Recently in Spring Training Category

Spring in Washington starts at noon today, when Nationals camp opens in Viera. Pitchers and catchers report at noon today, with the rest of the team reporting next week.

But the real point is, Take that, winter.

Fort Myers at Viera. Nationals 1, Orioles 0.

Dear Nationals,

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for finally completing nine whole innings without committing an error. (And remember, Fonzie, it's not an error if you just don't get to the ball and a can of corn drops in front of you. You just keep trying and swing that bat easy.)

In case this is your only quality game of the spring, thank you for saving it for the Orioles.

And thank you regardless for beating the Orioles. Not just beating them, but beating them 1-0, which is about the most heartbreaking way to lose a ballgame there is. It's nice to beat Atlanta. Nobody here will complain about beating the Metropolitans. And beating the Failers is among life's greatest pleasures. But breaking the hearts of C. Petegomery Angelos's songbirds gives the most vicious joy a person can experience without actually turning to evil like Darth Vader.

BallWonk's heart is practically bursting with happiness and spite after Thursday's game. Thank you, Nationals, thank you, thank you.

Yours,

BW

Viera at Jupiter. Cardinals 9, Nationals 3.

Take a look at that fielding. Throwing errors from Zimmerman, Vidro, and Johnson, but new left fielder Fonzie started the game's first double play (7-4 to nail Eckstein at second on a Pujols fly). Things that make you go hmmm.

On the batting side, Fonzie was 1 for 3 with a double, a walk, and two runs scored -- not a bad day's work for a leadoff hitter.

Look who just took left field for the Nationals in today's game against the Cardinals.

At the risk of mixing 70s sitcom metaphors, welcome back, Fonzie. Not only is BallWonk completely ready to forgive and forget, he's also willing to ignore any and all fielding errors you commit while playing left field. In his scorebook, instead of E-7, BW will score them E-GM.

It's officially spring, which means that the games count now. So ...

Vero Beach at Viera. Trolley-Dodgers 11, Nationals 5.

It may be the last taboo. Even the most conservative, infield-values-oriented manager has thought to himself, "If having one all-star secondbaseman is so nice, why not have two, like they did in biblical times? If we're all consenting players, what would be so wrong with that?" And then he starts thinking of all the chores a second secondbaseman could help with -- a 4-4-3 double play; just imagine it! -- and of course he thinks it must be pretty wild to have two secondbasemen swinging away deep into a night game.

But of course that's just the fantasy.

The reality, as teams from Utah once learned before they banned the practice of playing with more than one secondbaseman in order to gain admittance to the Union in 1896, is much messier.

Because as hot as the manager thinks it might be to have two swinging secondbasemen, they want his attention, not each other's. It's only natural. So the manager has to segment his time between them if he wants to keep them at second base, so in the end they have an easier time but his chores are doubled. If he sends flowers to one he has to send exactly equal flowers to the other. If he puts one in the lineup Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights, he has to put the other in the lineup Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights, and then find a way to split Sundays between them. And if the manager is performing one night, the other secondbaseman will know it, and become jealous if he doesn't perform the next night.

There's just no letup for a manager with two secondbaseman. Sure, maybe in biblical times one manager could satisfy two secondbasemen equally, but in these modern times it just never works. A manager will always favor one secondbaseman over the other -- usually his first secondbaseman, no matter how young and hot his second secondbaseman is -- and so to make more time for his first partner the newcomer gets sent to left field or something and then the spurned secondbaseman starts making trouble and passive-aggressively demanding attention by maxing out the credit cards or provoking the neighbors or going 0-12 in the WBC. Then all the manager's extended fielders have to take sides and it's just recrimination and jealousy and ugliness all around.

And that's pretty much how it's gone in Washington's attempt at polygamey, bringing the hot young Fonzie Soriano into the stable, committed relationship between manager Frank Robinson and his secondbaseman, Jose Vidro.

"Fonzie, I need you to play left field. This family needs you out there and in the lineup," Frank said yesterday before the game against the Dodgers of Vero Beach.

"You never gave me a chance!" Fonzie shouted. "You always put Vidro first, and you always will. You promised you would play us equally!" And then Fonzie threw his teacup and his saucer, frisbee-style, at Frank, but missed wildly, and the china shattered against the clubhouse wall. Fonzie is, after all, a crap fielder.

