Jordan Zimmermann went toe-to-toe with Cliff Lee at Nationals Park last night, throwing seven innings of five hit baseball (which included setting down the first fifteen batters he faced), but the Nats could not match Cliff Lee and fell to the Phillies 4-0. This was the best game that Jordan Zimmermann pitched in his young career: he threw 85 pitches, 64 of them for strikes before being relieved by Drew Storen. But Cliff Lee was better, notching a nine inning three hit shutout that put the surging Phillies atop the N.L. East by two games.

Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz broke the Zimmermann spell in the sixth inning, putting a Zimmermann offering (he left a down-and-out curve up in the zone) into the left field seats. The Nationals’ bats, tamed by Lee, could not respond — Lee notched 12 strikeouts while walking only one. While Lee was brilliant, key Nats continue to struggle at the plate; Ian Desmond is of-fer at home, Michael Morse continues to slump and the team’s batting stats place them near the bottom (they’re 28th of 30) in team batting. Riggleman says that team is “agonizing” over their hitting performance. “We’ll get with [hitting coach] Rick Eckstein and see if we will come up with something,” he said following the loss to the Phillies.

It’s Jackie Robinson Day in baseball, and Topps has released (as they do nearly every year at this time) a “Special Memorabilia” collection commemorating the legendary Dodger. This is now standard procedure for Topps: the company started by simply printing a set of baseball cards (usually some 500-plus for each season), but in recent years — since the card market was flooded with offerings during the 1980s — it supplements its offerings with heritage cards and commemorative editions. You can’t blame ‘em, Jackie Robinson cards are popular, and pricey.

Innovation is the name of the game for card manufacturers: not just better artwork, but newer offerings that provide collectors with scraps of jerseys and bats, and now (they must be getting desperate), video and 3-D cards. No one yet knows what these things actually look like, but the reaction hasn’t been overwhelming. The Anti-Beckett (worth reading, whether you’re interested in this kind of thing or not) says there’s a limit, and that some “innovations” are no more than “gimmicks.” Gone, it seems, are the days of good old fashioned baseball cards, victimized by old men in pot bellies who spend their time with magnifying glasses peering at cards to determine their value.

A number of card companies have jumped into the latest “innovation” fray (cards that will “revolutionize” the industry), offering 3-D trading cards and a “self playing video trading card.” This latest, a card with an HD-TV embedded in it (no kidding) has set off a PR war between Panini and Upper Deck. Okay, I agree: there’s inside baseball and then there’s inside baseball — and this is a little beyond the pale. Still, it’s interesting to note the lengthes some of these card companies will go to one-up their competition. The last offering of this kind came in the late 1990s, offering a CD-Rom in the form of a card. It was “cool,” but a flop. Which is not to diminish Topps’ Jackie Robinson offerings. The ten cards offered by Topps are a well-designed, if predictable, commemoration.

There are a whole lot of people in the world who appreciate Edwin Donald “Duke Snider” more than me — and most of them grew up in Brooklyn. Snider, who died Sunday at the age of 84, came to define the Brooklyn Dodgers as few others, including Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese. Snider was the original “great Dodger” in an era before Koufax or Drysdale, and lived and played with Robinson and Reese. These were those great Dodger teams that, after years of futility, dominated the National League, winning six pennants in ten years. Their names are legendary: Gil Hodges, Carl Erskine, Ralph Branca, Clem Labine, Carl Furillo, Joe Black, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and Jim Gilliam.

For Dodger fans, the 1950s (before their sainted heroes decamped to LA) were the golden age of New York baseball — with Snider, Mantle and Mays all in center, all contenders. Brooklyn Dodger fans still claim that Snider was the best of the three (and he was very good), but memories of Snider among Brooklyn fans have been dusted with the passage of time. Snider never got on too well with New York baseball reporters or Brooklyn diehards and when the O’Malley family beat it out of town Snider (an L.A. native) was quoted as saying he preferred it that way. He said he was misquoted (and probably was), but Brooklyn’s faithful believed it. He was “surly” and self-pitying; the book on the Duke was that he never quite lived up to his potential. Which, like much else having to do with Snider, just wasn’t true. He was better than just good and was voted into Cooperstown in 1980.

Brooklyn fans are notable for telling us how they never missed a game, loved every one of “dem bums” and supported them in everything they did. It’s not true, of course, but never mind: Snider’s immortality (never a sure thing in Brooklyn) was sealed as soon as he was missed. The same holds true for the team. The Dodgers were beloved in Brooklyn, but few went to see them play, the city would not build them a new stadium and their record for futility before the glorious days of “the Duke” would make a Cubs fan wince. “Duke Snider was proof in the flesh that great teams had once played in Brooklyn,” Howard Megdal wrote in today’s New York Times, and that about sums it up.

Well, not quite. Snider patrolled center field for the Dodgers for sixteen years (11 in Brooklyn, five in L.A.), still leads all Dodgers in HRs and RBIs, had one of the best hitters’ eyes in the game (though, paradoxically, struck out a lot), led the league in runs for three consecutive years, and in home runs (with 43) in 1956. His numbers for ’53 through ’57 are astonishing. He was an eight time all star. “Swing hard,” he told hitters, “in case they throw the ball where you’re swinging.”

Craig Stammen pitched batting practice to the Philadelphia Phillies last night, giving up seven hits and seven runs in less than two innings. The ponies eventually won the contest, 14-7. Washington has yet to solve the Phillies’ line-up, which has touched Nats’ pitching for 45 runs in five games. “I just didn’t throw quality strikes,” Stammen said, after the game. “I threw a lot of stuff in the zone and over the plate. [My offspeed stuff is] breaking good, but I can’t throw them for strikes. … It’s very disappointing to let a lead slip away real quickly. Then again, I’ve had many pitching coaches and even the one I have right now [Steve McCatty] said this happens.”

