Carlos Beltran’s two home runs and a misplayed fly ball tamed the Washington Nationals in New York on Saturday, 8-4. The loss spoiled a fine first-outing for lefty Tom Gorzelanny, who could not make it through the sixth inning. While Beltran’s home runs were important, they were not the difference in the game. In fact, even with Beltran providing a spark, the contest might well have gone the other way: after Gorzelanny walked David Wright to start the bottom of the 6th, Jerry Hairston, Jr. misplayed a Beltran fly ball that would have kept Wright at first with one out. Ike Davis followed and tripled to right-center. The Nats could not catch the Mets thereafter, with double-plus bad rookie reliever Brian Broderick entering the game and allowing the Mets another two runs.

This is one the Nats could have won. Beltran’s first dinger followed an inside fastball that should have been called a strike. Beltran put the next pitch into the left field seats, angering Gorzelanny, who questioned the call. And if Hairston had snagged Beltran’s fly in the 6th, Gorzelanny might have been able to preserve the victory. Hairston said that he thought center fielder Rick Ankiel was coming in behind him to take the fly: “At the last second, I felt something that he may go after it. Obviously, that wasn’t the case. I just missed it. Flat out. I just put us behind the eight ball tonight.” If there was good news from the loss, it was that Gorzelanny pitched well, establishing himself as a solid starter. The third game in the series will pit the Nats against the Mets at Citi Field on Sunday afternoon.

Pass The Warm Milk: Washington insomniacs should do what we do — after watching the scintillating Nats, switch over on “MLB Extra Innings” to a Cardinals west coast game, where play-by-play announcer Dan McLaughlin and color commentator Al Hrabosky are baseball’s version of Ambien. Last night, in what had to be one of the most exciting games of the young season (a 3-2 San Francisco win on a walk-off double in the bottom of the 9th), Dopey and Sleepy could hardly contain their excitement: “That’s a bloop to right field,” McLaughlin said, describing a Mark DeRosa hit in the bottom of the fifth. “Yeah, but it’s a lucky hit,” Hrabosky added. A run scored, but you would have never known it: the two announcers were silent for the next 60 seconds. “Okay, next up,” McLaughlin said.

In truth, watching “Fox Sports Midwest” (which becomes “FS Cardinals” during St. Louis broadcasts), provides a kind of discipline for fans: the lack of on-screen stats, or even information on who’s at the plate, keeps you on your toes. Last night, if you weren’t keeping score you wouldn’t have had a clue, and you wouldn’t have been alone. “Who’s this?” Hrabosky asked, at one point. “Rasmus,” McLaughlin answered. Tick. Tick. Tick. “Oh yeah, listen this guy’s got a lot of tools,” Hrabosky answered. Compared to FS Whatever, MASN is a dream — with all kinds of useful information, including a font that tells you who’s actually at the plate. The pinnacle of last night’s in-booth commentary came when McLaughlin and Hrabosky wrestled with a “fan question.” So, what’s a waiver wire? “It’s when a team no longer wants a player and other teams get to see whether they want him,” Hrabosky answered. “But there are lots of waiver wires,” McLaughlin added. “Oh sure,” Hrabosky said.

Whew.

Thankfully, while McLaughlin and Hrabosky are verbally challenged, the Cards-Giants match-up was fascinating. While the Giants squeaked out a nail-biter, the contest should have made it clear to the Cardinal faithful that it’s going to be a long season. St. Louis is a team headed in the other direction: GM John Mozeliak used the off-season to plug holes, acquiring Ryan Theriot to play short, trading Brendan Ryan to Seattle, signing Lance Berkman to play right and bringing in Gerald Laird as a back-up behind the plate. This was heady activity, if not quite useful: the Cubs and Dodgers had problems trying to figure out whether Theriot should play second or short (Ryan is better defensively) and Berkman’s time in the outfield passed several years ago. What the Cardinals really needed was another pitcher, a fact made clear when Adam Wainwright went down in February with a rotting elbow.

Wainwright was only the beginning: hefty hitter Matt Holliday took a week to deal with a swollen appendix and oft-injured head case David Freese (car accident, surgery, DUI, deep bruise, lost weight, damaged tendons), is giving way to someone named Daniel Descalso at third. The Cardinals haven’t had a third baseman since Scotty Rolen did his Hatfield and McCoy routine with Tony La Russa, haven’t had a shortstop since Ozzie did back flips. In this sense, at least, watching the Cardinals is instructive for Nats fans, whose infield is better at all positions except for first, where it’s cheaper. Last night’s Cardinals line-up told the tale: with Descalso, Tyler Greene (subbing for Theriot), Skip Schumaker and Pujols around the horn, Yadier Molina behind the plate, and Jon Jay, Colby Rasmus and Lance Berkman in the outfield. That’s fourth place waiting to happen.

The trade for Chicago lefty Tom Gorzelanny, the signing of ex-Brewers fist clenching righty bulwark Todd Coffey and the surprise recruitment of uber utilityman Jerry Hairston, Jr. may well have concluded the Nationals’ off-season moves, though Nats’ GM Mike Rizzo refuses to say he’s done. Even so: the Nats, were they to conclude now, have significantly improved the club, though that front-of-the-rotation ace they looked for remains elusive. Gorzelanny, for all of his steady talents, isn’t it. Gorzelanny is solid, to be sure, but his 7-9 record in Chicago is less a reflection of the North Side Drama Queen’s 2010 troubles than of Gorzelanny’s sometimes iffy performances. The lefty can go through terrible spells of leaving his fastball up in the zone, as attested to by his troubled 2009 season, when he never seemed to hit his rhythm.

