The headline on the Washington Nationals’ website is all about John Lannan, and how he struggles against the Philadelphia Phillies. But the story on Saturday night, when the Nationals were dumped by the Ponies (by an it-wasn’t-even-close 5-to-zip score) had little to do with Lannan — and an awful lot to do with Roy Oswalt.
Oswalt, who’s suffered through a 2011 campaign with a bad back, was at his best on Saturday, scattering eight hits over eight innings while shutting out a Nationals’ team that couldn’t put together any kind of offense. Oswalt’s outing was good news for the Phillies, who will depend on their starters in the post-season. “He’s back,” Phellow Phil Cole Hamels said. “I think that’s pretty much it. He’s back. When he has the velocity, you know it’s game time.” The only threat against Oswalt came from Ryan Zimmerman, who was 3-4 and continued his rocket-like ascent into the top tier of N.L. hitters.
Facing off against Oswalt, Lannan was just average — which wasn’t nearly good enough. The Nationals lefty, who has compiled a good season (8-9 with a 3.61 ERA), couldn’t keep the heavy hitting Phillies off the base paths. That said, his five inning three earned run outing deserved better, as the team played poorly behind him. The resulting loss came at the hands of Wilson Valdez, whose triple scored two and Hunter Pence, who parked one in the left field bleachers.
Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: The Nationals packed the ballpark on Saturday (setting a single game attendance record), as busloads of Phillies’ fans came down from the north to root for their best-record nine. The Nationals are 22nd in attendance this year, which isn’t all that bad when you consider their record. The Nationals have put people in the stands at a much better clip than other (better), teams . . . including the Diamondbacks, Blue Jays, Rays and Indians . . .
Hall of Fame manager Dick Williams, who led three teams to the World Series, died this week at the age of 82. Perhaps most remembered for leading Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s to World Championships in 1972 and 1973, he cut his managing teeth as the skipper for the 1967 Red Sox. Just two years retired as a player (the last two with the Sox after stints with several teams) Sox owner Tom Yawkey tapped Williams to try to do something, anything, with the ninth place boys from Boston.
Williams, always known for his pugnacity, showed it early after being named manager. Giving his thoughts on the upcoming 1967 season Williams was confident in his squad saying, “We’ll win more than we lose.” The Boston press corps was incredulous. The Sox hadn’t done much in the way of winning since the ’46 campaign when they lost the Series to the Cards in seven games. And in 1966 they finished 72-90, 26 games out of the running. They were, in a word, bad.
A 10-game turn-around wasn’t impossible of course. But the Sox would field essentially the same team as the year before, Williams had never managed in the Bigs and, after all, this was Boston. Who did he think he was? A Depression-era kid, all Williams knew was hard work and the “kids” (as the Sox were affectionately known given that the vast majority of them were in their 20s) were in for a lot of it. A no-bull type of guy, all Williams expected from his team was their best. He got it.
A few days ago one of me droogs wrote about Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp and the on-again, off-again focus he shows toward his job as team savior. Well, with him hitting .402 with 54 total bases thus far this season, he seems to have his head screwed on straight — at least for now.
But this story isn’t about Kemp. It’s actually about a mostly forgotten ballplayer who was, indirectly, mentioned in that post about Kemp. In the picture of the Kemp baseball card there was a quote from a Dodgers radio play-by-play guy by the name of Rick Monday who was a 19-year veteran when he hung them up at the end of the 1984 campaign. A career .264 hitter, he patrolled center field for the Cubs, Dodgers (where he finished his career) and the Athletics (both the Oakland and Kansas City varieties).
For me he will always wear the yellow and green away uniform of the Kansas City A’s — given that is the very first game I ever attended at Fenway park, 44 years ago this week. Monday was in center where his six-foot, three-inch frame more loped rather than ran after fly balls. He was never great, but he was an All-Star and played for three World Series teams. One of those, the 1981 Dodgers, won it all.
But this isn’t even about his playing career, but is about something he did on the field 35 years ago today, when he was playing for the Cubs. During a 5-4 loss to the Trolleys at Dodger Stadium, Monday sprinted from his center field position and retrieved an American flag that two protesters were trying to set on fire during the middle of the game. Monday, who had been in the Marine reserves, scooped the flag from the outfield grass as the protesters struggled to light the match.
