Ken Burns threw out his first ceremonial first pitch while on the road sixteen years ago promoting his Emmy-winning series Baseball. We talked about his appearance at tonight's game, the last 100 years of ceremonial first pitches, and whether Strasburg's debut is really history in the making.

NDN: Tell us about the history of the ceremonial first pitch.
Ken Burns: The first person to toss a ceremonial first pitch was President William Howard Taft - in 1910 - in Washington, D.C. During Taft's time, the gentlemen's agreement was in place and going strong. So, just right there it's interesting to stop and think about the progress of the last one hundred years. I think baseball is not just about the game - it is a mirror of American life.

NDN: How did it become something that happens at every game?
KB: The first pitch eventually went from an Opening-Day celebration to a celebration at every game -- as a way to recognize loyal fans, local business groups and celebrities that were passing through town. Or the idea of bringing back a revered sports hero and having some of the magic rub off. Baseball is continually creating its own sub-histories and aspects of the game have always started taking on more significance for the crowd.

NDN: What about the history of your own first pitch?
KB: At this point I've thrown about 25 first pitches, starting back in 1994 when 'Baseball' was just out and we were traveling the country. That year I went to twenty or so parks - including Fenway Park on Father's Day with my three daughters watching. I actually got to a point of being pretty cocky because I threw about eighteen or nineteen strikes in a row. Then one bounced at Jacob's Field. So, needless to say, I'm not coming in over-confident this evening.

NDN: Speaking of tonight, is it more of an honor for you to pitch on Strasburg Day, or for Strasburg to pitch on 'Ken Burns' Day?
KB: [laughs] What an amazing and fortuitous thing that when we scheduled this months ago, that it would be such a big night for the Nationals. Baseball is about rejuvenation and hope, and the Nats are placing a great deal of both on Strasburg. I'm glad to be caught up in the Nationals whirlwind today, and I know all eyes will be on Strasburg and not Ken Burns.

NDN: With every detail of Strasburg's performance and game having already been meticulously pored over, is his debut really all that 'historic'? I mean, it's just the Pirates.
KB: Well, we don't know if it will be 'historic.' But the in the context of the hype, yes, it's historic. Number-one picks come and go - the New York Times just had a great article on the picks surrounding Derek Jeter. Many of them have paled in comparison to his career. So the historical aspect here is which kind of number-one pick will he be. The proof will be in the pudding. If that fastball zings and the breaking ball breaks, then we can look forward to some good baseball tonight. I can't imagine that Strasburg slept very well though.

Ken Burns' new documentary, "The Tenth Inning," premieres September 28th and 29th on PBS.

      

Q: What could make up for a rainy Sunday when your winning Nats are out of town?

A: A rainy Sunday watching Strasburg for less than $10. Oh and some great handcrafted beer to go with it.

So the Nats are out of town kicking off another winning month. But you're stuck in the Deece jonesing for more action.
The logical solution? A 1.5-hour drive north for a day of baseball, catching Strasburg in what will likely be one of his last starts in Harrisburg.
The bonus? Some great brewpubs that fit nicely into the day's schedule.
Yes, friends -- there's more to Central Pennsylvania than simply pondering your own dependence on modern technology. And thankfully, you're reading the blog of someone from the area. Here's a guide to your day, should you choose to make the trek:

9am: Refresh your coffee and hit the road to Harrisburg by taking I-270N to Route 15N. It's a scenic, lovely drive.

11am: Arrive in Harrisburg and grab an early lunch and a handcrafted brew or two, (or better yet, a sampler) with a delightful trip to the Appalachian Brewing Company. With a 'lagering room' dating back to 1890 and located in a historic brick-and-timber building from the early 1900s, ABC is the first brewery in the Pennsylvania capital city since 1951. Given the expected humidity on Sunday, I highly recommend the Water Gap Wheat to start things off. (It will also go with the theme of the day as you later head out to City Island in the middle of the Susquehannah River.)

1:30pm: Grab your check and head over to Metro Bank Park. Enjoy the game, a dollar hotdog, and watching Strasburg add to his 23 season strikeouts.

