FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 2010
KLMNO BASEBALL
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D5
Road trip leaves Nationals at five games below .500
nationals from D1
been pitching. That’s why he’s up here.” Strasburg’s arrival has not lift-
ed Nationals aside from offering a respite from losing every fifth game. Since Strasburg joined the Nationals, they are 2-5 in games started by another pitcher. Rook- ie Luis Atilano became the third consecutive Nationals starter to provide scant chance for his team to win, allowing five runs on nine hits in 41
⁄3 innings. TONI L. SANDYS/THE WASHINGTON POST Stephen Strasburg takes questions after his 14-strikeout debut. “I don’t play this game for all the notoriety and all the hype,” he says. Extra attention brings out The Look strasburg from D1 “I really don’t know what
you’re referring to,” Strasburg said the day after his momen- tous debut, when asked about all the attention he was receiving. Someone else in his position might be reveling in the mo- ment, in this phenomenon, in the mind-blowing reality that the three biggest sports stories in the country this month are the World Cup, the NBA Finals and him. Were he to take even a mo- ment to consider it, he might find the whole thing amusing, inspiring, or even empowering. People are bidding thousands of dollars for his autograph or the dirt he has walked on. Television schedules are being altered to get him in front of as many eyes as possible, with TBS notably de- ciding last Sunday that Stras- burg is bigger than the Red Sox and Phillies combined. It ought to be a rush for a kid one month shy of his 22nd birth- day, who has dreamed of and worked toward this moment for years. It ought to bring a smile of sheer wonderment to his face. Instead, any mention of the phenomenon, any acknowledg- ment of the hype in Strasburg’s presence brings about The Look: a slight grimace, accompanied by a quick turn of the head. Red splotches spread across his neck. It is a look that says: I don’t want to hear it. Knock it off. “I don’t play this game for all the notoriety and all the hype,” he told reporters Wednesday during a group interview in the visitors’ dugout at Detroit’s Co- merica Park. It isn’t merely blissful igno-
rance on Strasburg’s part. It is a conscious decision — born out of a rookie’s sense of his place, a humble young man’s intense shyness, and an admitted home- body’s attempt to hold onto his privacy — to keep it all con- tained, and prevent the hype from encroaching upon what really matters here: baseball and family. “Just another week,” he said, without a trace of irony, after his June 13 start in Cleveland. Undoubtedly, Strasburg’s sin-
ball guys love to have the fame. I’d love to be in that spotlight. But honestly, he hates it. He’s definitely more of a quiet type of kid. I’m sure you guys [in the media] get frustrated because he’s so danged boring in those interviews.”
‘Just a baseball player’
Adored by teammates, wor- shipped by fans, cherished by coaches, praised by opponents, Strasburg — humble and un- assuming, almost to a fault — has only one natural enemy in the baseball ecosystem: the me- dia.
More accurately, the enemy is
hype. But the media is its weap- on.
When someone bursts onto the scene the way Strasburg has this month, the public is raven- ous for information, for deeper insight into the subject’s thoughts and his life. But in Strasburg’s case, it could be a long process before anyone out- side of his inner circle comes to know him that well. Since Strasburg’s arrival in
Washington, he has been kept under strict media restrictions, with access limited to news con- ferences after his starts and Wednesday’s group session — with the exception of a one-on- one interview with the team’s television rights holders. Partly, this is done to manage an unruly mob. And partly, it is to insulate a reluctant superstar from a part of the job he doesn’t really want. Last August, upon arriving at
Viera, Fla., to begin workouts for the fall instructional league — his first official assignment as a Nationals minor leaguer — he was surprised (and more than a little perturbed) to find a hand- ful of reporters and photogra- phers there to document his first long-tosses as a professional. “I thought I’d get a little peace out here on the field, but you guys are following me every- where,” he said then. “. . . Hope- fully it will die down sometime soon. I’m just a baseball player. It’s not like I’m the president or anything.” In retrospect, such sentiment seems naive. The degree of me- dia interest in him has risen al-
About this series
Baseball writer Dave Sheinin has been chronicling the journey of Stephen Strasburg, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 draft, from his sparkling stint in the minor leagues through his dazzling first two starts with the Nationals.
