You have to believe that Edwin Jackson is the pitcher that Mike Rizzo always wanted. Back when Adam Dunn was engaging in his version of Anacostia’s aerial bombardment, Rizzo thought of shipping him out to Chicago for Jackson, a stocky hard-throwing righty in Rizzo’s former organization — the Arizona Diamondbacks. That deal never went through (which remains somewhat of a mystery), but Rizzo continued to eye Jackson, who knows how to pile up innings and has one of the heavier fastballs in the majors.

Rizzo finally got his man today, signing Jackson to a reported one year contract worth between $8 and $12 million. Aside from the trade for the immensely talented Gio Gonzalez, the deal for Jackson solidifies what now must be considered one of the best starting rotations in the N.L. East — of Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmermann and (now) Jackson. That front four, when reinforced by Chien-Ming Wang and (perhaps) John Lannan, is likely to outperform the front four from Miami, or Atlanta, or New York, and maybe even from Philadelphia.

“The term and the value was too good to pass up,” Rizzo said of the Jackson deal. “We felt it improved our club immensely. There comes a point where his value was such that we were comfortable making the deal.” Despite his history with Jackson (and his continued flirtation with trading for him), the deal came as a surprise. The Red Sox were thought to be in the running for Jackson, as well as the Orioles.

It certainly helped that Jackson is a Scott Boras talent, and one year away from free agency. Boras is apparently convinced that Jackson would do better with a one year contract, than with a three year offer from elsewhere. In effect, this is a lease-to-purchase operation not uncommon in the great game, with Rizzo and Boras calculating the Jackson will pitch his heart out over the next months to up his value. But for Washington, and Rizzo, the added attraction is that Jackson will suck up innings: he threw 199 innings in 2011, 209 in 2010 and 214 in 2009. The kid (he’s only 28) is a horse.

There isn’t a thing to dislike about this deal, and Nats’ Nation has reacted accordingly. Federal Baseball was upbeat about the deal, while noting that the Jackson signing apparently puts John Lannan on the block — perhaps for that much sought-after centerfield leadoff hitter. Adam Kilgore, meanwhile, reports that the team will tweak Jackson’s wind-up, because the righty has had trouble tipping his pitches. Rizzo said that he doesn’t hide the ball well enough when he’s not in the stretch. Nats Enquirer also celebrated the news: “Well, a rotation of: 1. Stras 2. Gio; 3. Zimmermann; 4. Jackson; 5/6 Wang? Detwiler? Lannan? That’s a damn fine rotation. Bring on the Phillies.”

If you watched Tim Kurkjian last night on ESPN, then you know just how close he came to an on-air myocardial infarction. In the history of the game, he said, what viewers just saw was history — the best night of baseball ever of any regular season. The best, as he repeated, in 200,000 games. In fact, he’s right — it might well have been.

Unless, of course, you’re a fan of either the Boston Red Sox or Atlanta Braves. For both of those clubs, and their fans, the “night to remember” was a belly-up sinking that compared with the loss of the “unsinkable” Titanic: it just wasn’t supposed to happen. Fans will focus on the Red Sox, of course, but down in Atlanta the despair was as keenly felt. You only have so many shots at this, and this may be one of the Braves’ last.

“When you’re in a slump as a team, you find a bunch of different ways to lose,” third baseman Chipper Jones said after the Bravos dropped a nail biter to the Phillies. “Bats go silent. You get wild on the mound. You walk in runs. You find different ways to lose and we sure did over the past couple weeks.”

Okay. But still — the most improbable of improbables was not the Braves loss to Philadelphia (let alone the Redbirds whitewashing of the Astros), or even the fact that somehow the Tampa Bay Rays came back to take a 12 inning victory from the Yankees, but Baltimore’s epic ninth inning walk off victory against the Nation. “Now, there’s something you don’t see every day,” the unsinkable Molly Brown said as she saw the Titanic go down, stern first.

And that’s what we all said, last night, when Robert Andino put a Jonathan Papelbon offering just off the glove of Carl Crawford in left field to score Noland Reimold and give the Orioles (the Orioles!) a walk-off 4-3 win in Baltimore. There’s a reason why fans keep their mouths shut when they’re watching a no-hitter in the ninth, just as there’s a reason why you don’t pitch Tim Wakefield eight times in the middle of a divisional race just so he can get his 200th win. (What the hell were they thinking?)

Here’s some other things you don’t ever do, no matter what. You don’t calculate that you have an inside shot just because the Rays are playing the Yankees, you don’t headline that you have “the best team ever” at the beginning of a season, you don’t describe the Iraqi insurgents as “pushovers” — and you don’t call a ship unsinkable when it’s sitting in Belfast Harbor: you don’t flirt with icebergs.