4:30pm: Time to pack up and head south, but not after stopping in Carlisle (instead of departing back on Route 15, head to I-81 and drive south for 20 minutes) for another great brewpub experience at the Market Cross Pub. With a great list of draught beers (some of which are their own brews), a Brickskeller-like choice of bottles, a quality menu (I give the Duke of Devonshire 5/5 stars), and a charming and authentic English pub feel, the MCP is a must-stop if you're within 30 minutes.

6:30pm: Continue down Hanover Street on your way back to Route 15S. Be sure to count the buggies on your way back!

      

Over the past two days, former Washington Times baseball writer Mark Zuckerman met his fundraising goal to travel to Viera, Fla. and cover the Nats' spring training as an independent reporter/blogger. The campaign has been getting a lot of buzz in Nats Town and some of the larger media, including Chico's WaPo page and a mention by ESPN's Keith Law, as the idea went from concept to funded project in a little more than one week's time. The fundraising goal of $5,000 - from about 200 contributors - was reported to have been completed in only 29 hours and has now been surpassed by more than $2,000.

Whether Zuckerman knows it or not, he's actually just engaged in a journalistic and media-industry phenomenom that's cropped up in the last year: community-funded reporting. And his could very well be the first formal sports-related campaign to have been funded by this new trend, according to David Cohn, founder of Spot.Us, the first site devoted to helping fund stories solely through community contributions.

"I haven't heard of anything sports-related in the community-funded journalism space on this scale - that is, more than just a one-off piece." Cohn said.

The piece Cohn is referring to happens to be a story that was just completed thanks to Spot.Us-raised funds called "Trouble in Trojanland." It explores some of the deeper woes facing USC's storied football program. That story raised its small goal of $200.

Zuckerman's campaign, part of a shift in the business models facing online news content, could be the beginning for a new era in sports journalism itself as more reporters are being laid off due to continued budget cuts and seeking other avenues to continue their work. The success has already spawned similar requests from other Nats blogs, including here at NationalsPride last month and Nationals Inquisition today. Indeed, the idea of asking readers to contribute to a story's reporting has now been taken to an all-out project level with Zuckerman's spring-training initiative.

The funding aspect will be interesting to follow once April comes around. Will he ask for more funds for the season, and if so, will he get them - and in full? There are a lot of questions on the horizon for the campaign and what it means for sports journalism itself. David Cohn has little complaints.

"If community-funded reporting can be applied to sports, that’s a good thing," said Cohn, speaking to his own site's mission of covering civic-minded stories not normally given due resources. "Whether it's funded by advertisers or 200 people giving $30 each, this is fantastic for the future of journalism itself."

      

As the Riggleman Era kicks off, it's cautiously easy to look back on quotes like this one and see some obvious foreshadowing:

"You have to stay positive and keep talking to the guys. We have to keep working, and we are gong to snap out of it."

Then-new manager Manny Acta was facing a 9-24 start to his first season that day in May 2007, and would go on to be quoted along similar lines too many times in his little more than two-year stint at the helm of NatsTown - including throughout the horrible (and injury-ridden) 2008 season and this year's bullpen misery. At the end of it all, players (most notably, Zimmerman) would speak of Manny's firing as a needed public display of change, even if it was a result of their own poor performance. 

Quotes in the past few days indicate players' disappointment in themselves more than anything, but with a "this is how it goes" slant, and looking back over the mostly frustrating history of Nationals baseball, it never seemed to be any other way.

Just a few months into Acta's span, with a record of 40-55 (a "decent" losing record for the half-way mark), World Series champ Ronnie Belliard said Acta was focusing the team to win. "They said we weren't going to win 50 games [this season], and look where we are now. I think all those positive things come from our manager, Manny Acta. He's a winner. He's going to do what it takes to win the ballgame, day in and day out."

Later that 2007 season, as the team blew an 8-3 lead over the Dodgers to lose 10-9 and continue a six-game losing streak, players felt bleak toward the team's performance, but glad about their skipper. Now-defunct firstbaseman Robert Fick remarked, "It all starts with Manny. His attitude has been so good the whole year."

