Game Report: September 2005 Archives

Washington at Florida. Nationals 11, Fish 7 (Sweep).

Oh, the buttery-rich irony! All season long, every fifth day—sometimes every fourth—Esteban Loaiza went up and pitched masterpiece after masterpiece of shutout or near shutout ball for seven or eight innings and he never got any wins. Then, in his last game of the year, Esteban gets shellacked for six well-earned runs (it’s like he’s Cinderalla, and after midnight on July 31 his 2-0 pitch turns into a home run) and he’s out of the game before the seventh and he gets the win.

Hopefully, Esteban has not drawn the obvious lesson: Pitch like a genius and you’ll lose the game. Pitch like it’s batting practice and you’ll win.

And the hot, creamy irony only gets thicker: There we were with Vidro out and Guzman in and we were pounding the heck out of the ball. That’s just not how it’s supposed to be; BallWonk has spent the season thinking that if only we could play Vidro and sub Jamey for Six-Three we’d get some runs.

And BallWonk certainly never would have predicted that the Nationals would finish the season evens with the Fish. Why, back when we were on top of the world, Florida was the one team (OK, Cincinnati, one of the two teams) we just couldn’t beat. The Fish had our number, no lie. Yet here we are evens with the Fish after a sweep in Miami.

Who’d have thunk it?

Washington at Florida. Nationals 11, Fish 1.

Teammates evacuate after the D-Train derailed in Miami. Carlos Delgado swooned (left).

BallWonk would just like to point out that Florida, like Washington, has a manager old enough to remember Teddy Roosevelt, whose big-stick spirit was much in abundance on Tuesday night. But unlike Washington’s Frank Robinson, Florida’s dodecagenarian Jack McKeon is willing to bat a good-hitting pitcher eighth and a sub-.200 shortstop ninth.

Just, you know, in case anyone thinks that it’s written in stone that the pitcher has to bat ninth. No, the worst batter should bat ninth.

New Yawk at Washington. Series Report.

Metropolitans 6, Nationals 5.

To: Les Moonves, Jeff Zucker, Micheal Eisner

From: Tony Tavares

Re: New Program Idea

Have I got a show for you!

Imagine a plane full of athletes on a first-place team crashing on a seemingly deserted island. They’re all alone, their plane was so far off course they know nobody will think to look for them in first place, and then mysterious “accidents” begin to happen. Flash to all-star second baseman Jose Vidro (Benjamin Bratt, after you cancel The E-Ring in November?), who has wandered away from the beach and into the jungle all alone. A shadow falls across his face; he looks up, his eyes widen. Cut to his teammates, searching the jungle for him, stumbling across his unconscious body. His ankle is broken, but he seems to be OK. Then the boyish, cheerful Vinny (Luis Guzman?) makes the horrible discovery: Someone or something has stolen Vidro’s mojo! Pan up through the jungle canopy, where the rustle of leaves reveal attacking parties closing in on our crash victims. Cut to commercial; end of episode.

Future episodes would show rising conflict among the players, and especially between the players and their 70-year-old pilot, who seems to have previous experience crashing good teams. The island will not be so deserted after all; rival tribes, already at war with each other, will ambush our heroes. At least four of them will be killed off before the multi-part finale (not even Buffy killed off four leads in a season; talk about guaranteed water-cooler publicity!)

Finally, in the big reveal just two episodes before the season finale, the players will discover that their island is actually an uncharted portion of Long Island, and the clues will build that one native tribe, the Mets, caused the plane to crash in order to steal the players’ souls by eating them. A climactic battle for last place, and the team’s soul, will follow. And, in a Rockie-style twist, our heroes will lose their battle with the Mets. Cliffhanger: Will the crash survivors, beaten and scattered by the cannibalistic Mets tribe, stay out of last place and above .500? Tune in next fall.

It’s Alive meets Lost meets The Sopranos. It’s can’t-miss TV.

Call me, baby.

TT

San Francisco at Washington. Nationals 2, Gigantes 0.