It was a different country then. Vietnam and Watergate were in the recent past, and public protests were still common and not always ostracized. But this was different — given that it was a flag burning during a baseball game. Some things, even in the liberal ’70s, were beyond the pale. The fans booed loudly when the game was interrupted, but then cheered when Monday reacted. It may have been journeyman outfielder’s greatest play.
D5 — as in the fifth page of Section D. Section D is the Sports section of the Washington Post. Page five of said section is where I found the Associated Press story about Dallas Braden’s perfect game several days ago. And what was on the front page of the Washington Post sports section? A story about a track meet in Philadelphia — which was held last month. On the website the perfect game story was listed 16th — that is, the Post considered it the sixteenth most important sport’s story of the day. Dallas Braden’s perfect game was listed lower than “NCAA lacrosse,” “Redskins Insider” . . . and the “Chat Schedule.” Way to go Post.
To put things in perspective, there have been 19 perfect games in the last 130 years of baseball. That’s one perfect game, on average, every six and a half years. Put another way, there are (on average), thousands of games between each perfect game. So a perfect game is a very rare occurrence; to say the least. You would think it would be worth it for Post sports reporters to conclude that it’s worth making a big deal about Dallas Braden’s gem.
This will always be a football town; that’s understood. But this is also supposed to be a great sports town. But you’d never know it from the Post.
Not every Nats game is a trip down memory lane, but damn near. Before the first pitch of last night’s Nats-Rockies tilt at Nationals Park, one of me droogs (here they are, for those of you who’ve forgotten), told me about watching a no-hitter pitched by fastballer Dick Bosman in Cleveland in 1974. “You’ve actually seen a no-hitter?” I asked. He nodded: “A great game,” he said. “Fantastic. It was back in the early 1970s, 1973-1974, something like that.” Being armed with one of those hand-held doohickies, I looked it up. The game in question came on July 19, 1974 at Cleveland’s Memorial Stadium, when the Naps faced off against Oakland’s White Elephants. The A’s would go on to take the World Series in ’74, but on that July day in Cleveland they looked helpless against Bosman.
Bosman had a more than serviceable career: his fastball carried him from sleepy Kenosha, Wisconsin into the Pirates organization, and then into the McCovey’s minor league system. He ended up in Washington, where he had his best years pitching for the Senators. His best year came in 1969, when he led the AL with the lowest ERA and went 14-5. He won 16 games in 1970. But even at the age of 27 — when Bosman should have been at his peak — he seemed to be running out of gas. Bosman went to Texas with the Senators, but then kicked around until 1974, when he landed a starting role in Cleveland, where the no-account Indians were doing what they have been doing throughout their long and painful franchise history: searching for pitching.
July 19, 1974 was a warm day in Cleveland, but it was not killer-hot like it can be in Cleveland and there had been showers in the morning. Bosman was slated to start against Oakland’s Dave Hamilton. With some 24,000 looking on (Cleveland Stadium — built in 1931 — held 78,000 for baseball), Bosman went to work, facing a line-up of Oakland bombers. In many ways, this was a typical Oakland team, a mix of speed and power complemented by a deep starting rotation: Bert Campaneris, Sal Bando, Reggie Jackson and Joe Rudi were at the heart of the order, with Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Ken Holtzman and Dave Hamilton the primary hurlers. “Blue Moon” Odom added to the mix, though his best years were in the past. The Indians and A’s were locked up into the third, when Joe Lis gave the Naps a 2-0 lead. In the top of the 4th, Bosman fielded a swinging bunt from Bando, but his throw was wide of first, and scored as an error. As it turned out, Bando was the only A’s baserunner for the day — and the one baserunner that would keep Bosman from a perfect game. By the end of the 7th, Bosman had faced only one more than the minimum.
In the ninth inning, on the verge of putting himself in baseball’s record books, Bosman approached his catcher, John Ellis. “Catch me on your belly if you have to,” Bosman said, “but make me keep the ball down.” Ellis squatted behind the plate, flashing his glove on the ground, nodding at Bosman. “I told myself it was John and me now,” Bosman remembered, “and I concentrated on getting those last three hitters.” In the ninth, Bosman put the Elephants down in order, sealing his no-hitter and (as he hoped) resuscitating his career. [Here's the boxscore] At the season’s beginning he had been on baseball’s junk pile and relegated to the bullpen. Now he was “in the books.” His teammates were ecstatic, and Cleveland fans chanted him off the field: “We want Bosman. We want Bosman.” He came out of the dugout after a time, and tipped his cap. “This is the culmination of everything I’ve worked for and dreamed about,” he said after the game. “I almost feel like I am dreaming.â€
Bosman wasn’t long for baseball. In 1975, he was traded to the team he no-hit, with Jim Perry for Blue Moon Odom and cash. He had a good year with the A’s, pitching effectively and registering an 11-4 campaign. The A’s finished first in the AL West, seven games ahead of the Royals, and faced-off against the Red Sox for the AL pennant. The Red Sox crushed the A’s in three games, and went on to face the Reds in the World Series. Bosman saw little duty in the Red Sox post-season series, pitching to a single batter. The A’s released him in 1977 and he retired to his home in Florida. He spent the next twenty years in Florida, restoring antique cars — his obsession. He vowed to never look back. “When you shut the door on baseball, you have to keep it shut or it will never let you go.†Bosman has been a coach in the Tampa system since 2002.
