Washington Nationals, Nationals Park

By AgnosticPreachersKid (CC 4.0)

SATURDAY, JULY 22: The Washington Nationals downed the San Francisco Giants, 10-1, at Nationals Park in Southeast Washington. Angela and I were there, lower deck, first base side. Josiah Gray pitched seven strong innings to record the win for the Nats, and shortstop C.J. Abrams contributed a home run.

We made this trip mostly to cap off our Year of Live Baseball, to mark the end of our tour of minor league ballparks with a visit to The Show. Angela gave me the choice of city and team. I asked to go to Washington and see the Nats, feeling that it was a loose end that needed tying up. My years as a Little League player and my early years as a fan were spent in the Virginia suburbs of Washington - Vienna, to be exact. But my family's arrival in the D.C. area coincided exactly with the demise of Washington's major league team, the Senators, who decamped to become the Texas Rangers. I became a fan of the Baltimore Orioles, just up the road, which was no hardship (the Orioles were consistently strong in the 1970s). But it would have been nice to have a baseball team in the District to root for. And I had never been to a Nationals game since their arrival in 2005. And I was overdue for a visit to Washington, a city I have a lot of love and nostalgia for.

The Nationals were born in 1969 as the Montreal Expos. Over 30-odd seasons, the Expos boasted some elite playing talent: Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, Vladimir Guerrero. But they were also burdened with home parks that were ill-suited to major league baseball (Jarry Park might've been fine for the minors; Olympic Stadium was miserable for any purpose) and a shaky financial base overall. 

Meanwhile, however you might feel about it, Metro D.C. boomed between 1971 and 2005, in both raw population and disposable dollars. After multiple rumors over the years of the Expos' leaving Montreal and of Washington getting a new team, when the news broke that the Expos were heading to D.C., it seemed okay, with a whiff of inevitability. Unlike most franchise moves, I didn't hate this one.

The new Washington club would not keep the name Expos (or the garish uniforms; I'm not sure they ever throw back for those). But they would also not revive the name Senators. Notwithstanding the Hall of Fame pitching career of Walter Johnson, culminating in one World Series victory in 1924, the Senators had often been a punchline: "First in war, first in peace, last in the American League." Plus, the actual United States Senate had seen its reputation suffer. Nationals or Nats had been the informal alt-identity of the Senators. To combine it with the classic script lettering of the latter-day Senators of  the '60s -- that's pretty good branding, in my book.

The Nationals built the quality of the team gradually, first through the draft and farm system, then a burst of free-agent spending, which paid off in 2019 with a World Series title. Frustratingly, however, this success could not be sustained: the Nats couldn't meet the salary requirements to keep most of its best players. (Sadly, in August, we learned that Nats pitcher Stephen Strasburg is retiring at age 35. Strasburg led the team to glory in 2019 but has barely pitched since then due to nerve damage in his elbow. He was the one player the front office signed to a max contract.)

In the alternating boom-and-bust manner of many U.S sports franchises now, the Nationals now rely on young, cheap talent. Take the two young stars of the 7/22 game for the Nats. Josiah Gray was the Nats' representative on the All-Star team this year. C.J. Abrams was having a Bobblehead Day the day we were at the park. Crucially, each of them is on a bargain salary, in the $700,000 neighborhood. When the Nats mature and become contenders again, will the financial will be there to make another run? Flags fly forever, it is said, but do earnings reports know the meaning of forever?

Anyway, it was a nice weekend. In a novel move for us, we rode Amtrak from Raleigh to Washington's Union Station. Our hotel was a walkable distance from the ballpark, and close to a Metro rail station. So it was a car-free weekend, and our Saturday jaunts (to the Smithsonian and to visit a friend in far NW D.C.) were easily manageable via Metro. 

Nationals Field, which debuted in 2008, gets high marks. I'm in the bag for any newish ballpark with a grass playing surface and bars and restaurants within walking distance. Much of Southeast Washington near the Anacostia River is newly developed; I have no childhood memory of this part of the city, because no tourists would linger there in those years. The park's playing dimensions are pretty symmetrical and not unusual. The designers did throw in a funny angle in the outfield fence in center field, just for the sake of local color.