So . . . so don’t rewrite the rules. They remain, the rules. You don’t tempt fate, which is what the Red Sox did all of September, and it’s what they did last night. It’s call hubris, and it’s been around since Homer. “I’m pretty shocked,” Red Sox arm John Lester said. “Not only with the Rays game, but in our game, we’ve got the best closer in baseball. That stuff doesn’t happen to him.” Oh, c’mon. Sure it does.  This is baseball.

John Lannan seemed sharp on Friday, retiring the first ten Rockies he faced before two straight singles in the fourth inning from Jonathan Herrera and Todd Helton put two runners on and brought Ty Wigginton to the plate. Unfortuntely for Lannan — and for the Nationals — Wigginton hit a screamer off of Lannan’s left cheek, sending the young lefty to the clubhouse with a nasal contusion (it could’ve been worse) and the Nationals into a funk.

Wigginton’s single scored Herrera and eventually Helton and Wigginton also scored, which is all the Colorado Rockies’ would need for a three run lead, and a 3-2 win against the Nationals before nearly 20,000 at Nationals Park. With Lannan out of the game, Davey Johnson was forced into his bullpen — long before he wanted to use any of his relievers.

As Washington has done most recently, Colorado won ugly. Relieving Lannan, Ryan Mattheus balked Helton home and then gave up a single to rookie Cole Garner. “I was put in a big spot there, and those are the spots I want to be in,” Mattheus said. “It got away from me tonight.” The good news for the Nats was that Lannan appeared to be none the worse for taking the Wigginton rifle shot off his face, and Wilson Ramos continued his hot hitting: notching a solo home run in the fourth.

Fight Night In Boston: The big secret (or not) at Center Field Gate is that the majority of our contributors (and here they are, all bundled up for that wicked cold Boston weather) are fans of “The Nation” (gag), and are inclined to side with their Beantown Boys if given even half a chance. That’s true, but with this caveat: they’re Boston fans in their spare time — when they’re not absolutely head-over-heels monkey nuts over their (and your) Washington Nationals.

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The qualities that have made the Nationals one of the hottest teams in baseball failed them on Sunday afternoon, as the Washington Nine dropped the last in their three game series against the Orioles, 7-4 at Nationals Park. Returning starting pitcher Tom Gorzelanny was shaky in pitching just 4.2 innings (he gave up ten hits and four runs), the Washington bullpen was just so-so (Collin Ballester appeared, but didn’t impress), and — perhaps most worrisome — the Nationals committed three errors.

The disturbing reversion to form, however, seems more like a hiccup that a talisman of future performance: Ryan Zimmerman is back in the line-up, Michael Morse has claimed first base as his own, and it’s likely the strong-up-the-middle Nationals will remain so. “It’s a long season, and you’re going to have a couple games where you play terrible defensively,” third sacker Ryan Zimmerman said after the loss. “The thing is you just have to learn and realize that’s why you lost the game. When we won all those games in a row, it was because we were playing good defense and doing the little things right.”

The Wisdom of Section 1-2-9: It’s been three weeks since reports surfaced that the Nationals were inquiring about Houston outfielder Michael Bourn, but Nats fans are still talking about it. The consensus, at least in 1-2-9, is that the the inquiry is evidence that the team doesn’t realize what it has in Roger Bernadina. “Rizzo and crew have the solution to their lead-off and centerfield problem right in front of his eyes,” a 1-2-9 regular said on Friday. “They’ve got to give this guy a clear shot. He’s getting better every day.” There wasn’t much disagreement, even as 1-2-9′ers agreed on Bourn’s talents.

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Ryan Zimmerman and Michael Morse both homered, and righty youngster Jordan Zimmermann pitched effectively into the sixth inning to lead the Washington Nationals to their eighth straight victory with a 4-2 win over the Baltimore Orioles at Nationals Park on Saturday. The victory continued a streak that began in San Diego and included a sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals. The Nationals are on fire and are now one of baseball’s hottest teams.

Saturday afternoon’s victory gave Nationals’ fans more of the same. The triumph featured a strong starting pitching performance (Zimmermann admitted that he didn’t have his best stuff — but it was good enough to baffle the O’s), the Nationals were able to hit the long ball (Michael Morse’s homer in the bottom of the sixth put the Nats on top to stay), and the team’s bullpen came through once again: Henry Rodriguez registered the hold, and Drew Storen notched his seventeenth save.

“It was hard work for him today,” Nats’ catcher Ivan Rodriguez said of Zimmermann’s outing. “He got behind in the count — ball one, ball two — but that’s how good he is. He can come back and challenge everybody with the fastball. He did good. For the way he was today, to fight and fight and fight to get his mechanics back on track, he did a tremendous job.” While Zimmermann might not have had his best stuff, the sign of a pitcher who has “arrived,” is that they are able to win without it.

