A Preseason Meditation

Posted by Mike Henderson on Mar. 21, 2009 at 2:35 PM
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OK, so the Nationals won the Strasburg Sweepstakes. (May it not come back to haunt us.)

We're still thinking about that 2008 loss column, the one with the over-100 figure in it. Nobody saw that coming, not even Buster Olney.

Such a record is not without precedent in Washington.  Youthful Nats fans can quiz their parents and grandparents (ah, who the hell are we kidding, they'll Google it) about previous craptastic teams that have infested the region. Such as the expansion Senators, who even after more than a generation of reinvention as the Texas Rangers have yet to bring home an AL pennant.

Or the original Senators -- who, just as they were about to turn the corner, decamped to lily-white Minnesota.

Or the only team a lot of us ever had any connection to before the Expos relocated to D.C.

The Orioles had been a woeful lot in their previous incarnation as the St. Louis Browns.  Owner Bill Veeck had been forced -- thanks in large part to an eleventh-hour transaction in which the moguls of Anheuser-Busch gained control of the Cardinals -- first to cede St. Louis bragging rights to the National League and then to yield ownership of the Browns.  Upon relocation to Baltimore in 1954, the team was no threat to unseat the Yankees or Indians as top dogs of the American League.

The inaugural edition of the Birds lost an even one hundred games. Their least effective starter, an unheralded 24-year-old, went 3-21 on a then-yucky 4.37 ERA.

That man's engagement in Baltimore was mercifully brief. In the remaining 13 seasons of his career, he made a number of stops in both leagues, logging some decent seasons and some indecent ones.

One of those stops was in the Bronx -- where, just two seasons after his Baltimore stint, the hero of our story, Don Larsen, was the Pinstripes' most effective starter behind Whitey Ford, compiling an 11-5 record and 3.26 ERA in 20 starts and 18 relief appearances. And notching a perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

While Larsen never pitched for the Expos, plenty of his ilk and better slipped through that franchise's fingers in its declining years.  Meanwhile, back to those '54 Orioles, it took the better part of a decade for that club to reach contention (and, after a couple of strong decades, far less to fall out of it, though they look to be trying to rise from the ashes).

The Nats, despite their early D.C. sputterings, stand a chance to reach contention soon if the pitching can step up. Will it take a Strasburg to make that happen -- or, even though it might not look like it today, could the next Larsen (or Pedro) possibly already be in our midst?