Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez was the hero again on Sunday in New York, providing a clutch single in the 11th inning to give his team a 3-2 lead, as the Washington Nationals went on to seal a 7-3 victory. Laynce Nix padded the lead with a three run home run that put the game out of reach. The win allowed the Nats to exit from a tough New York series with a 2-1 edge in games, and brought their record to 4-5 on the season. The Nats will take Monday off, before facing the Philadelphia Phillies in Washington beginning on Tuesday. It looks as if “Pudge” could be shaping a new role on the team — not only as back-up to Wilson Ramos, but as a player you have to bring to the plate when the game is on the line.

Guess Who’s In First Place? Yeah, okay — the Phillies. But over in the AL Central the Cleveland Indians have compiled an astonishing 7-2 record and lead the Pale Hose by a full game. The Tribe, it seems, is hitting on all cracked cylinders: off-season acquisition Orlando Cabrera is hitting .375, youngster Michael Brantley is hitting lead-off (and getting on base), fleet footed shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera is racking up hits (and strike outs), and yesterday righty sophomore Josh Tomlin threw 6.2 in taming the Seattle Awfuls. This will make former Nats’ great and Cleveland manager Manny Acta feel good — he was telling anyone who was listening in Spring Training that the Indians were a sleeper and that they would compete for the top spot with the Twinkies and Konerkos. So, break up the Indians — right? Well, not just yet.

NL Least fans will remember that, back in 2009, the Florida Marlins began the season 11-1. That was their record on April 19. Everyone around the league was oohing and ahhing about the Fish, with some commentators saying that they were “the team to beat” in the National League. And it’s true: the Marlins were on fire, they were playing well — but not well enough. On April 27, the Marlins still had 11 wins, but with 8 losses. On May 8, they were 16-14. They were a solid team, even a very good team, but they weren’t great and they certainly weren’t the team to beat in the National League. They had come back to earth. On May 23, they were six games under .500. We all breathed a sign of relief: the sun rose in the east, set in the west — and the Florida Marlins were still the Florida Marlins. Of course (Marlins fans will claim), their team went on to have a pretty good year: they finished in second place in the NL East, which was good enough for . . . ah, second place in the NL East.

The same thing could happen to the fast-starting Indians. But it’s doubtful: they aren’t an average team, they’re a franchise that’s rebuilding. They won’t be 16-14 on May 8, they’ll be 14-16, or worse. They aren’t even the very good 2009 Florida Marlins: they’re the not-very-good 2011 Cleveland Indians. The Indians have some “good young players,” including underrated right fielder Shin-Soo Choo, who’s one of the best young players in baseball. Which is to say: when sports yackers tell you that a team has “some good young players,” what it means is “they better have, because they don’t have much else.” Of course, we can’t be totally negative. If the Tribe finishes the year at .500, it will be one of this year’s most dramatic stories. One thing’s for sure: back in 2009, the same columnists and baseball writers that said that the Marlins were the team to beat had forgotten all about them in September.

The Austin Kearns revival continues in Cleveland, as the former Nat and sometime slugger belted out two home runs in leading the Indians to a 7-2 victory over the Washington Nine at Progressive Field. Kearns, who was hobbled by injuries during his time in Washington, is now leading the Naps in BA — and anchoring an otherwise punchless front nine that is having difficulty competing in the AL Central. Kearns’ success is one of the bright spots for first year Tribe manager Manny Acta, who helped bring Kearns to Cleveland and then watched him win a spot in the regular line-up. “Austin is the ultimate pro, a throwback,” Acta said after the Cleveland win. “He’s a professional who never gives away an at-bat. He went into Spring Training fighting for a spot, waited for his opportunity and has taken advantage of it.  He’s a coach’s dream.”

Kearns’ victim was Washington rookie pitcher Luis Atilano, who allowed three runs in the first, and never seemed to settle down. Atilano threw five innings of seven hit ball, but never mastered the Naps front nine. “I wasn’t commanding my sinker to the righties,” Atilano said of his outing. “I was more outside — middle in a little bit.” Tyler Walker was also shaky in pitching two complete innings of relief, giving up two hits and a run in facing nine batters. Doug Slaten finished the game for the Nats. The indifferent mound work and the inability of the Nats to feed off of their long-ball heroics against the Pirates, ended the Anacostia Nine’s three game winning streak, sending the team to two games under .500. The Nats face off against the Indians on Saturday, with Washington youngster J.D. Martin set to start against Cleveland’s Fausto Carmona.

The Riggleman Order: Nats skipper Jim Riggleman shook up the batting order for the first game against the Tribe, hitting Ivan Rodriguez in the second spot, starting Willie Harris in left and slotting Josh Willingham as the DH. There were apparently good reasons for this; then too, Riggleman constantly massages his batting order — this isn’t the first time that Pudge has batted second. And the 38-year-old continues to hit, no matter where he bats. That’s not true for Willie Harris, whose time on the roster is increasingly cause for concern (he hitting a whopping .168) — but Rigs keeps running him out there. Maybe he’s a long lost cousin or something . . . There must be a good reason why Alberto Gonzalez continues to wear a hole in the bench. With Kennedy and Guzman switching off at second and Ryan Zimmerman healthy, there isn’t much room to play Gonzo, but running him out to the on-deck circle as a PH and then pulling him back — to be replaced by Harris — is puzzling. Is Willie Harris really a better hitter? . . .

