Live Q&As;

My family symbolizes the Nats/O's loyalty debate. I grew up taking the street car to Griffith Stadium, then rodee my bike toi RFK Stadium. But I also covered the Orioles for 29 years when D.C. didn't have a team. I think loyalties generally run back to your hpometown and your childhood teams.

However, my adult son learned baseball while running around the upper deck of Memorial Stadium in the late '80's. He's a perfect example of why the Post was correct to cover the Orioles all those non-baseball years in D.C. My son was actually old enough to vote before DC got a team back! What, he was supposed to NOT become a baseball fan if he wanted to be one? Now,  my sone is an Oriole lover, but likes the Nats. 

So, I'm never goiing to be a one-or-the-other person in this debate. But I certainly understand those who are. I'm delighted to have NL ball in DC and AL baseball just 40 miles away. And, right now, the Orioles are a good story __even if they played 1,000 miles away.    

Yes, I think thney have reached the point where each is quite aware of the other. The O's are worried, after the last 18 monmths, that the huge buzz about Strasburg, Harper and Werth will put them in an even worse position by '12-'13-'14. The Nats were looking at Lee a little more than LaRoche, but it didn't make a big difference to them. Still, my take is that they'd have prefered Lee, but not at $10M if he gets 600 PAs. So, they got LaRoche for 2-yrs for $16M. The Nats get a LH bat, which is good. But LaRoche doesn't have three Gold Gloves. And his best seasons haven't approached Lee's best year.

But I think LaRoche could have  a bunch of 25-homer, 85-RBI years left in him.

Think the Nats were surprised a little that the O's got Gregg. The Birds were aware that three of their key relievers, including Mike Gonzalez and Uehara were coming off arm issues. So that extra body __an d a pretty good one__ was important to them. They do NOT want this season to be derailed by one or two injuries. Still, MacPhail volunteered to me yesterday that, "We're not a deep team." (Yet.) So, they'll fret. 

I think I answered something similar years ago in a chat. But I'll risk repeating it. Once, a new MLB owner in a different city contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in being considered as his GM. (You'll never guess who it was.) I was stunned. I told him that writing about baseball and actually running ayear, even with tons of help, required a completely different skill set and that "incompetent" wouldn't begin to describe my own evaluation of myself for that position. My God, the draft, the scouting system, contract negotiations and 20 other aspects of a GM's job!

What scared me was that he DIDN'T KNOW THIS.

He turned out to be a well-intentioned, but terrible owner.

Of all the managers and GM's I've covered enough to have an opinion, I'd say there was only one __out of more than 100__ who did NOT know at least twice as much about baseball as I do. And with the good ones, I wouldn't even want to guess what the multiple is.

I'm learning all the time. I actually think of my job __whatever the sport__ as "learn, then pass on what you just learned to the reader.""  

Thanks, that's wonderful stuff.

I never thought I could feel even alittle bit sorry for the Heat after their self-aggandizing introduction of James. One of the worst moments in sports that I can remember. The marriage of so many things that are wrong, including some aspects of ESPN.

The "highlight film" view of sports is a terrible influence. For example, in my exam ple of watchjing the Woiz with my son, I kept mentioning (and probably boring him to death), that ALL the Wiz players atre good at the kind of plays that make ESPN highlights __dunks, shot blocks out of bounds, three-pointers, crazy acrobatic layups, steal-and-breakaway. But at NOTHING else. No wonder they have no clue why they lose. "But we are so talented." Yeah, at what? At highlight tricks, maybe. (Nice lob-dunk.) At basketball, no. And everybody is mystified that the best record in the NBA is...the Spurs.

The big blow to the Heat was losing Udonis Haslem, who was aveeraging 11.1 rebounds per 36 minutes, for the season. He gave them inside strength and somebody who would do all the "dirty deeds done dirt cheap."

At some point, in a acouple of years, maybe "we" can all take our societal curse off the Heat.

But not any time real soon, imo.

Everything you say is true. (Or "pretty true.")

But I always seperate the team from the owner. Those who play and manage and do the GM job should not carry the burden of the owner. Besides, Angelos is in business, so keeping a ateam out of Washington was obvious for him. Of course, we hated it and fought it. But that's entirely seperate from the different issue of his mismanagement of the team for a dozen years. 

Besides, I've written a half-dozen columns on the Nats this spring and one on the Orioles (at a point when they deserve it). So, I'm comfortable with the ratio! But I never, never, never had any reaction except pure anger to the idea, all those years, of the Orioles being "a regional franchise." Don't know how many times Bud used the phrase.  