Talk about time travel. While BallWonk remains stuck in a repeating past where the Nationals keep blowing games with two out in the ninth—and yes, BallWonk is still looking for Joan Collins, to throw her under a bus, or for Andie McDowell, to wish her a happy Groundhog Day—the Nationals have apparently fallen into a wormhole and emerged in the year 2006.

As we all hoped, the 2006 Washington Nationals look pretty good. Even their worst starter can pitch a heck of a game. Setup man John Wilkes Majewski has become a full-time assassin. Closer Chief Cordero remains the premiere game-ender in the league. Ryan Zimmerman can play any position we need in the infield. Cristian Guzman rides the pine. Rick Short is a hitting machine of a utility infielder. Ryan Church has remembered how to hit. Even Brandon Watson, struggling at the plate as young contact hitters often do, showed some killer instinct with the glove in left field.

And the future only gets brighter when you consider the 2006 players we didn’t play. Vinny, while not the hit generator or RBI factory he was in Colorado (duh), is still a power threat at the plate and a terrific asset in the field. (“At the hot corner, at the dish, Vinny is ¡caliente!”) There’s still this guy named Vidro who, when healthy, is an All-Star–caliber second baseman. Riker remains steady as she goes. And with both Preston Wilson and Bluegrass, we have enough quality outfielders to field two teams.

That’s the one blessing that comes from falling out of the pennant race in September: You get to see the future take the field. Well, actually, that’s usually not such a good thing, really. It’s not like the folks in Kansas City or Pittsburgh are thanking anybody for the chance of watching tomorrow’s Royals or Pirates today. But the 2006 Nationals are a vision to give us hope just as surely as were the 2005 Indians to the people of Cleveland when the Offensive Toons took the field this time last year.

With a magic number of something like three (which is to say, any combination of Nationals losses and Houston wins totaling three keeps us out of the playoffs) and only nine games left, we are very likely soon to be hearing the cry of “Wait ’till next year.” But to BallWonk, that will not be a sad refrain. It will be a chorus of hope. Because, honestly, these 2006 Nationals are hot.

San Francisco at Washington. Gigantes 5, Nationals 1.

Barry creamed Long John’s pitch clear to the BALCOny.

Seriously, BallWonk does not understand why the Barroid is still playing this game. Has he failed an MLB-administered drug test? No. Has he admitted under oath in a federal court to years of steroid use in violation of our republic’s criminal laws? Yes.

BallWonk believes in the principle of innocent until proven guilty, but he also believes in the principle of innocent until admitted guilty under oath in a court of law.

And while BallWonk has never liked the Barroid, this has nothing to do with his personality or the immanence of his record-breaking. BallWonk has never much liked Junior Griffey either, but BallWonk never, ever had any problem with the notion of Junior breaking Hammering Hank’s all-time home run record. (Back when Junior was a great player, and seemed to be on a track to break all the big hitting records, before Trader Jim touched him and he instantly became a broken-down has-been.) If the Barroid were just a jerk, and not a cheating jerk, BallWonk wouldn’t even boo the man when his Gigantes came to visit. No sir. BallWonk doesn't play that way. BallWonk would come to the ballpark and cheer on the Nationals and admire Bonds and even applaud him if he got a good hit, because good baseball is good baseball even when the player isn’t a particularly nice guy. Everybody can’t be Harmon Killebrew.

But this is a different case. The Barroid earns special derision for cheating is such a way that his every game in uniform amounts to rubbing the face of every decent fan in the metaphorical hog-turd of the obvious fact of his cheating. The Barroid’s struts about the field as though to say, “Look at me! I’m getting away with fraud!” His every at-bat is the equivalent of OJ or Robert Blake promising the track down “the real killer.”

So booing the Barroid is not just allowed. It is required. Fans of baseball, whatever their team loyalties, have an affirmative moral duty to boo the man when he sullies the field of play with his cheating presence.