ance, Nationals PR staffers ap- proached Strasburg hesitantly, figuring it would require serious arm-twisting. “But he immedi- ately said yes,” one official said. “I think he thought [doing the ‘Top 10’ list on Letterman] was really cool.” In the clubhouse with team-
mates, Strasburg is personable and funny, flashing a killer smile — wide and toothy — but around the media he is almost always se- rious, even sullen. “At a certain level he just wants to show up and pitch, and that’s it,” said Na- tionals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman. “And obviously, it’ll never be like that. And he’d never say that. He would never blow it off and disrespect it. It’s part of the job, I guess you could say. You have to understand that the reason we have baseball and we get paid is because you guys write about it, and fans read it, and they want to know what we have to say.” By Strasburg’s own decree, family members are strictly off limits, and to disobey that rule is to invite his wrath. Numerous times, he has chas- tised media members who have called his parents seeking inter- views. Once, after a Harrisburg game in April, a reporter asked Strasburg whether Rachel had been in attendance. “She’s not doing any interviews,” he said sternly. “That’s my private life,” he ex- plained once, “and I want to keep it that way.” Before Strasburg’s debut, the
Nationals sent out a mass e-mail to credentialed media members with some guidelines for cover- ing the game. Included was a re- minder that Strasburg’s family was off limits. “No exceptions,” the e-mail said. Still, when Strasburg’s entou-
rage was ushered into the inter- view room where Strasburg was
“At a certain level he just wants to show up and pitch,
and that’s it. And obviously, it’ll never be like that.” — Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman
gular powers of focus — his un- canny ability to block out the madness that is increasingly en- croaching upon him — is part of what makes him so good, so spe- cial.
“He just doesn’t care” about
the attention, said fellow Na- tionals rookie Drew Storen. “I don’t know how he does it. But he just doesn’t let what people say about him define him.” “He gets it,” said Tony Gwynn,
the Hall of Fame outfielder who was Strasburg’s coach at San Diego State University. “He’s very humble, a workaholic — all the things that you want in a player. His focus is unbeliev- able.” It’s possible, given his aver- sion to the hype and his determi- nation to avoid it, that Strasburg doesn’t even know the way the nation has embraced his arrival — the record-setting television ratings on MASN and the MLB Network, the incongruous sight of merchandise booths in Cleve- land selling his jerseys, the gush- ing testimonials of baseball big- wigs across the country. “He’s not the type of guy to
embrace the attention,” said Erik Castro, Strasburg’s catcher at San Diego State and the best man at his wedding. “Most base-
most exponentially. There were about 70 credentialed media members at his minor league de- but for Class AA Harrisburg in April, and more than 200 for his major league debut on June 8. He can be insightful and re- vealing in the rare one-on-one interviews he has done — as long as the questions don’t stray too far from baseball.
“I enjoy talking about baseball with guys who don’t focus on the velocity or the hype, who want to ask detailed baseball questions,” Strasburg said in May. “It’s something I like to do — I like to talk baseball, period. But not everybody [in the media] is like that. There are some things you have to just deal with, but that’s what happens when everyone wants a piece of you.” Strasburg also has jumped at
opportunities to do a pair of tele- vision appearances on shows he grew up watching — ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight” (for which he and wife Rachel drove them- selves to the ESPN studios in Bristol, Conn., when Strasburg’s Class AA Harrisburg team was in nearby New Britain for a road series) and, last week, CBS’s “Late Show With David Letter- man.” For the Letterman appear-
holding his postgame news con- ference following his debut, it was difficult for the media not to take notice. Many of them, in- cluding Strasburg’s father, Jim, appeared to be holding back tears. And when Strasburg fin- ished talking, he stepped down off the stage and began hugging them, one by one — the kind of camera-ready moment that makes PR folks drool. As Strasburg hugged Rachel, a Reuters photographer snapped off a few frames, causing Stras- burg to turn, throw up his hand and say, “No pictures.” The pho- tographer backed off. It was a minor annoyance, no big deal. And in no way could it ever have tarnished a night that was near-perfect in every other way.