That "whole year" ended up being the "bright spot" in team history by ending 73-89 (the Nats ended fourth in the East and the F.O. was even pushing for Acta to be named the NL Manager of the Year, no doubt a move intended for encouragement more than anything), and players continued to stand by Acta through thick and thin. Yes, he would be questioned for his lack of emotion...but not by his players.

During 2008's terrible showing, many in the media camp were almost amazed at Acta's level of patience and calm. Acta credited his cool head to his time in the minors, where he found that "kicking and screaming doesn't get the best out of people most of the time." He logically explained his Zen-like approach by stating, "If I throw a phone around or turn over the spread, the score is not going to change. I have done a lot of research and have data to prove it's not going to work." And he concluded that the best way to gain player respect was by "treating them fairly and keep showing them that I do have faith in them."

For a team that put players on the DL 30 times (for a combined total of more than one thousand lost games among them) that season, people steered clear of blaming the skipper, with Bowden stating last September, "I believe when Manny Acta gets the horses, Manny Acta will win."

As one of those potential horses going into the '09 season, Lastings Milledge said in October, "I know he takes a lot of heat because we didn't win. He handles the team great and he knows how to handle young guys. The biggest thing is, he knows how to communicate with guys." At the outset of this year, another one, Willie Harris, called him a "player's manager." And the first day of spring training had Adam Dunn praising, "It's hard to get those many guys organized. That's impressive."

So in the end, it seems Acta's players had what they needed from him: Good communication, ability to handle and even discipline younger players, and a positive attitude to boot. The elephant in the...stable...however, became the need to change something - anything. As recently as May, the term had crept into the locker room's regular lexicon. Scott Olsen was quoted in frustration after the team went 7-18 in the first NL East stint, "It definitely has to change. The atmosphere and culture around here -- something has to change."

Still, likes of Ron Villone and Nick Johnson took an equally as candid view as recently as last month, noting that there was only so much Acta could do. "Manny is doing everything he can to put us in the position to win and we are not winning games for him," said Villone. "It's up to us to do the job." Johnson added, "It's on us to play better baseball." Even Zimmerman's recent interview in the Post, while mentioning the need of urgency and "fire," focused more on accountability within.

Now that he's gone, it's easy to see that even during the past two months - and as his tenure came to a close and became distracted by rumors of his firing - Acta did what he's always done. He stayed calm, left fate to the Fates, and focused on staying positive to his ballclub. Said Acta in late May, "I just prepare myself to go out there every single day and give this team the best possible chance to win."

Maybe Acta will get what he wanted in the end, even if he is somewhere else. Change could up the chances for the Nats. Only time will tell, but in the meantime, patience is still a virtue...and one which Riggleman will have to embrace.

      

I've been addicted to reading the comments on Nats-related sites for a while now; everything from here at NP to the myriad of responses at WaPo and beyond. So if I can - for just a moment - make a sweeping generalization: Nats fans are smart.

I'm not saying they are necessarily smartER than any other types of fans - whether it be of a different sport or of a fellow ball club. (OK, OK, OK. If I HAD to, I'd say...we may be smarter than perhaps some) But I just mean in their own way, Nats fans are a relatively smart bunch.

To give a concrete example, I'll use a Chico post today - "From This Point Forward". In the post, Cheeks asks folks to vote on what they think our win percentage will end up being at the end of this AMAZING baseball season. The comments are superb - everything from "if/then" stat-backed projections to thinking critically about the natural arc which seasons tend to take...to obscure Seinfeld references. And all without any need for people to showcase their smarts other than humbly in the WaPo comments section. It's endearing and makes me proud to be a citizen of NatsTown.

Joebleux: I can see a scenario where the bullpen and hitting both return to a semblance of normality, and we start losing games "normally", like 5-3 instead of our customary 11-8 bullpen blowup special, and finish at something like a .400 pace.

Gengreen17: If we had won even half of our bullpen losses, [then] we'd be in the thick of the division fight.

Section505203: ...Switch to all cotton uniforms courtesy of George Costanza.

