Baseball will start this week but will it? The Nats are a team in limbo in every way. They have no home station. They have no home coverage. Under new leadership they have no direction (yet). They have an ownership as stable as the next rumor that they are trying to sell. They are a baseball team this year because they were a baseball team last year and baseball teams just don't go away.
This Spring will be an exercise in finding the bright spots. In again looking for what might be part of the next great Nats team and evaluating them. In again scouring the minors for any unexpected bright spot that can make you think tomorrow will be better than today because today should be very bad. In again trying to figure what the Nats can get for their tradeable assets.
It'll be about staying out of the league cellar, the division cellar, and maybe sneaking into 4th. It'll be about being a feeder team in August and playing spoiler in September. It'll be about the baseball happening around the Nationals more than the baseball happening within.
It'll be about Cade Cavalli and James Wood and Dylan Crews and Brad Lord and Daylen Lile and Brady House and a lot of other names of kids in their early to mid 20s and a lot of prayers that things go right.
It'll be about dives in the hole and long throws and ninth inning comebacks and moonshot homers. It'll be about getting too excited about a 4 game winning streak. It'll be about reading too much into stats on April 24th even though every year we tell ourselves not to do that. It will likely be bad and inconsequential most of the time but it will be baseball. Baseball will start this week. Even for the Nats.
2 comments:
Harper, your uncomfortable ambivalence makes you the true "every man" of Nats fandom. We are all looking for the sliver of hope that keeps eluding us.
For the first time in 20+ years, I may skip the home opener; still have the season tickets tho.
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