An electric debut Shortly after noon on June 8,
Strasburg said goodbye to his pet yorkie, Bentley, and walked out of the two-bedroom apart- ment he and Rachel are renting in the Virginia suburbs. They drove to the stadium together, and Rachel dropped him off. No one who witnessed what
occurred on the Nationals Park field that night will soon forget it. And that holds doubly true for
Strasburg’s friends and family in attendance, a group that in- cludes his father, Jim; mother, Kathy Swett; his in-laws, Tim and Jenny Lackey; his college coach, Gwynn, and pitching coach, Rusty Filter; a college teammate, Bubba Ruddy; and his agents, Scott Boras and Scott Chiamparino. Also in attendance were Brett
and Marybeth Lefevre and their 17-year-old son, Ryan, who served as Strasburg’s host family when he played in a wooden-bat summer league in Connecticut after his freshman year of col- lege in 2007, and with whom he has remained close. Once the game started, the
majority of Strasburg’s entou- rage watched from a luxury suite, but different friends and family members, two by two, took turns occupying two pairs of seats down front, in Section 120, where the reactions were more visceral, the atmosphere even more charged. As the innings wore on, and
Strasburg began to gain strength and dominance — he struck out the last seven batters he faced, and 14 batters overall — the raw emotion began to sweep over everyone. There were tears shed in those box seats and in that luxury suite. “We were just in awe — jaw- dropping awe,” said Marybeth Lefevre. “It was just magical, to look around at all of these peo- ple, people of every stripe, screaming and yelling for Ste- phen, and all the ‘Strasburg’ shirts, and the electricity. Up- stairs, Gwynn was grinning ear to ear. He was like a proud fa- ther. Each person saw the same thing, but they all took some- thing different from it because we were all from different parts of Stephen’s life.” The glow was felt beyond Na- tionals Park, by people around the country watching rapt on television. In Milwaukee that night, Bud
Selig, baseball’s commissioner, watched rapt as Strasburg mowed down the Pittsburgh Pi- rates. “I’ve seen a lot of great pitchers,” said Selig, 75, in a tele- phone interview. “But there was something about this kid that was really aberrational. I mean, it was really unique. Here you have this 21-year-old kid, 10 months from signing. You had this huge buildup. And he just completely delivered. It was just remarkable. I’ve been watching baseball since the early- to mid-’40s, and I can’t think of a good analogy to this. That’s how good this was and how remark- able this was. “It was big. I thought to my-
self, ‘Baseball is really back in Washington.’ ” Long after the game was over, about 10 of Strasburg’s friends and family members gathered in one downtown hotel suite, reliv- ing the magic well into the wee hours of the next morning. Stephen and Rachel, though, did not, choosing instead to re- turn to the apartment they had only begun occupying some 48 hours earlier. It was after mid- night. Bentley needed to be walked. Stephen was exhausted, and his eyes were still red and stinging (and would be again the next morning) from the three shaving-cream pies he took in the face, courtesy of his team- mates, during an on-field post- game interview.
