There's No "You" in "Team"

Florida at Washington (Opening Day). Fish 9, Nationals 2.

Imagine if instead of the Justice League, Superman joined the Three Stooges. He'd be all, "Good heavens! Lex Luthor and Gorilla Grodd are using stolen alien technology to vaporize the Atlantic Ocean!"

And the Three Stooges would be hitting one another with two-by-fours and poking one another in the eyes, saying "nyuk" and fake-screaming.

"Sigh," Superman would sigh, "I guess I'll go take care of this one too. See you guys, um, later."

Or don't imagine it: Just think about Z-Man realizing that he plays for the Nationals. "All right, I'll do it" could be his motto. Put it on his family crest.

The surprising thing on Opening Day wasn't the loss, or the fact that neither our "ace" starter nor our much-vaunted bullpen could have found the strike zone if you'd given them a map, a flashlight, and a GPS receiver. No, the surprise was that when Nookular went down and Church shifted to center and when Guzman went down, Mannyger bothered putting replacements in at all.

Because you could just see Z-Man thinking, "Sigh. All right. I'll cover left field and shortstop, too." Which you know he could have done.

Still, even though he gave us nothing but good at-bats, well except maybe that DP in the third, but it was a well-hit ball that would have gone through against, say, Guzman, even though he led off the Nationals offensive season with a triple, BallWonk's very favorite thing in all of baseball, even though he made two defensive plays that would qualify as "play of the year" for most guys, BallWonk would give honors to Power Austin Monday. First, he ran out the passed-ball strikeout to reach first and put himself in position to prevent the Nationals from losing by a forfeitian score of 9-0. Then, in the sixth, he threw a bullet from the right-field wall to Z-Man's glove at third -- in the air all the way! -- on a Ramirez double. Frankly, BallWonk didn't know Power Austin had that kind of an arm. At the start of the game he must have to decide whether to load with canister, grape, or ball.

It looked like a stretchable hit, but if Ramirez had tried for three, he'd have been out by forty feet. Someday, and probably soon, the other team is going to try to stretch that double, knowing how far the right field wall is from third, and Comrade Bluegrass is going to give some poor sap the most embarrassing out of his professional career.

PS: What happened to the Hard Times Cafe? When BW doesn't get his Frito pie, he is a grumpy BallWonk.