Some of the glitter has worn off Adam Kennedy, who booted a ball against the Tribe. Rigs says that that’s the result of not having steady playing time, a good enough (and probably accurate) explanation. Kennedy was a steady-as-she-goes fielder in both Anaheim and St. Louis, though no one would ever confuse him with a gold glover. We suspect that this leaves Riggleman in a kind of quandry: the team needs Guzman’s bat, but he’s a deficit at both second and (even more so) in right, while Kennedy has yet to hit his stride in the batter’s box . . .I keep coming back to Harris. While it’s true that Harris will never “find his stroke” by sitting the bench, how likely is it that (after 52 games and 95 at bats) Willie will suddenly become Lou Gehrig? Or Alberto Gonzalez? Or even Mario Mendoza? Harris has never hit over .270 in a season, and that was three years ago in Atlanta. Maybe it’s time for Rigs to rethink his role . . .

The announcement that Manny Acta has been dismissed as manager of the Washington Nationals will not come as a surprise to Nats fans. The move had been rumored for weeks, with three-time manager (Padres, Cubs and Mariners) and Nats bench coach Jim Riggleman waiting in the wings as the heir-apparent since the beginning of the year. His last 72 hours on the job were among Acta’s finest: in the face of mounting criticism from on-air analysts Ray Knight and Rob Dibble, Acta defended his team. “It’s a long season. Every one of these guys are going to go through a tough time — offensively and defensively. They are human. That’s why we have to have the patience. It’s very difficult for every one of these guys to be on top of their game for 162 games of the baseball season.” Not surprisingly, Acta was gracious when given the news of his firing, telling ESPN Deportes: “I thank the Nationals for giving me this opportunity, and I’m sorry that things didn’t work out as expected. It’s normal for the manager to pay the price when the team is not doing well.”

The apparent hope in the Nats front office is that replacing Acta with Riggleman will motivate the team. There’s little question: Riggleman is more outspoken, more fiery and more willing to argue with umpires than Acta — and seemingly more willing to confront (as a number of Nats’ commentators have recently described it) the team’s “lazy” and “pathetic” play. But the squad that Riggleman inherits isn’t dead last in the MLB because it lacks desire, but because it lacks talent. The Nats bullpen is virtually non-existent, its defense is last in the league, its situational hitting is “atrocious” (as Ray Knight put it in the wake of the most recent loss to the Astros), and its starting pitching is young and untried. The team is a last place team because it is filled with last place talent. Someone, somewhere was asleep at the switch — but it sure wasn’t Manny Acta.

The Nats had a chance to remedy that during the last off-season: when they might have signed Jon Garland and Orlando Hudson. Garland would have provided a veteran pitching presence among a group of 20-somethings, while Hudson actually wanted to play in D.C. The two would not have worked miracles, but more than 81 games into the 2009 season, the Nats still lack a steady veteran pitching presence and a middle infielder with strong defensive skills. Here’s the simple truth: Cristian Guzman is playing like he wants to be elsewhere, the young starting staff needs more seasoning, Alberto Gonzalez and Anderson Hernandez could both use another year at triple-A, Austin Kearns is a bust, the front office went into the season without an experienced closer and, until recently, the team had no speed. It’s time for Stan Kasten to make it clear: he’s the person responsible for this debacle, not Manny Acta.

A lot of Washington fans will greet Manny Acta’s firing with sighs of relief — believing that his replacement will spell a new beginning for the team. That’s because Washington is a sophisticated football town, where fans know that a new coach means a new set of priorities and a new coaching philosophy. A new coach means a “new scheme,” a new set of offenses and defenses and new ways to make use of them. In football, a new coach can wipe the slate clean, can turn also-rans into champions. That’s not true for baseball, where traditional skills done better are rewarded with wins, where player development that is slow but certain brings championships. Riggle won’t come into the dugout with a new system, he’ll be stuck with the same players that Manny had. It would be very surprising if the results were any different.

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In an interview with Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post the other day Nats manager Manny Acta summed up his impression of 23 year-old hurler John Lannan this way: “Lannan has moxie and command. He can hit the glove.”

Gotta love Manny: a 39 year-old Dominican native going ‘old-school’ with the 100 year-old moxie reference.

If you’re young and the ‘moxie’ expression isn’t something you’ve heard before you’re probably more familiar with other words that have similar meanings such as ‘chutzpah’ (from Yiddish), ‘bollocks’ (from the Brits) or ‘cojones’ (from Madeline Albright).

mox·ie (mok – see) n. Slang, The ability to face difficulty with spirit and courage.

And unless you grew up in New England decades ago you probably have no knowledge of what Moxie, the soft drink, is all about. Since the name of the soft drink is the origin for the term meaning ‘spunk,’ here is a brief primer:

Moxie, the cola, originated in Maine in the 1870s and was originally marketed as a tonic for what ails you. Among the afflictions it was said to cure were “softening of the brain” and “loss of manhood.” Apparently it was the Viagra of its day. I have a feeling that wasn’t what Manny was referring to.

By the 1880s the boys on the Moxie marketing team must have realized the soda would never measure up to popularity of the little blue pill so they added carbonation and repositioned the drink to be used for ‘refreshment.’ I use the term lightly. If you’ve ever tasted it you know, despite its deceptively pleasing orange can, it is the most vile concoction ever invented. The one and only time I tasted it I think I looked like this:

First off, in your Flintstones jelly glass it looks like 10W40. There is no sparkle to it at all. It is the black hole of colas. If there is carbonation in there it gets bogged down in the sludge. Second, Robitussen by comparison, is a sweet-tasting elixir. There is no amount of aspartame that could make Moxie taste pleasant.

Even so, it supposedly sold well in its hey-day. Included among Moxie’s famous adherents was Calvin Coolidge. But then again, ‘ol Cal always looked like he had just downed a glass of the stuff:

I think this is a picture of him on his wedding day.

Anyway, Moxie (the soft drink) is not completely unknown to baseball lore. Ted Williams is said to have endorsed the product once upon a time. So, this is another indication that Manny knows his baseball history. And he also knows a gutsy kid when he sees one.