And besides, had they gone to
that hotel room, someone, though well-meaning, would have undoubtedly started talk- ing about how great Stephen Strasburg is. And that’s some- thing he wouldn’t have wanted to hear.
sheinind@washpost.com
On Friday, the Nationals will receive their most significant boost from Strasburg. But simply going home will help. The Na- tionals went 1-5 in Cleveland and Detroit, which dropped them to 13-24 on the road this year. “I don’t know about home,”
shortstop Ian Desmond said. “I just want a win. I don’t know care if it’s at home, on the road, in Ja- pan. I want to win.” Since the Nationals hit 20-15
on May 15, they have gone 11-21 and fallen to last place, where they have spent 14 of 17 days in June. On their brutal road trip, aside from the game Strasburg dominated, the Nationals rarely threatened to win. All five losses came by at least three runs, and four came by at least five. They were outscored, 41-27. The Tigers, now on a six-game winning streak, thrashed the Na- tionals for three games. Their pitchers struck out 32 and walked three. (“We were chasing today,” Manager Jim Riggleman said.) The Tigers outscored the Nation- als, 23-10. Magglio Ordóñez and Miguel Cabrera went a combined 12 for 24 in the series. “This team is a really, really
good team, and they just beat the crap out of us,” Dunn said. “They flat-out beat us. They were just better than us for three days.” On Thursday, the Tigers wrest- ed complete control from the be- ginning. Starter Jeremy Bond- erman retired the first 11 Nation- als of the game, striking out five of them. The Nationals also ran into hard luck, good defense and, most significantly a cavernous ballpark. They drove four outs to the warning track and two others that came close. After the game, Riggleman told
his players, “Swing the bat the way you swung it today, and we’re going to be fine,” Riggleman said. “We got to just continue to realize it’s attention to detail. Tighten the game up.”
With help from Comerica Park, Bonderman oppressed the Na- tionals, allowing two runs on five hits in seven innings. Alex Avila gave the Tigers a two-run lead with a two-run double in the sec- ond. Atilano matched Bonder- man until the fifth, when Cabrera smoked a two-run double over Roger Bernadina’s head in dead center. As the game fell out of their
grasp, Dunn continued his torrid stretch of hitting, blasting two flyballs to the track before finally he smoked a home run to right in the seventh, his sixth in nine games. He added an RBI single in the eighth, much too little much too late. “We definitely aren’t playing our best baseball,” Desmond said. “Everything is just not coming into synch right now. We just got to keep on playing solid baseball. Eventually, the tides are going to turn.” The Nationals could find solace in a trip home and, especially, the next day’s starter. The Nationals have the third-worst record in baseball since May 15. Once every
TIGERS 8, NATIONALS 3 Washington
C.Guzman dh Bernadina cf
Zimmerman 3b A.Dunn 1b
Willingham lf Morse rf
A.Kennedy 2b Desmond ss Nieves c
W.Harris ph Totals Detroit
Raburn 2b
Worth pr-2b Santiago ss Ordonez rf
Mi.Cabrera 1b Boesch lf
C.Guillen dh Inge 3b Avila c Kelly cf Totals
Washington Detroit
AB R H BI BB SO AVG 4 1 2 1 0 2 .301 4 0 0 0 0 1 .273 4 0 1 0 0 0 .295 4 1 2 2 0 0 .288 4 0 0 0 0 1 .273 4 0 1 0 0 0 .405 4 0 0 0 0 0 .240 4 1 1 0 0 2 .268 3 0 1 0 0 2 .175 1 0 0 0 0 0 .157 36 3 8 3 0 8 — AB R H BI BB SO AVG 4 0 2 0 0 0 .194 1 1 0 0 0 0 .225 4 3 4 1 0 0 .262 5 1 3 1 0 0 .330 5 1 2 3 0 1 .332 4 0 2 0 1 0 .348 5 1 2 1 0 1 .305 4 1 2 0 0 1 .255 4 0 2 2 0 1 .230 4 0 0 0 0 0 .205 40 8 19 8 1 4 —
000 001 110 — 3 8 2 020 032 01x — 8 19 1
E: Willingham (1), Atilano (2), Mi.Cabrera (8). LOB: Washington 6, Detroit 10. 2B: Desmond (12), Ra- burn (8), Santiago (3), Mi.Cabrera (19), Avila (4). HR: A.Dunn (16), off Bonderman. RBI: C.Guzman (19), A.Dunn 2 (38), Santiago (10), Ordonez (43), Mi.Cabrera 3 (59), C.Guillen (20), Avila 2 (8). S: Santiago.