OK, I'm going to try, for the third time, to answer this question. We have "technical difficulty" posting it. So, I'm break the answer in half and see if our new chat system can cope with it. So, the next two answers will be about this issue of how spectacularly and wonderfully difficult it is to predict the performance of any baseball team __even within a band of 10 wins or loses. In short, the Nats (and Orioles) could be much better, or much worse) than we now assume and we might not even know it yet. Though, so far, I'd say that any '11 surprised for both teams are more likely to be to the up side.

The first team I ever covered on the baseball beat was the '76 Orioles who won 88 games. The next off-season, they lost Reggie Jackson (in his prime), Bobby Grich (a '76 All-Star) and Wayne Garland (20-7 in '76) to free agency. They signed nobody. "Poor team, small town." Mike Cuellar, Brooks Robinson and Paul Blair all retired. In mid-'76, Ken Holtzman (only 30) was traded away along with Doyle Alexander and Elrod Hendricks for prospects nobody'd heard of. So, of course, I predicted disaster for the '77 Orioles. Because that's what everybody else thought.

I bought the conventional wisdom, as you are doing now. I was too smart to listen to Earl Weaver, George Bamberger, Billy Hunter and Jim Frye about what they saw in a bunch of guys, almost all rookies, who were all 25 or younger and some others who were older but supposedly weren't much good: Eddie Murray, Scott McGregor, Mike Flanagan, Dennis Martinez, Rich Dauer, Rick Dempsey, Tippy Martinez, and Andres Mora.

The '77 Orioles won 97 games. At least 20 more than I thought they would. By '79, they were playing in the seventh game of the Woirld Series.

Okay, a nice place to continue that previous answer.

Baseball has been teaching me hard lessons ever since that late-'70's mistake about accepting conventional wisdom __rather than what respected scouts and coaches tell me and what my own eyes see. Nobody thought the '86 Orioles would collapse. Fred Lynn, Ripken and Murray were in the middle of the order. Boddicker, Flanagan, McGregor and Storm Davis were in the rotation. But some were getting old fasts. There was no chemistry. Weaver was gone. They lost 89, then 95, then 107. 

Of course, nobody saw the '89 Orioles coming either. I still don't really understand how they won 33 more games __33__ than they did in '88. But it taught me NEVER to act like I really KNOW what will happen. They went 87-75 and almost made the playoffs. I promise you that the current Nats staff has more talent, without Strasburg, than the '89 Orioles had with a rotation of Bob Milacki, Jeff Ballard, Dave Schmidt, Dave Johnson, Jose Bautista and Jay Tibbs starting 141 of 162 games. The only guy who even had a decent career, Pete Harnisch, was 5-9. Don't sell baseball short. It was built to amaze us. When the Nats came here from Montreal, everybody said they would lose 95 games in '05 as they had in '04. I probably agreed. At the All-Star game, they had the best record in baseball.

This happens over and over __season after season. Fans and "experts" are wrong __by 10 to 20 wins__ every season on 5-to-10 teams. Three years ago I went back to see how accurate SI's pre-season predictions were. They were wrong by 10-or-more wins on a MAJORITY of the 30 years in baseball. You couldn't be that far wrong if you tried. That was the last year they ever predicted specific win totals for teams. Fans can't imagine the Rangers in the Series. They can't imagine a reigning world champ falling under .500. But it happens again and again.

As a writer, you're better off actually standing behind the bullpen or by the batting cage for a week, as I recently did, than listening to off-season punditry (including your own).  Sometimes what you see and what others, whom you respect, tell you isn't correct. But it is an informed opinion. Right now, Detwiler's stuff is special, like Bumgarner, who was drafted after him. But Detwiler is skinny and throws across his body. How good is his command, his stamina? Will he pan out? Zimmermann has a very similar repetoire as Dennis Martinez, though his changeup needs to be better. Will Detwiler and Zimmermann have careers like Storm Davis and Martinez? Don't know. Is their stuiff equally good. Probably.           

Every column I've written this spring has been in the context of the Nats as a losing team in '11, a club that will probably win 70-some games. Is that 70 or 79? We'll find out. Or will I be wrong? It could be 65 to 85 wins, too. The band of possible outcomes is probably even wider than that, especially in baseball where half of all games are decided by one or two runs and many others are still close at the seventh inning stretch.

I was all set for a wonderful GMU run to the Sweet 16 when I'd be back from a second trip to Viera and hoped I'd get to cover their no-longer-Cinderella but still wonderful season. How long might their winning streak have been by then? (Over 20).

That's a bad loss. No silver lining that I see. Of course, they'll get in the Tournament. But it will hurt their seeding and their confidence. You can get that confidence back with one good first-round game.  But the tougher seeding will haunt them. Not many coaches are better plugged into their players than Jim Larranaga. So, I think he'll pull them back together. But first-round conference loses are a particularly bad sign. I'd love to see a study on how many 1st-round losers in any of the major conferences did in reaching the rounds of 16, 8 and Final Four.

