Nationals Move Atop NL East

Yesterday morning the Washington Nationals sat just a half game out of first place. A win against the Florida Marlins coupled with a Braves loss in Pittsburgh would put a baseball team from Washington in first place this late in the season for the first time in 72 years.
It was way back in 1933 when Washingtonians could have last opened their newspaper and seen their team atop the standings. Hall of Famer Joe Cronin led the Washington Senators to the final American League pennant that season; the same year construction on the Golden Gate Bridge started, Franklin Delano Roosevelt began the first of four terms in the White House and an ex-convict named Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.
In the following 38 years D.C. teams came within 10 games of first place just once and had twice as many last place finishes as seasons above .500. For the past 33 years, of course, the Nation’s Capital didn’t even have a baseball team to follow.
But last year Major League Baseball finally brought baseball back to D.C., moving the lowly Montreal Expos into RFK Stadium. And yesterday, many of the same players that were part of last year’s 95-loss campaign were on the field when the new Washington Nationals completed a three-game sweep of the NL East leading Florida Marlins and subsequently moved atop the best division in baseball.
In the top-heavy East a team can go from first to last in a weekend (as the Marlins did), so the Nats division reign could be short-lived. But that they’re even in this position in the first place already makes the Nationals inaugural season a success.
Nearly every sportswriter in America picked the Washington Nationals to finish last this season in the loaded NL East (not this one though). It wasn’t (and isn’t) a bad pick. The team had no depth on the bench or in the bullpen and the starting rotation was a question mark at best.
The team’s big off-season acquisitions were a malcontent from Anaheim who had been kicked off the team prior to the playoffs, a 37-year old with power numbers aided by Coors Field, a pitcher with an anomalous season mixed among mediocre ones and a weak-hitting, decently-fielding shortstop who was deemed expendable by the Minnesota Twins, yet somehow signed to a $16 million deal in Washington.
Compared to the always-stacked Braves, the Pedro and Carlos show in New York, the ever-so-close Phillies and the World Series Champs once-removed, observers had to figure that playing .500 ball was a lofty goal for the Nats.
But someone forgot to tell that to the coaches and players. Despite a meager payroll (the Mets, Phillies and Braves each have a payroll double that of Washington), debilitating injuries and a murderous opening schedule, the Nats have managed to hang around the NL East and figure to contend through the summer.
They almost definitely won’t win the division (baseball will be reluctant to let the team add payroll at the trading deadline) and probably won’t grab the Wild Card either (the East figures to only get their division winner into the playoffs).
But to a baseball-starved town that will be of little consequence. Baseball is back in D.C. and for the near future that is all that matters.

Tomorrow: My thoughts on the criminally idiocy of Sean Taylor and 25 Reasons Why The Nationals are in First Place.