Remember, Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver were tried and acquitted of throwing the 1919 World Series and the commissioner banned them from the game anyway. In Bonds we have a man who has admitted to his wrongdoing—wrongdoing that violated not only the rules of the game but the laws of the land—under oath in a court of law. Emperor Selig will never have more clear-cut cause to banish a player than the case against the Barroid.

The good news is that the Barroid, aside from being a cheating jerk, is also a delicate prima donna, sort of like Guillen the Barbarian but without the backbone, and he refuses to play day games. (Or run to first base, or face big-league pitching without more armor than Voltron.) So Washington baseball fans will not have to endure a third game of the Barroid on Thursday.

Which is good, since even scrawny, pre-cheating Barry would probably hit the heck out of Hector, and it sure would be nice to avoid the sweep.

San Francisco at Washington. Gigantes 4, Nationals 3.

No, no, no. BallWonk does not believe it. Not even half a day later when the newspaper says it's true. Surely the Nationals would not once again lose the lead with two out in the ninth inning. Not three games in a row.

But assuming for a moment that BallWonk is not stuck in a Bill Murray-like cycle of repeating history that he will soon break by learning the piano and making himself more useful to his neighbors, or by throwing Joan Collins under a bus, whichever, and that the Nationals really have lost three straight contests in the last one-twenty-seventh of the game, then BallWonk would like to take issue with Mel and Ron's assessment Tuesday night.

Leaving ¡Livo! in to pitch to Barry Bonds in the ninth was not a mistake. When the game is on the line, does anybody really prefer Mike Stanton to ¡Livo!? No, nobody does. If they did, we wouldn't have Stanton in the first place. So please, guys, lay off Frank’s decision to walk away from the mound without changing pitchers.

The whole problem with that inning was not Frank's choice to leave ¡Livo! in, it was ¡Livo!'s choice to walk Edgardo Alfonzo. The trick to beating the Gigantes when Bonds is playing is not what you do to Bonds. It's what you do to the guys due up in the inning before Bonds. Pitch to Bonds, walk him, it's all the same to BallWonk. But for the love of Frank, don't walk the guys due up before Bonds. On the 3-2 count to the guy batting before Bonds, you throw a strike. Period. You don't nibble at the corners or hope he chases a ball, you put one in the zone and trust your fielders. Because the truth is that he's only got about one chance in three of reaching base if he puts the ball in play. In the end a pair of solo homers doesn't hurt you any worse than a walk and a homer, and the odds of the former are worse if you throw that strike than the odds of the latter if you don't.

In fact, that has been the theme of the Nationals' ninth-inning curse of late. It's not the big hits that kill us, it's the walks that precede them. And you see this every time the Nationals play extra innings. We get just as many hits as the other guys after the ninth, but their pitchers don't give up any walks and ours do. As a result, the other team scores runs and we don’t. It’s the walks—the ones we give up and the ones we don’t take—that are losing us the ballgames.

But BW doesn't actually believe any of this is really happening. Just as soon as he can find Joan Collins and introduce her to the grille of a city bus so that the Nazis don't win WWII, the timespace continuum will restore itself to last Wednesday and the Nationals will start closing out some wins.

Washington at New Yawk. Nationals 4, Metropolitans 2.

It is to laugh. Or perhaps to cry. The lately bumbling Nationals facing Tom Glavine without a starting pitcher, on a day when Cristian Guzman would be our best hitter, and without Frank Robinson for the critical innings. Could the odds be more stacked against us? Yes, they could: we could be playing on the road against a team with Andruw Jones. Well, we got one out of two, anyway.

BallWonk is of the firm belief that Frank marks some games on his schedule as "losable." Instead of spreading out rest days and balancing them against the quality of our starters to maximize the Nationals' day-to-day average ability to win, Frank picks a day when the pitching matchup doesn't look good and sits as many starters as the roster allows. "We're probably not going to win that game anyway," Frank says, "So we might as well write it off and rest guys for the games we might win."

