Yet Bowden has managed to put together a heart of the order -- Castilla, Guillen and Brad Wilkerson -- that hit 94 homers last year. Second baseman Jose Vidro is a perennial .300 hitter. Outfielders Juan Rivera (.307 in 391 at bats) and Terrmel Sledge (15 homers as a rookie) are promising. Catcher Brian Schneider, a solid hitter, led the majors in throwing out runners the past two seasons (47 and 48 percent). Are the Nationals, who lost 95 games last year, close to being a winning team yet? Probably not. But is their front office trying to put an entertaining product on the field immediately? Absolutely.
Perhaps that good-faith effort is part of the reason that Washington already has deposits on 17,830 season tickets.
Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos.
(File Photo)
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Partial season-ticket plans aren't even for sale yet. The only fan complaints so far are that there aren't enough expensive box seats at RFK for everybody who already wants to buy them. "This is such a hot ticket," one Nats' front office worker told The Post's Tom Heath.
If the Orioles thought that their fan base was in jeopardy when the Expos were first relocated, what must they feel now? Within a few months, the Nationals may have new owners with deep pockets and fancy aspirations.
Now is the time when the Orioles should be trying to win new friends, not drive away old ones. Their goal should be a win-win atmosphere in which both franchises flourish and, in many cases, share the same supporters. The adversarial Angelos may not grasp that many fans wanted the Nats to get a Castilla but also hoped the Orioles would get a Delgado or Sexson.
The Orioles may not yet understand the worst damage this idle offseason has done them. Angelos is still haggling with baseball over a "compensation agreement" from the sport for daring to put a team in Washington.
His most infuriating and baseless demand is that the Orioles should get more than half the revenues -- perhaps 60 percent -- of any future regional cable TV network.
This offseason's radically opposite results have put such greedy demands in an ugly light.
The Orioles have everything on their side -- profits, tradition, a classic ballpark and a team on the verge of becoming a winner again. Yet they either can't or won't improve their product on the field. Why should they be rewarded by baseball for ineptitude?
Until they get an owner, the Nationals have nothing on their side -- except a modest budget, a dreary history and the task of selling tickets to fans for several seasons in a stadium with few amenities. Yet, if the hamstrung Nationals can make so much progress in one winter, why should they give the lion's share of any future revenues to the Orioles? It's preposterous.
If the Orioles want to prosper in their new two-team market, let them do it the old-fashioned way -- by competing and earning it.
So far, while the Orioles appear to sulk and stumble, the Nationals and their skeleton-crew front office are eating their lunch.
