They showed The Strasburg Game on MASN yet again last night. You know the game from last year: Strasburg gets called up to the bigs, strikes out 14 without walking anyone, wins one of the great first starts — in fact, possibly the greatest first start — in major league baseball history. Zimmerman, Dunn and Willingham all stroke homers. The sold-out house goes berserk. And the best, most thrilling game I’ve ever attended is refreshed in my mind one more time.
That night from last June seems so long ago now.
As this year’s Opening Day arrives, Dunn and Willingham (and, praise the baseball gods, the underperforming Nyjer Morgan) are gone. Strasburg has a still-fresh scar on his pitching arm and we won’t see him until the fall, if then. We have some decent, solid acquisitions but no one who makes you go, “Wow!” There is still virtually no real starting pitching, thus commencing Year 6 of that particular trend. And for the first time since the franchise moved here, I don’t possess a fistful of tickets for the coming year.
I have fallen into the role of so many Washington sports fans, planning to go to the park this year only when a team I actually want to see — in this case, the St. Louis Cardinals — comes to town. I’ll probably hit a few more games because there is likely to be all sorts of cheap/free options (I’ve already got freebie tickets for the weekend, for example). I suspect I’ll head more often to Baltimore this season, where the O’s (and their better/smarter fans) have a real chance at creating some excitement. Meanwhile, the Nats, like the Wizards and increasingly the Redskins, serve the all-important Washington Generals role — forgettable, crushable opponents of the team you really care about.
Thus does a dull-looking baseball season begin. Perhaps this is the year the Nats will surprise, with Hernandez managing to repeat last year’s excellent performance and Marquis showing his arm is not a noodly appendage and The Other Zimmermann becoming a solid starter. The bullpen looks decent, the defense looks substantially better and — who knows — perhaps the offense will surprise. And perhaps in August we’ll be talking about the Nats as a playoff contender, with Strasburg’s return serving as just the boost that will kick the team into new realms.
But I doubt it.