Oh, sure, when he talks to the press, Frank will say things like "platoon" and "righty-lefty matchup" and so forth. But the platoons never seem to require sitting half of our best hitters against lefties when one of our good pitchers is on the mound. Funny how that works out.

Maybe we didn't face Andruw, the mad bomber of the Bobby. But we did play with a lineup that our own manager meant to lose the game.

So yeah, all that overcoming of the odds did raise the excitement of an already exciting game. True, Officer Schneider and Riker (or is it Luigi? Note to Nick: think beard, not mustache) eventually got into the game. But only after Frank was ejected. In other words, we started with a manager who wanted to lose. We finished with a manager who wanted to win.

And perhaps that's why we took this game we had absolutely no right to win. It's always hard to quantify a manager's impact on a team -- do you really need Joe Torre if you have the talent of the '98 Yankees? -- but maybe Tuesday's match at Shea sheds some light on the question. A team with a manager who plays his best players is more likely to win than a team with a manager who intends to lose.

Of course, it helps when the other team gives you extra outs in the form of errors and blunders. The Metropolitans gave us what amounts to an extra inning or more. But then most of the mistakes were forced by an unusually aggressive approach on the bases. Did Frank (or Eddie) tell Huppert to start sending runners to force some errors, or did Frank merely give Huppert his head and this is how our much-maligned third-base coach would handle runners if left to his own devices? BallWonk doesn't know, but he does hope that the new owners, if Emperor Selig and his dark minions get around to naming an owner before Spring Training, ask and answer that question before they decide to extend Frank's contract.

Because Tuesday's game, with all the small-ball and the pitching changes and a close margin, had the hallmarks of a game decided by the manager. What the Nationals caucus needs to decide is whether we won this one because Frank was our manager for the first six innings, or because he wasn't our manager for the last three.

Atlanta at Washington. Series Wrap-Up

Cowards 9, Nationals 7.

Good gracious, BallWonk, you seem most tardy of late. Highly unusual, what.

Indeed, BallWonk replies, and mutters something indistinct about elections in Egypt and the arrests in Lebanon and unforseen additions to his schedule.

Harrumph! the reader would be justified in saying, and maybe even a second Harrumph! Have you not got your priorities all topsy-turvy, man, losing days in wonkery on foreign subjects when there is a baseball season on the line right here in Washington?

But work, BallWonk protests.

Work be damned, sir, and so to you if you will not stand now at your Nationals' side in this hour of crisis!

But my dear reader, BallWonk does stand at his Nationals' side. He still believes. Four games back with eighteen to go? We can do that. But to do it, the Nationals are going to have to learn the lesson of the end of the Atlanta series. If you're going to score seven runs in one game and zero runs in another game, score the seven runs when your opponent scores four and none when he scores nine, not the other way around.

That was how we climbed to first place in May: Win the close ones, lose the blowouts.

It was the first of the Confucian maxims by which the Nationals must live if they are to win:

Win the close ones, lose the blowouts.

Walks and doubles.

Always send the runner.

That's it, grasshopper. Follow those rules and we will pick up those four games against whichever other member of the Keystone Kops leads the race for the dark-horse nomination today. (Florida, but wait 24 hours. It'll change again.)

As for the rest, BallWonk promises that he's done with the quiet prayer portion of the season. It's back to the pulpit from here on out, even if that means that Ms. BallWonk will have to watch a Metropolitans game on her tenth anniversary. We've got a pennant to win here; a guy has to have priorities.

Atlanta at Washington. Nationals 8, Cowards 6.

Was there ever a better bottom of the eighth? Not this season, not for this team, there hasn't been.

We may play like Ewoks whenever Florida comes to town, but bring on Atlanta and oh yes, the Force will most assuredly be with us.