While the Nats were in the midst of getting roughed up in Pittsburgh (5-4 on Friday, 11-6 tonight), interim GM Mike Rizzo was joining the swarm of the none-too-subtle. Though Rizzo’s Friday afternoon disquisition on his reason for trading first baseman Nick Johnson and lefty reliever Joe Beimel was more than defensible (“young, controllable, up-sided starting pitchers are like gold in the game right now,” he once said), his post-deadline statement contained a pointed defense of the Nationals, their front office and their ownership. This was the line: “We are not rebuilding. We are building. We are not far from being a good team.” I’ve been thinking about what Rizzo said for the last twenty-four hours (okay, I’ve done some other things) and it’s actually pretty interesting. I wonder if it’s true?
Rizzo’s intention was to reassure Nats’ fans that the team’s front office knows what it’s doing, while rejecting the notion that the Nats have to get worse before they can get better. The pieces are almost in place, Rizzo says. The team is close. Itchy, itchy close. How close? Rizzo’s statement implied that being a playoff contender (or at least .500 ballclub) is just around the corner. No one expects that to happen this year, of course (the Nats’ plunge in Pittsburgh is just another example of why), but it could easily happen next: particularly with a starting rotation of John Lannen, Jordan Zimmermann and (perhaps) Craig Stammen — with additions (Washington Post columnist Tracee Hamilton listed them for us this morning) of Ross Detwiler, Shairon Martis, Collin Balester, J.D. Martin and Garrett Mock. Just for giggles, let’s throw in the guy with “the best change-up in the Marlins’ system,” Aaron Thompson and wunderkind Stephen Strasburg. So it’s true: the Nats have a puppy brigade of potential pitchers that might someday comprise one of the most formidible starting rotations in baseball. Potentially. Someday.
In saying that the Nats are “building,” and “not rebuilding,” Rizzo was subtlely comparing himself to a sheaf of other baseball GMs who spent Friday auctioning off their best players to the highest bidder. Padres’ GM Kevin Towers traded ace Jake Peavy for an entirely new pitching staff, Cleveland dealt their recent Cy Young winner and the face of their franchise for four Phuzzie prospects, the Pirates traded their middle infield (and a lot more) for a potential star first basemen and a bucket of balls and the A’s (after parting with the one off-season acquisition that they hoped would solidify their line-up) shipped their other best hitter off to Minnesota for a Montessory graduate who might not get to the majors until 2014. There could be a mission to Mars before this kid plays. These moves weren’t made because the Padres, Indians, Pirates and A’s think they’re a player-or-two away from a championship — they were made because they’re convinced they’re not.
Friday’s trade deadline was Rizzo’s most important statement as the Nats’ interim GM: not because of who he traded, but because of who he didn’t. Unlike the Friars, Tomahawks, Ahoys and White Elephants the Nats are adding pieces, not giving them away. It’s a hell of a statement if you think about it. The Nats (though more specifically Mike Rizzo) are convinced that with a little more pitching (or, perhaps, a lot more pitching) a team with a foundation of Dunn, Flores, Willingham, Zimmerman, Morgan and maybe even Guzman is good enough to win. Okay, a few more pieces here and there would help (a couple free agents, but probably nothing too daring — and someone to fill the baseball equivalent of the Grand Canyon at second), but any team that boasts three hitters who can stroke at least 25 (or more) homers each year (and that boasts the league’s seventh best OBP) ought to be able to contend. Frankly, I like the gamble because I think that Rizzo’s right: the core is solid and eventually, and inevitably, the pitching should come. But let’s not kid ourselves; this is a gamble — and it’s a pretty big one at that.
