Last week two rookies made a dramatic entrance to mark their
debuts in Major League Baseball.
Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg set D.C. and
the rest of the nation
abuzz by striking out fourteen Pittsburgh Pirates over seven
innings without walking a single batter en route to a 5-2 victory
for the Nationals.
A few days later, Boston Red Sox outfielder Daniel Nava set
Red Sox Nation abuzz by hitting the very first pitch he saw in
the big leagues for a grand slam homerun into the Red Sox bullpen
at Fenway Park to help the Sox blow out the defending National
League Champion Philadelphia Phillies 10-2. Nava
became only the second player in Red Sox (and fourth in MLB)
history to hit a grand slam in his first plate big league
appearance.
This is where the similarities between Stephen Strasburg
and Daniel Nava end.
Strasburg was arguably the biggest college baseball star in
decades when he pitched for San Diego State under the tutelage of
Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn. Nava was cut from the baseball team at
Santa Clara University and then became the team’s equipment
manager. Among his duties was
doing the team’s laundry.
Strasburg was selected by the Nationals as the number one
pick in the 2009 MLB Draft. Nava went undrafted by all thirty
major league clubs.
Last August, Strasburg’s agent Scott Boras negotiated
a four-year, $15.1 million contract with the Nationals with only
minutes to spare. The Red Sox purchased
Nava’s contract in January 2008 from the Chico Outlaws of the
independent Golden Baseball League for $1.
Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo announced
Strasburg’s MLB debut more than a week in advance to increase
ticket sales. Strasburg’s debut was greatly anticipated by
baseball fans everywhere. Nava found out he had been promoted to
the majors less than 24 hours before he took his first swing. The
only people who greatly anticipated Nava’s big league debut
were his parents.
Even before he threw his first pitch, Nationals fans were
sporting Strasburg jerseys on their backs. When Red Sox fans saw
Nava’s name in the lineup for the first time they probably asked,
“Who is this guy? Nava heard of him.”
Unless Strasburg absolutely falls flat on his face he is in
the majors to stay. As for Nava, he could be sent back down to
Pawtucket once Jacoby Ellsbury and Jeremy Hermida (who hit a
grand slam in his first big league at bat) return from the
disabled list, even if he continues to play well.
That is, unless the Red Sox have another Wade Boggs on
their hands. Boggs dominated the American League in batting for
most of the 1980s, winning five AL batting titles in six seasons.
But there’s a good chance that opportunity might have never come
Boggs’ way had Carney Lansford (who won the 1981 AL batting title
while with the Bosox) not been injured. When Boggs got the
call
to the majors in 1982 he had been toiling
in the Red Sox farm system since 1976.
While sometimes success recedes due to an inexplicable loss
of ability (e.g., Dontrelle
Willis), at other times a major league player’s time at the
top can come to an abrupt end due to an injury. During
Strasburg’s second start against the Cleveland Indians over the
weekend he
slipped several times on the pitcher’s mound at Progressive
Field which the ground crew had to fix on two occasions. Despite
getting the win, Strasburg walked five batters. But Strasburg is
lucky those five walks were his only trouble. He could have
twisted an ankle, hyperextended a knee, or severed an Achilles
tendon.
Given that the game was in Cleveland, I could not help but
think of the career
of Herb Score and what could have been. In the mid-1950s,
Score excited baseball fans the way Strasburg is today. The
southpaw would win 16 games as well as lead the American League
in strikeouts with 245 batters en route to becoming AL Rookie of
the Year. Score was even better in 1956, winning 20 games and
once again leading the league in strikeouts with 263. By all
appearances, Score was the second coming of Bob Feller and a
destined to be a first ballot Hall of Famer.
But in May 1957, a month before his 24th birthday, Score
was struck in the face by a line drive off the bat of New York
Yankees infielder Gil McDougald. Score sustained facial fractures
and was nearly blinded. Neither Score, nor for that matter
McDougald, was the same player again.
Although Score returned to the Indians the following
season, he never regained his earlier form and only won 17 more
games over the next five seasons before hanging it up in 1962
while a member of the Chicago White Sox. Score would later return
to the Indians — as a broadcaster.
While Strasburg appears destined for greatness and Nava
appeared destined for obscurity, both men have played their way
into the spotlight. For the moment what we have here is a tale of
two rookies.
No one can guarantee what will happen next. Perhaps
Strasburg will win 300 games and be inducted into the Hall of
Fame and Nava will become an answer to a trivia question. Or
perhaps Strasburg won’t live up to lofty expectations and it will
be Nava who gets a plaque in Cooperstown. Then again perhaps
Strasburg and Nava will simply be among the thousands of major
league players who have good careers but not receive any special
recognition once their careers have ended. What they might lack
in greatness will be more than made up for with a lifetime of
great memories playing in the majors. In which case, perhaps
Stephen Strasburg and Daniel Nava might not be so different after
all.