We ignored the city's fine-dining scene on this visit; hopefully we can rectify this oversight next time. However, I've been hearing about Ben's Chili Bowl for many years, and thought I'd like to try it... Maybe it's cheating, but when I learned Ben's has a stand at Nationals Park, I figured I would check off that box at the game. The half-smoke with chili, falling apart in my hands, was good. 

Side note about the game and my sense of mortality: As a kid playing Little League ball in Vienna, I owned a Carl Yastrzemski autograph model fielder's glove. The Giants' starting left fielder in this game was Michael Yastrzemski, who is (get this) Carl's grandson. His 32-year-old grandson, at that. 

Historically, Washington produced quite a few notable players and other figures in the baseball industry, especially in the early decades of professionalism. 

• Although biographical details are scant, several Black Washingtonians made an impact in Negro League baseball, including Nip Winters and Script Lee, who both pitched for the Hilldale Club in the Eastern Colored League during the 1920s.
• Art Devlin (1879-1948) was a two-sport star at Georgetown, then played third base for John McGraw's New York Giants from 1904 to 1911. He was a brawling, hustling Irishman of the type McGraw liked. He played with three pennant winners in New York. 
• Doc White (1879-1968), also a Georgetown man, was a quality left-handed pitcher, winning 189 big league games. He earned his nickname because he was a practicing dentist for a time. Doc pitched for the Hitless Wonders, the 1906 Chicago White Sox, and got a save and a win over the crosstown Cubs in the two concluding games of the World Series that year.
• Lu Blue (1897-1958) - An interesting name for an interesting player. Lu was a switch-hitting first baseman without home run power but with a great ability to get on base. He came up with the Detroit Tigers in 1921 during a meh period for the club, the latter Ty Cobb years. Lu subsequently played for the St. Louis Browns and the White Sox, and was a regular for 12 years all told. He grew up in DC and returned to the area in his post-playing years. 
• George McQuinn (1910-1970), an Arlington, VA native, was a line drive hitter and a slick-fielding first baseman. He spent most of his big-league career with the mostly bad St. Louis Browns, but capped his career as the regular 1B on the World Series champion Yankees of 1947.
• Maury Wills (1932-2022) was the Los Angeles Dodgers' shortstop for their brilliant early-1960s run. He won two Gold Gloves and in 1962 set a single-season MLB record by stealing 104 bases. He played in four World Series and was on the winning side in three (1959, 1963, 1965). Maury graduated from Cardozo High School, not far from Nationals Park in the District.

Brooks Robinson

 

Baseball great Brooks Robinson passed away on September 26th, aged 86. He was at the heart of the Baltimore Orioles teams that I loved in the 1970s, a fixture at third base, a 16-time Gold Glove winner. He remained around the team even after retirement, and became a favorite adopted son of the city of Baltimore. Brooks's national profile went way up in after his MVP performance in the 1970 World Series, with the fielding gems he crafted and which have lived on in highlight reels ever since. I think of him first as a sweet-natured down-to-earth guy. From memory I can easily cue up the sound of his voice, that high pitched Arkansas accent, from local commercials and post-game interviews. Brooks had a Walter Mitty quality, giving hope to the balding, slope-shouldered anti-phenoms of the world. He epitomized the saying that an athlete is one thing, a baseball player is something else. 

I've been looking over his numbers, and at what Bill James wrote about him in the Historical Abstract. It's possible, in light of latter-day analytics, that we (Oriole fans and others of his contemporaries) overrated Brooks somewhat: that the dazzling defensive highlight reel outshone his offensive abilities, which were good but not dazzling. He was possibly the greatest fielding third baseman who ever played. But overall, Bill James has him at number 7 on the all-time 3B rankings, and he's probably fallen a notch or two since that list was published in 2001. There were years in the heart of his career where Brooks was an average hitter, or a little worse.

Brooks led the league twice in GIDP, which is evidence that he was a slow runner. But also, he led the league four times in Sacrifice Flies (and wow, there are a lot of ex-Orioles near the top of this list). He didn't strike out much, which speaks to good strike zone judgment and bat control. He didn't have brute batting power, but I'd say he had the timing and mechanics needed to ride the ball a long way. Given Brooks's obvious defensive skill set, gained through hard work and practice and study of the game, it makes sense to me to think of his offensive skill set this way. In his career, Brooks hit 268 home runs and 114 sacrifice flies. Robin Yount is the only player with fewer HR's and more SF's (251 and 123). 