Washington
S.Burnett Clippard Detroit
Bonderman (W, 3-4) Ni
Zumaya Bonine
Atilano (L, 5-4) 4B 9 5 5 1 1 83 4.77 Storen Slaten
IP H R ER BB SO NP ERA C 1 0 0 0 1 10 1.46
1 4 2 2 0 1 23 2.84 1 2 0 0 0 0 12 2.86 1 3 1 1 0 1 15 1.69 IP H R ER BB SO NP ERA 7 5 2 2 0 7 95 4.06
B 2 1 1 0 0 11 4.34 C 1 0 0 0 0 12 1.87 1 0 0 0 0 1 16 2.23
Inherited runners-scored: Storen 2-1, Zumaya 2-1. IBB: off Atilano (Boesch). WP: Storen, Bonderman. PB: Avila. T: 2:44. A: 33,630 (41,255).
HOW THEY SCORED Tigers second: Boesch flied out.
C.Guillen singled. Inge singled, C.Guillen to second. Avila doubled, C.Guillen and Inge scored. Kelly flied out. Raburn flied out. Tigers, 2-0. Tigers fifth: Raburn flied out. Santiago
singled. Ordoñez singled, Santiago to second. Mi.Cabrera doubled to center, Santiago and Ordoñez scored. Boesch was intentionally walked. C.Guillen sin- gled to center, Mi.Cabrera scored, Boesch to second. Boesch was out ad- vancing. On wild pitch, C.Guillen to sec- ond. Inge struck out. Tigers, 5-0. Nationals sixth: Desmond doubled. On Bonderman’s wild pitch, Desmond to third. Nieves struck out. Guzman infield single, Desmond scored. Bernadina lined out. Zimmerman flied out. Tigers, 5-1. Tigers sixth: Avila struck out. Kelly grounded out. Raburn doubled. Worth pinch-running for Raburn. Santiago sin- gled, Worth scored. Ordoñez singled, Santiago to second. Mi.Cabrera singled, Santiago scored, Ordoñez to second. Boesch grounded out. Tigers, 7-1. Nationals seventh: Dunn homered. Wil-
lingham grounded out. Morse singled. A.Kennedy flied out. Desmond grounded into fielder’s choice, Morse out. Tigers, 7-2.
Nationals eighth: Nieves singled. Guz- man singled, Nieves to third. Bernadina grounded into fielder’s choice, Nieves out, Guzman to second. Zimmerman flied out, Guzman to third. Dunn singled, Guzman scored, Bernadina to second. On passed ball, Bernadina to third, Dunn to second. Willingham fouled out. Tigers, 7-3. Tigers eighth: Santiago doubled. Ordo-
ñez singled, Santiago scored. Mi.Cabrera hit into a double play. Boesch infield sin- gle. C.Guillen struck out. Tigers, 8-3.
NATIONALS ON DECK
VS. CHI. WHITE SOX Friday, 7:05 (MASN, MLB Network) Saturday, 4:10 (FOX) Sunday, 1:35 (WDCW-50, MASN)
VS. KANSAS CITY Monday, 7:05 (MASN) Tuesday, 7:05 (MASN) Wednesday, 4:35 (MASN)
AT BALTIMORE
June 25, 7:05 (MASN) June 26, 4:05 (MASN) June 27, 1:35 (MASN, WDCW-50)
RADIO: WFED (820 AM, 1500 AM)
five days, at least, optimism reigns. “Tomorrow,” Tigers Manager
Jim Leyland said, “they’ll be one of the best teams in baseball.”
kilgorea@washpost.com
LEON HALIP/GETTY IMAGES
Nationals rookie Luis Atilano hands the ball to Manager Jim Riggleman in the fifth inning as Wil Nieves, center, watches.
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