And after Friday's eighth-inning rally -- four runs! off Atlanta's bullpen! -- BallWonk's plans for a productive Saturday are shot all to heck. It is going to take a full day of quiet reflection to come down from the high of Friday's comeback. Because it wasn't just the game we came back to win. In a very real sense, this was a fork-test game. Atlanta stuck its evil, genocide-celebrating fork into the Nationals and discovered we weren't done. Instead of pulling their foul-hearted Reb fork out of us clean and crumb-free, the Cowards got their ears knocked about and their bellies kicked in and their spirits crushed, yet again this season, by a team even some Washingtonians have given up for dead.

"We still believe," said Vinny.

So do we, Vinny! There is a number out there, a moving target where the number of games left is lower than the number of games back and that's it, the season is over and it's just a matter of playing the games out and hoping you don't finish in last place again. But that number is not here yet, and won't be for a while, and maybe we don't ever have to see it.

Instead of that number, which some people call "magic" but only if they're in front of it looking backward, the Nationals gave us some other, better numbers Friday. Numbers like 1,000 hits and 44 saves. Now those are some magic numbers. Numbers a fan can really believe in.

Florida at Washington. Series Report.

Chapter 1. Nationals 5, Fish 2.

He was an old man who managed alone on a team in the nation's capital and he had gone forty-eight days without taking a series. In the first half of the season a Byrd had been with him. But after forty days without a series win the Byrd's general manager had told him that the old man was salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the Byrd had gone at their orders to a minor-league team which won three good games the first week. It made the Byrd sad to see the old man come in each night with his scoreboard empty and he always went over to help him carry either the practice balls or the bats that the players left in the dugout.

The old man was thin and gaunt with the deep wrinkles a baseball uniform brings from having no collar were on his neck. The wrinkles ran all around his throat and the back of his neck and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy lumber at the plate. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a cliff wall no home run could clear.

Everything about his was old except his eyes and they were the same color as a mahogany bat and were cheerful and undefeated.

"El Juez," the Byrd said to him as they walked back to the clubhouse where the equipment was hauled, "I could play with you again. I've improved my swing."

The old man had taught the Byrd to swing and the Byrd loved him.

"No," said the old man. "You're with a lucky team. Stay with them."

"But remember how you went through April without winning and then we won big games every day for two months."

"I remember," the old man said. "I know you did not leave me because you doubted."

"It was Trader Jim made me leave. I am a Byrd and I must obey him."

"I know," the old man said. "It is quite normal."

"He hasn't much faith."

"No," the old man said. "But your swing has improved. Hasn't it?"

"Yes," the Byrd said. "Can I offer you a beer on the terrace and then we'll take all the stuff home."

"Why not?" the old man said. "Between baseball men."

When the wind was in the south a smell came across the parking lot from the Anacostia; but today there was only the faint edge of the odor because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the terrace.

"Al Juez," the Byrd said.

"Yes," the old man said. He was holding his glass and thinking of many years ago.

"Can I go out to get the baseballs for practice tomorrow?"

"No. Come and play baseball. I can still manage, and Cowboy Randy will throw batting practice. But you have your new swing and I feel that you could hit doubles and home runs and even triples for us."

Chapter 2. Fish 4, Nationals 2.

I could just drift off, the old man thought, and sleep here in the dugout and tell Cowboy Randy or maybe Buford to wake me if we score some runs. But we have gone too long without winning a series and I should manage the game well.

Just then, the Fish scored three runs off of Darrell Rasner.

"No," he said. "No" and decided to yank Rasner. He walked out to the mound and reached up to tell the bullpen to send Jay Bergmann. He could feel the Fish slipping away, and with them probably the series and maybe the season. What did he have to throw at them? At anybody two games of every five? Rasner? Bergmann? Or that other man, the one with the trim gray goatee. What was his name? Halama. He did not look like a Halama to the old man.

He knew that he would have to start Halama the next day, which was like starting nobody and just sending the bullpen out to pitch nine innings. So he could not bring in Halama tonight and he had to send Bergmann out to face the Fish in the third.

In the bottom of the inning, the old man felt his knee cramp again. His knee first cramped in Korea, up in the mountains west of Pyongyang the winter the Chinese had driven the army back from the Yalu. Kim, he said to his knee cramp for he always called it Kim, do not bother me now. Today, later, come if you must, but let me walk a little while longer. I will have to go to the mound more times today.