I have a few theories about what's behind this more-cerebral fandom (DC is an intellectually ambitious place full of mostly nerds; our team being new equates to folks having a lot of recent knowledge at the ready; etc.). Whatever it is, though, I like it just as much as I like plain-and-simple baseball itself.

Hopefully we're not too smart for our own good - analyzing the team away into emotional irrelevance.

      

That was the quantifying description Manny Acta gave Boz regarding how many pitchers we've sent to the mound in an attempt to rectify our unbalanced offense-defense situation. One-fifth of the way through our season, let's take a look at the overall family tree -- those 18 [soon to be 19] kin who have pitched for us so far:

Joe Beimel
Active (0-2; 4.61)
Hoping Joe can remember his time with the Dodgers and start showing some of the same stuff.

Jason Bergmann
Optioned to minors 4/29 (3.60)
Three appearances so far, most (unfortunately) notably back on April 25th when he threw three innings for a 4.50 and 2H, 3R. Now he's showing great relief work and should be brought back, as Mike argued last week.

Daniel Cabrera
Active (0-5; 5.95)
Not sure a whole lot is needed here. His lowest game-specific ERA is only 4.42; his lowest season ERA is 4.52.

Jesus Colome
Active (20.25)
Obviously the numbers are skewed since he's only seen one inning this season, and that included the bats of Ibanez & Co. Hoping he can bust out his '07 stuff sometime soon...

Joel Hanrahan
Active (0-1; 5.51)
He's lowered his March/April ERA of 8.00 to 2.45 this month, and has thrown nearly as many strike-outs in May (9) as he did the rest of the season (11).

Mike Hinckley
Designated 5/7 (4.66)
Sent down after he gave up a hit and a bases-loaded walk in the 10-3 Dodgers loss.

John Lannan
Active (2-3; 4.00):
In May he's 2-0 and has dropped his ERA to 3.06. Great job as starter, but...which we know doesn't mean a whole lot right now.

Wil Ledezma
Designated 4/20 (9.53)

Logan Kensing
Designated (0-1; 18.00)
He's thrown two strikeouts in his entire five May appearances (which total a little more than four innings).

Shairon Martis
Active (5-0; 4.10)
To the Giants fans sitting behind me last Wednesday who heckled "Sharon to get a haircut" (I guess it was funny that his name could possibly be mispronounced for that of a girl...?) -- I don't see any of your (albeit terrific) pitching going 5-0, now do I??

Garrett Mock
Active (0-1; 4.97)
He's tamped it down from his pre-May ERA of 7.02 to stand now at 3.52...but in Saturday's outing he gave up double the runs he had the rest of the month.

Scott Olsen
15-Day DL (1-4; 7.24)
Prior to his MRI on Saturday, he was starting to get on my nerves.

Saul Rivera
Optioned to minors 4/20 (0-3; 8.49)
He's back in Syracuse, where he belongs -- hopefully we're not forced into another desperate call-up until he straightens things out.

Steven Shell
Designated 4/20 (5.40)

Julian Tavarez
Active (0-3; 6.32)
Meh.

Ron Villone
Active (1-0; 0.00)
Called up earlier this month for Hinckley; as Jeff noted, "the addition of a veteran like Ron Villone is a reminder that this team is retooling the right way." His first game he relieved Zimmermann and pitched a scoreless seventh to get the win.

Kip Wells
Active (0-1; 6.06)
Wells has been climbing this month, culminating in his loss on Friday. Let's see if he gets back down to the 3/4.00-range sometime soon.

Jordan Zimmermann
Active (2-1; 6.35)
He's not having the best month...and really should be in AAA as Jeff said earlier today. Hopefully we'll have more info to work with after Friday's game.

All in all, we average 4.42 different pitchers a game, with seven games having needed six or more pitchers (last Friday's Phillies game took eight to get the loss.) On a positive note, let's not forget Martis' 9 IP for the win on May 2nd. And welcoming the "irresistible" Mr. Detwiler to the mix in tonight's game.

      

OK, so I'm definitely not pulling off a pun like Brian did. But I just read Marchman's article, and it got me thinking: Would we be better off if the rules were different?