I had a memory that turns out to be apocryphal: Brooks had a sporting-goods business that got into trouble, at or near the end of his playing career. In my mind, Baltimore fans had spontaneously come forward and donated cash to help Brooks stave off bankruptcy. According to Wikipedia, this was an exaggeration (though there was public concern that Brooks would lose his house). Wikipedia also contains an anecdote that in 1976, when Earl Weaver told Brooks he was being benched in favor of young Doug DeCinces (a handsome, broad-shouldered phenom of the classic type), Brooks asked the Orioles to explore the possibility of trading him. The Chicago White Sox were interested, but would not extend Brooks's contract beyond that season. So Brooks vetoed the deal. Late in the 1977 season Brooks retired, having never worn a big-league uniform other than Baltimore's.

Photo: Jay Publishing via tradingcarddb.com, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Captain

 

Basketball Hall of Famer and two-time NBA Finals MVP Willis Reed died on March 21. 

The word "iconic" is overused, in my opinion. But it's hard to avoid it when talking about the 1970 New York Knicks, or Madison Square Garden, or "the Willis Reed Game." 

May 8, 1970 was the day of Game 7 of the NBA Finals, Los Angeles at New York. The atmosphere was heavy with anxious speculation, since Reed had suffered a bad thigh injury a few days earlier. He couldn't possibly play. Could he?

When Reed emerged from the locker room, in uniform, and limped onto the court for warm-ups, the Garden exploded in cheers. Just by showing up for duty, the Knick captain had galvanized the home crowd and transformed doomy angst into a great hope. After tip-off, on the first possession, Reed sank a jump shot. The Garden was enraptured. Second trip downcourt, same thing. By then the Knicks were flying and the Lakers were chained to the floor. Those four points were all Reed would manage, but Walt Frazier would supply 36, and the rout was on. The Knicks built a 27-point halftime lead, and cruised to the franchise's first championship.  

Ray Ratto's obituary at Defector was headlined "Willis Reed Met The Moment."

It’s as big as it is, even still, because Reed always seemed content to let it be what it was; the legend spread as legends used to, by word of mouth and images of his two jumpshots. Reed himself never really said much about it, and he didn't have to. He did the perfect thing at the perfect time when everyone was looking, and then let it speak for itself. The lasting moments are like that.

In 1971 Reed's body seriously started to break down, in a cascading series of leg injuries. This is how I remember him, as a wounded warrior, struggling bravely to summon a ghost of his former self. In this diminished state he helped the Knicks to a second NBA title in 1973.

Writing in the afterglow of the Willis Reed Game, Pete Axthelm lauded Willis as a unifying figure between downtown and uptown, between the glamorous Knicks and the grassroots basketball culture of Harlem and the outer boroughs. Reed pioneered a new style of leadership and of masculinity, in Axthelm's view. This seems a little too grandiose now. A few years later his Knick teammate Bill Bradley wrote more simply that Reed was "the dominant member... the perfect center for our team that year." 

Reed was named to the NBA's 50th and 75th anniversary teams. His career numbers are not in the same stratus as those of the very greatest centers: Russell, Chamberlain, Kareem, or Shaq. (Russell loved Willis's game, however, and Willis and the young Kareem had some phenomenal head-to-head battles in the 69-70 season, recounted by Axthelm.) Willis was a fine versatile player, a great team player, the captain of a two-time champion, an honored part of a great hoops ensemble. 

Willis was named the Finals MVP in both '70 and '73. In neither year is it obvious from the stats sheet that he was the best player in the series. Notably, in both years, the Knicks vanquished the Lakers, featuring Wilt Chamberlain as Willis's opposite number. One could call these awards to Willis a roundabout compliment to Wilt - if you beat The Man, you must be the man - but it's also a comment on each man's style of play and character. Wilt was a monumental talent but a confounding human being. Wilt's teammates always had to fit themselves around Wilt. Whereas Willis fit himself within the team, and met the moments as they came. Willis would lean on Wilt in the post, draw him away from the basket with the threat of his jump shot, act as a decoy. He didn't thrash Wilt, he outfoxed Wilt. Bill Russell is often remembered as Wilt's great foil, but Willis, even on one good leg, had his own anti-Wilt mojo.