He watched Bluegrass hit a two-run homer. Kim, he thought, you see? We will come back and catch the Fish and I will have to go to the mound many times to keep the game close so that Tex and the Chief can win the game and save it for us. Then we will not be done for the season and I will come back next year to this bench. I will let Cowboy Randy make the pitching changes, and Eddie will go talk to the umpire, and I will rest my legs and watch the games.

He did not say any of that, though, because he knew that if you said a good thing it might not happen. He knew what a huge game this was and he thought of it slipping away in the darkness and the Nationals' season ending with it.

But his team got only two more baseruners in the game, and the Fish scored another run. This will kill me, the old man thought. The Fish always beat us. Even when we are winning and beating great teams we lose to Florida.

Chapter 3. Fish 12, Nationals 1.

"Tell me about the wild card," the injured Vidro asked him.

"In the American League, it is the Indians as I said," the old man said happily.

"They lost Sunday," Vidro told him.

"That means nothing. The great Hafner is himself again."

"They have other men on the team."

"Naturally. But he makes the difference. In our league, between Houston and Florida, I must take Houston. But then I think of Dontrelle Willis and those great pitches he throws against us."

"There was nothing ever like them. He throws the wickedest ball I have ever seen."

"Do you remember when he used to come to Montreal? I wanted to ask him to pitch for us, but I was too timid to ask him. Then I asked you to ask him and you were too timid."

"I know. It was a great mistake. He might have come pitch for us. Then we would have him every fifth game. And we would not have to start these crap pitchers your hissy fits against our good Asian players have forced us to rely on."

"I would like to manage the great Hafner," the old man said. "They say his father was a farmer. Maybe he was as poor as the Expos and would understand."

"The great Bonds' father was never poor, and he, the father, was winning MVP awards when he was my age."

"When I was your age I was in the infantry in Korea and I have seen Chinese volunteers swarm across the Yalu in the evening."

"I know. You told me."

Chapter 4. Fish 8, Nationals 4.

The old man could not look at the Fish anymore since they had mutilated his season. When the Fish got a hit it was as though he himself were hit.

It was too good to last, he thought. I wish it had been a dream now and that we had never been six weeks in first place and was home in Los Angeles watching the Lakers.

"But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." I am sorry that I drove the Asian pitchers off the team, he thought. Now the bad time is coming and I do not even have a fourth starter.

"Don't think, old man," he said aloud. "Manage on and take it when it comes."

But I must think, he thought. Because it is all I have left. That and baseball. I wonder how the great Earl Weaver would have liked the way I managed this team halfway to the pennant? It was no great thing, he thought. Any manager could do it. But do you think Guzman was as great a handicap as Belanger? I cannot know.

"Think about something cheerful, old man," he said. "Every minute now you are closer to home. Three losses to the Fish are nothing when Atlanta is coming to town and you have beaten Atlanta all year long."

Philadelphia at Washington. Series Report.

Nationals 6, Failers 1.

What's that, Philadelphia? Your baseball team is choking? Here, let us help.

What's that? You say we're making things worse? We're very sorry. We did not mean to confuse you. When we said we'd help, we meant we'd help the Failers choke. You have only a month to do it, and you wouldn't want to let your fans down now, would you? Honestly, they wouldn't know what to do if their team ever got back to the playoffs. They'd probably just go on booing, and then the rest of baseball would begin exchanging embarrassed glances with each other, like the family does at Thanksgiving dinner when uncle Bob starts his sermon about how FDR turned the country communist and it's been downhill since then.

So we're very happy to help the Failers with their September choke. Everyone will be better off when the Failers drop out of contention. You'll all thank us later, really.