Vidro looked on in uncomfortable silence, desperately wishing he were somewhere else.

"Fonzie, I love you both equally. I really do. But this is a hard time for this family. We're losing every game. You know you're my favorite at the plate --"

At which point a stunned Vidro turned and stormed out of the room, blushing.

"Jose! Wait! Dammit. Look, Fonzie, you know how hot you are with the bat, but Jose is more experienced fielding second base, and this team needs that experience right now. You'll get your chance. But in the meantime, I need you to help out in left field. Please. Do this for me."

A look of purest loathing crossed Fonzie's face, and he choked back tears. "You already take me for granted. You think you can order me around like you're the king and I'm some harem girl! This is exactly what you promised wouldn't happen. I hate you!" And Fonzie stormed out, slamming the clubhouse door shut behind him. He turned and tried to throw his glove against the door's glass panel, hoping to shatter it into as many pieces as his heart, but the throw came up short and his glove just flopped against the doorsill.

"You can't just walk out on me!" Frank shouted at Fonzie's back when he opened the door and picked up the glove. "We've got a solemn contract!" Fonzie didn't respond. "You, why, you! If you're not back here and playing left field by Wednesday, I'm going to seek an annulment! You won't get a dime of my money, and nobody will want to take on an ungrateful second-hand castoff like you! You'll be all alone!" But by then Fonzie was gone. Frank slammed the glove down and called little Ryan and Brandon into his room.

"Kids, your manager and Fonzie are having an argument, and he's gone away for a little while. But this is between us, not you, and I know Fonzie still wants to be your teammate ..."

Forget about your groundhogs or robins or daisies. BallWonk thinks waking up to this sight is the most beautiful moment of spring:

Yes, the start of Grapefruit League baseball heralded by the sudden return of "Today's Scorecard" on my Yahoo!.

Though BallWonk and the WonkPuppy will be lending moral support to Ms. BallWonk at Old Town's St. Patrick's Day Parade on Saturday, other fans will no doubt descend on RFK Canyon National Monument for the opening of single-game ticket sales. Last year's ticket opening was a blast, and this year the Nationals even have a promotional schedule:

Saturday, April 22: Schedule Magnet (Southwest Airlines)
Saturday, May 6: Baseball Cap (Bud Light)
Saturday, June 10: The Chief Bobblehead (PNC)
Friday, June 30: Six-Pack Cooler (Miller Lite)
Friday, July 7: Guillen the Barbarian Bobblehead (PNC)
Saturday, July 8: Visor Fans (Geico)
Sunday, August 13: Screech Bobblehead (PNC)
Saturday, September 30: Team Photo/2007 Schedule (Southwest Airlines)

The Chief and Barbarian bobbleheads are for the first 15,000 fans, and the Screech bobble is for kids only. And the beer-sponsored promotions are for adults 21 and over.

Ah, but to heck with ballpark giveaways and lease agreements and narcissistic secondbasemen and Trader Jim and all of that. There's a ballgame today, and it's on the radio, and spring is in the air.

Talk about a brutal weekend. Thank heavens St. Patrick's Day is coming soon, otherwise BallWonk would fear running out of beer to cry into.

First Fonzie Soriano looked his living legend of a manager in the eye and said, "Screw you, old man, you can't make me play anything other than second base." So the plan now is for Fonzie to practice second base for a week with the Nationals, then go play second base for three weeks in the World Baseball Classic, then come back and see what's what about three days before the regular season starts.

Then we learned that when Brian Lawrence says he's never pitched with pain, what he really means is he's never pitched with such excruciating pain that he seriously considered gnawing his arm off with his bare teeth right there on the dugout bench between innings.

But in his second bullpen workout with the Nationals, Lawrence suddenly did have arm-gnawing-off pain, which led to an MRI and the diagnosis that the only thing holding his pitching arm to his body is the rubbery tube of his brachial artery. So off to the surgeon and, maybe if we're really lucky, a September callup to the bullpen.

The obvious solution is for Vidro or Soriano to learn how to pitch. You figure that the distance from where a secondbaseman fields the ball to first is at least 60 feet. So it should be no problem learning to throw from the pitcher's mound to home plate, right? Especially for a guy as naturally talented and just purely awesome as Fonzie, right? That's right, Fonzie, you show us just how great you are. Show us by working on an 85-mph fastball while you try to learn a changeup.