Still . . . still, Gorzelanny provides innings and steadiness — 136 last year and 201 in 2007, his best year. And “Gorzo” (as his Chicago followers called him) seems immune (knock on wood) to the kinds of nagging injuries that have plagued Washington pitchers: he took two back-through-the-box line drives last year in Chicago and kept on soldiering. He seems also “a good clubhouse man,” which is a premium for Rizzo & Co., who want to add players who want to play: Gorzelanny was relegated to the bullpen in Chicago last year, but with nary a whimper. But it says something about Washington’s pitching staff that Gorzo arrives here as one of the team’s solid starters and a near sure-bet to be number two or three in the rotation. Considering what’s left in the market his acquisition is a good move, and Washington didn’t have to give up a lot to get him.

Mike Rizzo has added five pieces to the club in the off-season: the steady-as-she-goes Gorzelanny, bells and whistles big-bat outfield czar Jayson Werth, nice-glove-nice-guy first sacker Adam LaRoche, utilityman Hairston and (now) bullpen workhorse Todd Coffey. Of the five, the acquisition of Coffey is the one under-the-radar acquisition that could pay unlikely and unpredicted dividends. Like Gorzelanny, Coffee doesn’t seem likely to set the team on fire (62 innings, 4.76 ERA), but he has good stuff and a solid presence that will put pressure on an already-good bullpen to get better. The one thing that Coffey brings is a firebrand in-your-face presence that includes an up-and-in fastball that is particularly effective against plate-crowders. He’ll be fun to watch. Oh — and then there’s the trade of Josh Willingham for upside prospect Corey Brown and potential closer Henry Rodriguez; the deal ranks as a “potential steal,” but only if Rodriguez can lasso his upper-90s fastball and become the team’s closer-of-the-future.

What does it all mean? In the end, while Mike Rizzo couldn’t get his ace, the team that will arrive in Florida in a month or so is better than the 2010 version, though how much better remains to be seen. Our guess? Over the moon fans say the Nats might make a run at a Wild Card, but it’s more likely the Half Street Nine would do well to flirt with .500.

Back on August 24, Sports Illustrated put the fading baseball card industry on life support: “The sports trading card industry is dealing with an uncomfortable present and an uncertain future,” SI intoned. “The sales of cards peaked in 1991 at $1.2 billion, according to estimates by Sports Collector’s Digest, but slid to $400 million by the turn of the century and to $200 million last year.” Take it from me — SI is right; baseball cards, once priced at a nickel a pack, now appeal to a shrinking market of grey haired oldsters who are less interested in the game than in finding a good investment. The proof, they say, is in the pricing. The last great baseball card made by the industry (according to the SI report) was ”Ken Griffey Jr.’s 1989 Upper Deck Star Rookie” — the number 1 card in Upper Deck’s inaugural set, and it fetches a pretty fair price; it can bring as much as $150 on ebay, depending on the day and buyer. But it’s more than that: you can go into any store where kids hang out and look for baseball cards and they’re not there. And if they were the kids wouldn’t buy them: the cards are too expensive. The people who make baseball cards have made a terrible mistake — their cards aren’t for kids, they’re for collectors.

But the SI report tells only a part of the story. While the appeal of baseball cards has been shrinking, the market for older cards has not, according to those card dealers who specialize in sets from eras prior to 1980 — the date that is usually given for when the market began to be saturated by an increased number of manufacturers, specialty sets and over printing. It makes sense: when card production became unlimited, card values plummeted. But the very earliest baseball cards (and the cards of the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s — the classics) actually increased in “value.” See, there’s that word. Back when I began to collect baseball cards (and I date myself here, but what the hell) I had no sense of their “value.” I bought them because they were the sole means that I had of learning a players stats — his ERA or batting average and reading the little cartoons on the back that weren’t so much funny as dumb. I stacked ‘em up, kept them in a shoebox, looked at them, smelled them. They had value outside of the nickel I paid for them.

Then baseball card price guides came along. I was well out of baseball cards then, too busy making a living to pay attention, but the appearance of these guides puzzled me and I would stand at the supermarket magazine counter and page through them, noting the ups and downs of card values. It made no sense to me and it still doesn’t. Card grading, it still seems to me, is subjective and dependent on what a dealer views as being off center or faded or . . . whatever. Yeah, okay: a tattered and water-marked 1953 Satchell Paige is not worth as much as a mint condition Satchell Paige, but some of the differences between a grade “9″ and “10″ seems arbitrary and is not so much art as fraud; a way to create a specialty out of an opinion. All of this has generated a lot of controversy, and a mini-industry of its own, which can be found on a number of baseball blogs – of which there are plenty — and which we have linked to here at CFG. (You’ll find the links over there on the right — under the category “What Your Mother Threw Away.”)

It comes down to this: I recently bought a 1953 Topps Eddie Mathews card; it’s in pretty good but not great shape — and as pretty a card as you’ll find anywhere, with a picture of Eddie as a young third baseman. I sit at my desk, when I’m working and I look at it. I’m in the habit of collecting Eddie Mathews cards, not because I’m a Boston Braves or Milwaukee Braves or Atlanta Braves fan (I’m decidely not), but because I’m an Eddie Mathews fan. I saw him play about thirty times, maybe more, and I always rooted against the teams he played for: but always for him. He’s one of the best players I ever saw play the game. He could hit and field and he seemed to play his best when I was in the stands. So I started collecting his cards. And here’s the thing. I’m not collecting his cards in order to sell them, I’m collecting them in order to have them.