I think, hope, that NFL owners are already stunned by how much people hate them __and already understands that this is THEIR lockout/work-stoppage, not the players. Sally Jenkins did a wonderful funny rip last week and Bill Simmons, Rick Reilly and others have painted a similar picture.  The only downside in that is NFL owners tend to be so arrogant that it only makes them more stiuff-necked when they are criticized. And the NFL Players are tempted to "tough it out" more if they think the public/press are mostly with them. Uuuugh. The baseball players thought that __correctly__ in '94. It toughed the union's resolve. But the owners, like the NFL owners I fear, didn't give a damn. They had their plan. They had already forced out a commissioner so that they could execute it more easily, just like the NFL now has it Total Suit of a commissioner as a mouthpiece.

I hate to encourage either side, not that they take a vote on what 179 columnists say!

I'll be delighted, but amazed, if this gets settled in the next few weeks. I'm almosty sure it will still be rolling toward Doomsday for America as Labor Day approaches.

I wondered what a fall without baseball would be like. You know, I can't even remember! So, '94 must not have been TOO bad on me. It hurt the game. It didn't hurt the part of me that is a fan. I'm sure I watched other sports. But I stayed angry about it a long time __lets see, that would be 16 years and still counting, I guess. 

The NFL is so big right now __but has so many major issues with concussion, long-term health of players, etc., that are just ben eath the surface__ that I doubt they underwstand that they are vulnerable at all. Oh, they are.  

Now, the science has finally caught up with the injuries. In your day and mine (though mine is a long time after DiMag!) you just had a "dead arm." So long, buddy.

FWIW, Espinosa says his hand has been bothering him for two years and he already feels stronger after his Hamate bone surgery than he did before. You mena he hit those six bombs in September when he had been playing with a broken bone in his hand for two years!?

Yes, I'm in the tank for Espinosa.   

Over the wintyer, Davey had a heart procedure that got his heart beat back in sync. I could pretend I know the exact name of the procedure __had another friend who had it last year__ but I'd butcher it. But Davey says he feels better than he has in many years __more energy.

I doubt very much that he is crazy enough to put himself through another managing gig.

He sure enjoys sitting with Rizzo or Corrales in a golf cart analyzing everything. "I have him sit beside me for credibility," jokes Rizzo.  

Of course, you're right and I appreciate all the time. However, when I was in my 20's and 30's, I always wondered, "Will I still love it this much when I'm 50, etc. Is that the trap? You get sick of it?" Turns out that you enjoy it just as much and maybe appreciate it more. And it helps that you should come a little closer to knowing what you're talking about every year (though I'm sure plenty would disagree.)

When I came to the Post at 21, ffetching coffee, answering phones, the four writers who sat right in front of me were (columnist) Bob Addie, (NFL writer) Dave Brady, (golf writer) Maury Fitzgerald and (behind them) Shirley Povich. I watched them every day. They were all in their 60's then. They had so much fun __were so sarcastic, gave everybody grief, laughed all the time__ it was ridiculous and none seemed anywhere near their age. I remember Dave Brady, a sweet soul, giving promoter Don King hell about a fight he was pitching: "If you put that %$#$@^&&% fight on in my back yard, I'd close the blinds." Then they both started laughing.

I thought, "Maybe you can do this a long time."  

They want to give Morgan a chance. He's their preference. That's not the same as lifetime Supreme Court appointment.

There's a reason they brought in Ankiel. And Bernadina can play CF, too. Morgan will have an on-base percentage above .350, play a "plus" centerfield and steal 75% of his bases, or he will not play. Periuod. 

So, either way, Nats fans will end up happy. Morgan will play. Or he won't play. And you'll get to see what somebody else can do. And it will probably be somebody with some pop.

The Nats pitching rotation, set in stone!!!???

Excuse me, I had to get up off the floor.

All teams show copnfidence in their "probable" starting rotation. It's againsty the law to tell the truth: "We don't have a No. 1 starter. We don't have a No. 2 starter. If somebody would like to pitch really, really weel, we CAN find a place for you."

You need 7 or 8 starters for five spots over a w2hole year. Be glad the Nats may have them with Maya and Detweiler looking good. Everybody in baseball assumes Marquis is a logical mid-season trade if he is pitching well. Nothing against him. It just makes sense. So, it's not as crowded at it looks.

But Wang not being able to go out for his second inning with elbow tightness was not a good sign. I've said I never thought he'd win another MLB game. Then I saw him in Fla and hoped I was completely wrong. In this case, I hate it when I'm right.

That's it for this week. Thanks for all the excellent questions. Sorry we didn't get to the Redskins (Okay, not really sorry. Hey, it's March.)  But we WILL have more Caps next week. See you then.    

This chatters description of "dating" the Orioles for decades but never even dreaming of marrying them was too good not to include. Thanks.