Calmly Fielding Anything Life Throws at Him

Cheryl used to run, but those days were over. A lacrosse player in college, she came from an athletic family in her home town of Collegeville, Pa., where she grew up with Keith. She served as an assistant coach on Ryan's youth basketball teams and was part of the two-person operation that toted the Zimmerman boys to and from practices and games and, in Shawn's case, golf matches.

If the diagnosis of MS started to change all that, then the accident blew it up. Cheryl fought to continue teaching, returning in January 1999 and working through the next school year. "Finally I said: 'That's it. I've had enough,' " she said. Her room at school was a long way from the parking lot. Just getting there had become a challenge. And the disease was progressing. She went to the wheelchair full time. Now she has use of her arms, and her hands a little bit. She can talk and eat without any problem. "But I'm basically dead weight from my armpits down," she said.

So the reality of day-to-day life at Sandtucket changed. Cheryl could no longer make dinner, so Ryan and Shawn were expected to chip in. They learned to do their own laundry. The family installed a ramp at one end of the house so Cheryl could wheel down to the driveway, where a lift would raise her into the family van. Now she envisions power doors, because maneuvering around the little house is cumbersome in her chair.

"We kind of got eased into it," Ryan said. "When it first happened, it wasn't that bad for a while. But as things progressed, it showed that you can't really take anything for granted. In a way, that's helped us out a lot. It made us grow up quicker, a lot more than other kids, kids who had their mom there doing dinner all the time or driving them places or whatever. It made us mature a lot faster."

Truth be told, Ryan Zimmerman may have turned out exactly as he is had his mother been running, been cooking, been working like she always did. "He's never been a flashy kid," Keith said. But those who know him believe there is a calm in Ryan that comes out more easily because of his mother's illness.

Take those times in college when the Cavaliers would fall down by three or four runs early in a crucial ACC game.

"Kids would come in the dugout, and they'd be uptight," O'Connor said. "Ryan always had this presence about him to where he never panicked. Time upon time, you'd hear him say stuff to the entire team to where it's calming: 'Relax. Just play the game. It's the third inning.' It really rubbed off on his teammates."

Meantime, he was doing things his teammates couldn't do, making plays others couldn't make. In the summer of 2003, he played in a local college wood-bat league. Greg Lovelady, a former star catcher at the University of Miami, served as the coach, and he watched Zimmerman snare a one-hop smash to his backhand side, jump in the air and "with ease," Lovelady said, "flick the ball across the diamond." Lovelady turned to his team. "You see that on 'SportsCenter,' " he said. "You're talking about Scott Rolen as the only guy in the majors who can make that play, and he makes it in front of your eyes when he's 18."

These comparisons would seem to be exaggerations. Scott Rolen? Brooks Robinson? Last week, O'Connor was preparing for an upcoming Virginia baseball banquet, an event at which Robinson will serve as the keynote speaker. The Hall of Famer sent a videotape of highlights that will run as he is introduced.

"I thought I was watching Ryan Zimmerman," O'Connor said. "The ball you come in on, the one Brooks made look so easy? That's what Ryan does."

Bounce these comparisons off Zimmerman, and he allows that it's "neat." But the fact that he doesn't treat it as a big deal is one of the reasons his teammates and others in the Nationals organization are predicting a smooth transition to a full-time job in the majors. He hit .397 with 10 doubles in just 58 at-bats at the tail end of last season and made enough of an impression that the Nationals traded veteran Vinny Castilla to make room for him. "Poised," is how first baseman Nick Johnson described Zimmerman after he had been in the majors a few weeks.

"Honestly," said Nationals catcher Brian Schneider, "he's the kind of kid you want to take care of because you know how good he can be."

How good he can be is the result of natural ability, no doubt. But no one who knows Zimmerman debates that his circumstances play into his attitude. He is low-key about his success in part because his mother is low-key about her disease. "You either go with it," Cheryl said, before Keith jumped in. "You just don't let it consume you," he said.

Last week, as the sun set across the beach and the low light shined through the windows of the house, Ryan Zimmerman moved easily through his living room, joking with his parents about old moments in high school, or how his widespread family might embarrass him when they showed up at various games, sometimes sticking their heads in the dugout to see if they could catch a word with Ryan. Cheryl, sitting in stocking feet in her wheelchair, smiled at each retelling, rolling her eyes and laughing.

"She doesn't let that bring her down," Ryan said. "She doesn't want anyone to act any different when she's there. How can that not have an effect on you?"