Nats relievers didn’t fare much better: Jason Bergmann, Sean Burnett and Brian Bruney were roughed up, with Bruney the most exploited victim — the former Yankee now has a 13.50 ERA in his time in Washington. The Phillies are now 7-1 on the season, which matches their best major league start since 1993. Washington used six pitchers during the contest. They gave up 14 runs on 14 hits, with 176 pitches thrown — a line that compares favorably with their pitching futility of 2009. The only reliever who pitched really well was rookie Jessie English, who gave up four hits but no runs in two-and-two-third innings. The Nationals finish their time in Philadelphia tonight, with a final match-up against the powerful Phillies’ line-up. The Nationals return home tomorrow to face the 3-5 Milwaukee Brewers.

It’s Jackie Robinson Day in Baseball: Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier 61 years ago today. The 1947 NL MVP and National League Rookie of the Year had a .311 lifetime batting average was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. The Nats will celebrate Jackie Robinson Day at Nationals Park on Friday.

Remember Bobby Bragan? The bent-backed big-bellied curse of Brooklyn and Birmingham and the fair-haired best buddy of Branch Rickey before that kid infielder Jackie Robinson came along, Bragan was his generation’s Bobby Cox. He could bait an umpire by just being there, but was at his best while shuffling to the mound, muttering under his breath. And the umps would yell at him: “What did you say Bragan? What was that?” It seems a required part of Braves’ baseball even now, a “given” on the single-sheet job description: “Must know the game. Must hate umpires.”

Bragan was that, and classically Birmingham fat, aging gracelessly as the players got younger around him. So Bragan would come out of the dugout, muttering about the unfairness of it all (carrying his Denny Lemaster hook — “oh thank God, he’s pulling Lemaster”) and you would swear he was going to lose his balance, tipping forward as he walked. I never thought he was that heavy, but back in 1965 Milwaukee Braves fan would razz him, ceaselessly, relentlessly, cruelly: “Go on a diet Bobby,” and “you’re a pig, Bragan.” He was of a “type” — a southern boy who was okay behind the plate, a player forever of the verge of being something more than just average. Neither a peripheral great nor even mediocre, Bragan was one of those guys you put in the line-up until someone better comes along. There is a whole community of guys like Bragan wandering through the underworld: Dennis Menke and . . .  well, Dennis Menke.

Bragan would have been a forgettable character, were it not for his memorable 1947 decision to circulate a petition from white players saying they wouldn’t play with Robinson, whom Rickey had brought in the break baseball’s color barrier (and transform the Trolleys from a very good to a great team). Bragan even asked Rickey to trade him: he would not play with a black man. You have to wonder what Bragan was thinking. Did he really believe Rickey would send Jackie packing because his second string catcher was a racist? Bragan quickly changed his mind. “After just one road trip, I saw the quality of Jackie the man and the player,” Bragan later remembered. “I told Mr. Rickey I had changed my mind and I was honored to be a teammate of Jackie Robinson.” Trumpets. Organ music. Fade.

Bragan never lived down that moment, but he tried. He pushed Maury Wills to the majors when he was a minor league manager in Spokane, praised Rickey as the person who had “made me a better man,” and became one of baseball’s smartest and most well-respected administrators — as head of the Texas League and then head of the governing body of minor league baseball. In the 1980 he started the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation, which raises money for scholarships to keep kids in school and was elected into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame and into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. But back in 1965, Bragan was viewed by the people of Milwaukee as anything but a hero. Bragan was the manager of the lame duck Milwaukee Braves, who had announced the previous year that they would be moving to Atlanta. Milwaukee partisans were shocked — and angered. 

When a group of local businessmen sued, the Braves were forced to stay an extra year in Milwaukee. Bragan, the on-field symbol of the Braves’ ownership bore the brunt of Milwaukee’s anger, but he was never known for being a stoic (or knowing what the word meant). You could see him seeth, and the more he seethed the more fans let him have it. As I remember it (and I was there — blessedly), the anger towards the Braves and Bragan culminated on a hot August day at Milwaukee County Stadium when Bragan walked to the mound to remove a pitcher (probably Lemaster, but I can’t remember for sure) and on the way back to the dugout he motioned in Rico Carty from left field. Carty had just misplayed a fly ball and Bragan was punishing him — in public, humiliating him front of the fans. On purpose. And the Braves fans just let him have it. And I mean they let him have it. I’ve never seen anything like it. I thought the fans in front of me, along the third base line, were going to come out of their seats. And Bragan looked up into the stands and just smiled and nodded his head: yes, yes, I took him out. So go do yourself. You know, whatever else you might think about Bragan, he knew when not to give a damn.

Bobby Bragan died last week in Fort Worth, Texas.  Major League Baseball paid homage to Bragan in a public notice that quoted Bud Selig. “He was a dear friend of mine for nearly 50 years,” Selig said. ”He had a long and wonderful baseball career as a player, coach, manager and executive.” What the announcement failed to mention is that the group of Milwaukee businessmen who forced the Braves to spend ’65 in Milwaukee was organized and led by prominent local car dealer — named (oh yeah) Bud Selig. Selig was convinced that the Braves, and Bragan, owed their home town fans something more than a single press release and an empty stadium. 

Bobby Bragan was 92. Actually I kinda liked him.