All season long - or short - most of us here at NP would be in agreement that our biggest weakness is pitching. From start to finish, pitching. And mostly the 'pen. I don't even have to spend a lot of hyperlinked words explaining this, because we all get it.

There's one role we've been most frustrated with, and that's the closer position. I believe it was the last PrideCast in which the guys spent much time discussing the fact that we've no one around which to build our bullpen. And I'd agree.

So while I like Marchman's analysis of IF we could actually trade Strasburg - or his pick - for lots of other stuff, how could we be better off...But pesky reality says we can't. So that portion is rendered moot. But some of his points, and indeed the general logical reasoning behind deciding whether or not to pick up this whizkid (the idea that he could be peaking now; throwing that hard regularly isn't going to hold up much longer; will he really make a difference once every 5 games; etc.), is valid.

So here's an idea: Strasburg becomes our closer. We've lamented too much about our bullpen blowing it .. and blowing it again and again. That doesn't mean our rotation is in the best shape -- but they're doing an OK job coupled with our hitting, which keeps us in the game and on the scoreboard.

Less than a month away from the June draft, wouldn't Strasburg-as-closer be one of the best ways to maximize his incredible talent?

      

That's the opening line to one of film's most famous monologues, and I just made myself watch it again after last night's last-out meltdown.

I'm not sure which is "worse" - Cabrera's hard time on Monday, or coming back from a 5-1 deficit, taking the lead in a game where one of our stars is on a historical hit-streak...and then losing it in the last out. It's the sixth time this season we haven't been behind going in to the last two innings, yet have still come out with a Curly L.

Here's what Manny said publicly:

"We have tried everybody and their cousins, and we still can't get anybody to put a zero up in the eighth and the ninth innings," said Manager Manny Acta. "And that's really just killing us. It's very discouraging to waste the type of offense that we're displaying out there for a month and a half now."

But here's what I'm hoping he said in the locker room:

"You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close sh*t, you ARE sh*t, hit the bricks pal and beat it 'cause you are going out!"

Not to sound harsh, but going a little Blake on the boys might help our situation right now.

Game 3 in just a few short hours...

      

THAT'S ALL.

10:10pm Pacific Daylight Time.

      

Every baseball season I've lived here ('06, '07 and this year), I've gone to each Nats-Giants series to enjoy the combo of DC baseball and what is apparently the country's best ballpark. (While the post last June by Jon was informative, at some point I'll go in to more detail on what the 'baseball experience' is like here in the City by the Bay.) It's just an awesome place to be able to watch a game and it's hard not to have a good time.

But let's go back to last night for one quick sec. I don't know if it was the full moon or what, but the crowd I was near had gone from the usual mix of stat-recorders, cheerers and latte-sippers (yes that's what I said!) to Nats-bashing d-bags. Demonstrating their bully's wit with displays such as yelling at Nick Johnson to "go back to Triple A" (a little confusing since he hasn't been in the minors for a while and his batting average so far is still above .300 -- unlike, say, the Giants' firstbaseman.) So, outside of D-Cab's "pitching," I'd say the most disturbing aspect of the game was, for me, the surrounding people.

Now I don't mean "boo hoo - they were being mean," and this is in no way even specific to Giants fans or the SF population of which I am a part. Nor is this someone pontificating about some high-falutin' notions of this or that sports-as-life philosophy. Thankfully, Gene's got that covered. And I'll be the first to admit that there's a good place in this sport for old-fashioned heckling, especially in divison or historical rivalries. I even look forward to the day when, somewhere down the line, Nationals Park has been broken in, 'NatsTown' has established an actual personality, and certain funny quirks/jeers tossed toward visiting rivals become ingrained in its baseball tradition.

Fun.

But (and again, no thanks to Cabrera), it was hard for even me to have fun last night. From throwing home-run balls back (Anthony covered this one back in April) to simply not actually knowing anything about the visiting team (see above), the majority of crowd behavior was less-than-impressive, and it just so happened to be one of those mental tipping points as to what it even means to be a fan of something.

I look forward to having a better post topic as the series continues!