The next best option is to trade Fonzie -- or, sigh, Vidro -- for a pitcher. That makes so much sense that we can be pretty sure our GM will never do it. Any other GM in the big leagues would have turned Fonzie back on the hot stove for pitching, or even better a couple of prospect arms, faster than you can say "competence," and he'd have done it in January.

Instead, what Trader Jim will probably do is swap Church or, let's just say it to brace ourselves for the event, because where Trader Jim is involved, "worst case scenario" is another way of saying "the best we can hope for," Zimmerman for a pitcher. And remember, when Trader Jim dreams about pitchers when he dozes off under the hot Florida sun, he sees visions of Ryan Drese. Let's just hope that when Trader Jim trades away one of our best young players for a rubber-armed number-five man, he at least has the good graces to make the deal out of the NL East.

Washington at New York. Nationals 2, Metropolitans 2 in 10 innings.

Look, ma, no suck!

Hard to say what's worse: The fact that we lost Cousin Vinny Castilla to a knee injury - in the Metropolitans' bullpen! - or the fact that Cousin Vinny will probably be healthy in time for opening day. Yes, he's our starting third baseman, and yes, we're paying him the annual budget of a small country. But he's also 2-for-20 this spring. Two hits in seven games.

Which makes Cousin Vinny, in Washington terms, the Dick Gephardt of baseball. He's unbeatable on his home turf - Missouri for Gephardt, Denver for Cousin Vinny - but couldn't win a solo game of tic-tac-toe elsewhere. And considering that Space Coast Stadium is within a few feet of the same elevation above sea level as RFK, we're getting a pretty good preview of what Cousin Vinny will do for the Nationals here in Washington.

The good news is that Esteban Loaiza pitched his third straight non-crap start. That's more non-crap pitching than Esteban managed all season last year. In fact, Esteban lowered his ERA from 3.00 to 2.57 on the night, allowing one run on five hits and his first walk of the season in five innings. That ties Esteban with ¡Livan! on the spring.

Perhaps it helps that Randy St. Claire has forced Esteban to change the name of his offspeed pitch from "Suckball" to "Change-up." Or that United Airlines finally located and forwarded to Esteban the five miles per hour of velocity he lost at O'Hare last April. Whatever the cause, the entire Nationals caucus can take heart that the senior starter from Tijuana is pitching up to his number-three-man potential.

Washington at Baltimore. Nationals 9, Songbirds 6.

Note: James Earl Jones and his colleagues at Verizon have finally agreed to let BallWonk go back online at his new house. Mr. Vader and company only had two months' notice of the move, so you can understand how it took them two extra weeks to flip the switch activating internet service at the new address. Anyway, a bit of catching up is in order.

Poor Sammy. He spent the last decade in the rougher-and-tumblerer world of Chicago, the city of Capone and police riots, a city where party machine workers once registered BallWonk to vote on the basis of a library card, and then offered to help him cast his vote on election day. In an uncontested election.

Chicago is the kind of city where he who shouts loudest gets ahead. Rules? Chicago don't need no stinkin' rules. They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send on of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way. Pity Sammy coming into a game against Washington and trying to play by Chicago rules. We don't play that way, Sammy. We follow civilized rules of parliamentary procedure. And, oh, by the way, you're outta here. Sergeant at arms! Escort this man from the field, please.

If you want to argue balls and strikes against the Nationals, you don't stand out in right field and shout at the second-base umpire like a city councilman trolling for bribes. If you believe the umpire got it wrong, you have to rise for a point of order. And if you just want to register your complaint, you have to make a point of personal preference.

But this is a pattern with Chicagoans who deal with Washington. Al Capone, Dan Rostenkowski, Jack Ryan, and now Sammy Sosa all learned to their cost that Chicago rules don't work when you play DC.

Oh, and the Songbirds lost to the Nationals in their first meeting. Why yes, Mr. Angelos, we do intend to whup the stuffing out of your pretty little birds every chance we can get. Thank you for asking. And can we have our TV contract now, please?

Nationals cap? Check. Printed-out roster? Check. Access to ESPN at 1:00? Check.

Almost six months since Emperor Selig and his dark minions transubstantiated the Expos into the Nationals, it's finally game on, Garth. Awesome. Just awesome.