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The Anacostia Nine notched their seventh straight win on Friday night, bunching their runs in the game’s middle frames to beat the Orioles 8-4. Starter Jason Marquis got a no-decision as he scattered 12 hits and four runs over five-and-a-third. Sean Burnett ultimately got the “W” after pitching just two-thirds of an inning. His record on the year now stands at 3-3.

Baltimore was first to get on the scoreboard in the 4th, as they were able to sneak three hits in between three strikeouts. After Luke Scott led off with a strikeout, first baseman Derek Lee doubled. Mark Reynolds followed with a strikeout and Robert Andino singled scoring Lee. Then, in just his second career at-bat 23-year-old rookie lefty Zach Britton doubled to left (driving in Andino), and suddenly the Birds were up by a deuce.

The Nationals waited until the 5th to score, as they batted through the order. Singles by Wilson Ramos, Jerry Hairston, and Ian Desmond plus an error and a Ryan Zimmerman double pushed the hometown nine ahead by two. Marquis got chased in the Orioles’ 6th after the O’s strung together five hits and scored two. Two hits, two walks and a sacrifice fly in the Nats’ half of the 6th plated three — and the hometown crew never looked back. Roger Bernadina added an exclamation point homer in the 8th, his third of the year.

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When the Nationals can’t pitch, they can’t hit — and when they can’t hit, they can’t pitch. But when they do both, they still need the ball to bounce the right way, and that hasn’t been happening lately. With their game knotted at four on Sunday, the Anacostia Nine simply needed to get out of the 9th and win it in the bottom of the inning, but a squibber off the bat of Ryan Ludwick and past a diving Ian Desmond scored Jorge Cantu to give the San Diego Padres a 5-4 win.

Was there any good news? If you think that a win is the best and only news there can be, then “no,” there wasn’t. But at least the Nationals began to hit, with Jayson Werth going 3-4 and Michael Morse continuing with his hot hitting. But Drew Storen, who has been struggling of late, was saddled with the loss — although reliever Tyler Clippard seemed to emerge from his late inning doldrums to register two innings of one hit ball. The jury is still out on Yunesky Maya, meanwhile, as the Cuban defector (who was called up from Syracuse) started strong, but then faded in the 5th.

The Wisdom of Section 1-2-9: The Nationals are now 5-11 in one run games, and still have to find a way to win the close ones. And there’s grumbling amongst Nationals fans, who wonder whether the team’s skipper is so enamored of speed and the hit and run that he runs the Nationals out of some games. The groans along the first base line were audible on Saturday, as fans grumbled when Michael Morse was caught stealing with Jerry Hairston at the plate and Matt Stairs on the deck. “He just ran us out of the game,” a Nats’ ticket holder groused . . .

There was a lot of talk amongst season ticket holders about Jayson Werth’s comments earlier this week. “He said his comments weren’t aimed at Riggleman, but I don’t buy it,” a regular in Row BB commented. “Ah, he’s just frustrated,” a fan responded. “He’s always been that way.” Another fan, a visitor from New York, chimed in: “Well, Bobby’s available.” This brought puzzled looks and a response: “Valentine? Forget about it. If you think Werth is angry now, just wait until Valentine gets here. Rizz [Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo] will never give up on Riggleman.”

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: Josh Willingham says he loves it in Oakland, where he’s become the centerpiece of the White Elephant’s all-pitch, no-hit franchise. But Willingham hasn’t exactly been hitting the cover off the ball, which is why the Athletics got him to begin with — he’s hitting .238 and been reaching for pitches out of the zone. Playing in Oakland’s “Coliseum” might have something to do with it: in most ballparks a ball will get lost in the lights; in Oakland, a ball gets lost in the darkness. And the fences are far, far away: out where the California National Guard patrols.

But Oakland is playing good baseball and getting good pitching, which has taken the pressure off the struggling Willingham. The good news is that when Oakland doesn’t get the stellar pitching they’re used to, Willingham has a habit of putting a ball back where no one can get it. As he did this afternoon against the Orioles, parking a heater from uber rookie Zach Britton in the left field seats.

The Connie Macks went on to win, 6-4 and sweep the suddenly struggling Orioles. The A’s are worth watching; they lead the A.L. in ERA and a lurking close enough to the top of the A.L. West to make the Gunslingers and Belinskys sweat. The A’s never seem to run out of pitching: today they started Guillermo Moscoso. Oh come on, you remember Guillermo Moscoso — right? No? Well, join the club.