In the meantime, we would like to thank you, Philadelphia, for helping to focus the minds of our players back on baseball, where it belongs, and teaching us how to hit with runners in scoring position. These were very instructional games for us, reminding us of the good pitching and timely hitting that won us so many contests before the All-Star break ruined everything -- this is exactly the kind of game we will have to play day in, day out to reach the playoffs and win there.

All August, the Nationals were one really bad series from being finished for the season. We went to Philadelphia, and then Atlanta, for four-game series that each included a rainout and a double-header, and faced near-certain elimination if we couldn't at least split the series. We split 'em both, and now we're in position to pick up games and be the team that can knock other teams out of contention. It's a nice feeling. BallWonk said after the four-game split in Philly that he looked forward to seeing the Failers at RFK in order to help administer their annual choke.

And here they came, and choke they did. What good houseguests the Failers proved to be. After Friday night, every time they started to choke, and we cut up another piece of raw hot dog and offered it to them, they swallowed it right down.

Come back again real soon, you hear!

Washington at Atlanta. Cowards 8, Nationals 7.

Some thing just break your heart. The inundation of New Orleans -- after the hurricane had passed. The story of that police dog, shot by a fellow officer while guarding a crime scene. Memories of 98 cent gas from only seven years ago. Thursday night's game at Atlanta.

In the past few weeks, the Nationals have gone a fair way to righting the ship of state. They have shown they can win games. They have shown they can rally from deep deficits -- six, seven eight runs down.

Unfortunately, what they haven't shown they can do is rally back from a deep deficit and then win the game.

Blowouts are tough. One-run losses are harder still. But a blowout and a one-run loss, in the same game? Heartbreaking.

Oh, and welcome aboard, Deivi Cruz. Hopefully, as a fellow Dominican, you can talk some sense into Six-Three. Or replace him. Either way. What is it about the Nationals that any player we add to the lineup has at least two hits in his first game? Byrd and Cruz this week, Byrd, Preston, Rick Short, Brandon Watson, and Junior Spivey before them. Couldn't we just send every player down to New Orleans -- er, make that Potomac -- for a couple of days a week? Just rotate them through, so that every day we have at least one starter who just got called up?

A dispiriting loss, true, but the Nationals caucus has got to consider the series a success. The last-place team came to the first-place team's town and split the series. That's clearly a failed series for Atlanta. The Nationals scored some runs, and at least posed scoring threats in many innings. We pushed Atlanta hard enough that the Cowards were forced to play like it was the playoffs -- which is to say, they started to give away runs.

Oh, yeah, and both games we lost we lost not to Atlanta, but to presumptive MVP Andruw Jones. Without the league's best slugger (and one of the league's best defensive outfielders), Atlanta would have been swept. Handily. If the Nationals played like they played the last four games against any other team in the NL East, they would win four games out of five. And this wasn't even a particularly good series for our pitching (except for the bullpen, which gave up one run in 96 and a third innings.)

Play Philly like we played Atlanta, and we will finish the Failers' season right here in Washington. Play Florida like we played Atlanta -- well, maybe with slightly better starting pitching -- and we can throw the Fish back in the water.

Of course, not all successes are equal. The Nationals achieved strategic superiority with the series split. But strategic supremacy -- a series win or a sweep -- would have been much better. Still, there were seven weeks not too long ago when it would have been inconceivable for Washington to march on Atlanta for four games and not lose at least three.

We have, it seems, turned a corner. The slump is in its final throes. Not even a heartbreaking come-from-behind one-run loss can take away from the good news of the Atlanta series.

Washington at Atlanta. Twi-Night Doubleheader.

Nationals 4, Cowards 3.

It was like any other birthday party. Except instead of party favors for the guests, Frank handed out a hit and run with Vinny on first and our backup catcher at bat. And instead of a frosted cake and a pair of reading glasses, the guests chipped in to steal Frank third base and a run to break a ninth-inning tie.

Which is to say, for his birthday Frank gave the Nationals a loss. But they gave him a win, and so it all balances out. As far as the standings go, it was as if we didn't play at all on Wednesday. Which ain't bad -- treading water is progress for the Nationals. When you're drowning, the first step is not swimming. It's keeping your head above water.

