Maybe I Was Wrong

I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to roster moves by my favorite sports teams I’m pretty pessimistic. I always assume disatster. But how could you blame me?

I mean, just look at the recent history of Washington area sports teams… The Bullets/Wizards are the team that traded Rasheed Wallace for Rod Strickland, Chris Webber for the AARP member Mitch Richmond, Richard Hamilton for Jerry Stackhouse, and worst of all Ben Wallace for Ike "Eat My Way Out of the League" Austin! As an added bonus we got to watch the Detroit Pistons win a Championship with a bunch of guys who couldn’t even take us to the playoffs!

And don’t even get me started on the Redskins... Desmond Howard, Heath Shuler, Michael Westbrook… it’s painful. They actually drafted a guy in the 1st round of the1996 draft named Andre Johnson who never even played a down in the NFL! And that’s just the drafting woes!
I could write a 10,000 word column on the Free Agency brilliance of “The Dan" Snyder… Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, Jeff George, Laverneus Coles, and Michael Barrow, all of these names spoken out loud to a Redskins fan will cause a grimace followed by a string of curse words.

So when the Washington Nationals (in the midst of a pennant race) traded to get the injury prone Colorado Rockies outfielder Preston Wilson, you can imagine how I felt. “Here we go again!”

Don’t get me wrong, I was in favor of trading Zach Day. Any snot-nosed young pitcher who can’t find the strike zone yet has the nerve to turn his back on Frank Robinson needs to go… but for Preston Wilson!?!? The Zach Day trade talks had been hot and heavy all year and some of the names that were tossed around included Ken Griffey Jr, Willy Mo Pena, and some serious Minor League prospects. So when the Day for Wilson deal actually went down it was a bit anti-climactic. It was like going to a Ford Dealership hoping to buy a Mustang and then coming home with a Taurus.

Sure Preston has had some nice years, but seriously, the guy has a limp! If you go to a game at RFK, just watch him walking around during BP. He walks like Gayle Sayers… Seruiously, how many Center Feilders in MLB walk like a retired grandfather? He only managed to play 58 games last season, and his best year 2003 was inflated by the fact that he played in Colorado… and it’s not like he was setting the world on fire this year. He batted only .258 with 14 HR’s in the thin air of the "Mile High City."

So no, I wasn’t buying this deal and I’ve criticized his every move since he got into town... I've used everything from his steal ratio (1 stolen base vs 4 times caught stealing) to the way he wore his uniform as ammo against him. Every time he struck out or failed to move a runner over I would turn to my friend Brian (a proponent of the Wilson deal) and make some kind of sarcastic comment.

But the truth is, Preston Wilson has come up HUGE in the 2 biggest games of the season. With the wildcard leading Phillies in town and the Nats in danger of falling out of the race, Wilson put the team on his back. Two nights ago he drove in a run in the 1st inning, and then the game winner with a bloop single in the bottom of the 12th.

In his encore last night he put the game away with one swing of the bat, driving in 3 runs on a gargantuan blast that landed in the upper deck! I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure it was the longest blast in RFK this season. What made the moment even more fitting was the fact that I was riding in a car with my friend Brian when it happened. This time it was his turn to turn to me and make a sarcastic comment. All I could do was nod my head, shrug my shoulders and say something I hardly ever say, “I was wrong...”