumnambulation of East Potomac Park, an emperor penguin, and a bottle of ridiculously strong tequila left BallWonk with so monstrous a headache on Sunday that, seen from the other side of said headache, the Nationals 2007 season is looking good. Real good. When you start the season with that kind of mal a la tete, the thought of 120 losses* is nothing. Pain is like that: Get enough of it in your short-term memory, and you can bear pretty much anything the world throws at you from then on.

So here's hoping the Nationals also took advantage of spring to go on a bender or two. Maybe this will be a long, painful season. Or maybe it will just be another ordinary grinder with its ups and its downs. But as much as today may feel like the first step off a very tall cliff, it's really just the first step of Stan the Plan's Great Leap Forward. So BW hopes the whole team, from Mannyger down to the kids in Potomac, have some immediate, personal reference they can turn to and tell themselves, convincingly, things could be worse.

Like, "Oh, man, I can't believe we just lost to the Pirates. The. Freakin'. Pirates." [Player smashes water cooler with bat.]

"Dude, take it easy. We'll get them next time. Besides, this is nothing. You remember that time in March you woke up in the tide pool by the bar with that Jimmy Buffett tattoo and the jellyfish burns?"

"Yeah, man, that was awful!"

"Worse than losing to the Pirates, right?"

"You know it." [Laughs.]

[Rest of team laugh, keep spirits up for another day.]

It's a beautiful day at RFK Canyon National Monument. Sunny and warm with a homer-killing breeze to make Long John happy, and the Fish in town to play. That weightless feeling? It's not freefall. It's giddy anticipation. Opening Day is here, and pundits and columnists be damned: This is going to be fun.

Let's play 162.

* No, the Nationals are not going to lose 120 games. But if they do, it'll be OK. We'll still love them.