Really, though, as much as they admire the guy, surely some Nationals looked at Frank's party favor and wished he'd just gotten them a bag of noisemakers and kazoos like a normal birthday party. Yes, the Nationals needed to do something to energize their lackluster baserunning -- opposing teams have clearly begun taking the somnolescence of our runners for granted.

But with Vinny on first, the best we can hope for is a hit and hobble. The. Man. Can't. Run. And BallWonk doesn't mean he can't run in terms of not being as good at running as some other guys. BallWonk means that literally. Vinny can run about 30 feet at a time before he has to stop, take a break, adjust the straps on his leg braces, and catch his breath. The poor man sacrificed his legs in service to the Nationals; the least we can do is honor his sacrifice by not calling on him to run too much.

But the Nationals just kept coming. Even when we weren't scoring runs, or hit-and-running our way out of innings, we were threatening a lot more than has been the case lately. Heck, in one game Cristian Guzman, who only kept his starting job because the TSA detained his replacement for a security check, hit two doubles. A pair of doubles for Six-Three! And some folks think we can't get right back into these pennant races.

(Yes, "races" in the plural. There's the wild card race -- or, as BallWonk thinks of it, the third-party nomination -- and there's the division. Sure, we're in fifth place right now, but we've got plenty of games left in the division. Who's ahead of us? Philly won't win the division; the Failers will choke like they always do. Florida? Florida only gets to the playoffs finishing second. That leaves New York and Atlanta. If there's one team that can be counted on to crumble under pressure, it's the Metropolitans. And if there's one team the Nationals can beat in the clutch, it's Atlanta. So there you go: there is no principled reason the Nationals cannot still win the pennant.)

But even if the guests were grumbling about their party favors, Frank had to regard it as a terrific birthday party. After all, he got an important win to keep his team in the race. The Nationals even played some of his beloved old-timey small-ball for him. (BallWonk has never understood Frank's jones for small-ball. The man was a monster slugger who hit for power and average but never walked much, rarely tried to stretch doubles into triples, didn't steal a lot of bases, and hit only 17 sac bunts in 21 seasons. When, exactly, did he ever learn about small-ball? It sure wasn't during his big-league career.)

Plus, the home-plate umpire in the nightcap even obliged Frank by getting into an argument with him -- literally, an argument over nothing. It went something like this, but with lots of hand signals:

Ump: Hey! Robinson! You talkin' to me?

Frank: I'm not talking to you! What are you doing talking to me?

Ump: I'm not talking to you. You got something to say to me, you come out here and say it to me.

Frank: I got nothin' to say to you. How dare you stand over there and talk to me when I'm in the dugout.

Ump: I'm not talkin' to you. You got that?

Frank: Look, pal, I don't care who you're not talking to, I'm not talking to you.

Actually, it was Frank's adopted son Guillen the Barbarian who put the umpire up to it. That strike we thought he was arguing? Nothing doing. In fact, the Barbarian simply turned to the ump and said, "I know that pitch caught the outside edge, but you should hear Frank in the dugout complaining about your calls."

"He doesn't like my calls but he's not coming out here to face me about it?"

"Nah, man, it's his 70th birthday. He's trying to take it easy."

"What's he saying about me?"

"You ever watch Deadwood?"

"Yeah."

"Then you can imagine what Frank is saying about you. Whoo, man, is his vinegar up today."

Walking back to the dugout, Guillen winked barbarically at Vinny, who was totally in on the joke. Everyone knows Frank loves a good confrontation with the umps, but they also knew that if they were going to engineer one for his birthday they would have to goad the ump into starting it so that Frank didn't risk getting ejected.

Mission accomplished. What with the plucky small-ball win and the rhubarb with the ump, the night game was a pretty terrific birthday present for the old man.

Except, well, Frank kind of had his heart set on some cake. The kind with the sour cream frosting and the pudding between the layers and the little plastic baseball players on the top.