Ambition Steps to the Plate

When he managed the Dominican team in the World Baseball Classic, Acta's most dramatic mid-tournament decision was to bench Alfonso Soriano, then a second baseman, in favor of the better glove of the Tigers' Placido Polanco. "Fonzie accepted it. He understood," Acta said. "The first phone call I got [after being named manager] was from Alfonso Soriano to congratulate me. We'd love to have him. It's going to be a financial thing, obviously. . . . We grew up just two sugar cane factories [apart]. . . . We are good friends but I don't think we are good enough friends to get him back here on my presence alone."

There are two questions in Washington to which every fan wants an answer, but nobody really has one: Can Jason Campbell play quarterback and is Acta, who's undeniably one of the game's half-dozen hot young managerial prospects, the real thing?

"I know the answer to the second question," Kasten volunteered.

At least the list of unknown factors is not nearly as long in Acta's case. "Our industry is different," said Bowden, contrasting baseball with the NFL and NBA, where aspiring pro coaches sometimes become famous in college. "You know the next guys who are going to be managers, but they don't get the notoriety. Those 14 teams Acta has managed no one knows about. But that's a lot of experience."

If the Nationals had gotten their druthers for a new manager, they might have wished for unemployed Joe Girardi, the potential NL manager of the year with the Florida Marlins. He has name recognition and might sell some tickets. Acta is about as utterly invisible to the general public as a rookie manager can be.

But time may prove that Acta is already well known and respected where it matters most -- in the Nationals' clubhouse. In Montreal, Acta was third base coach -- essentially third in command -- for 10 current Nationals, including half the team's core players: Nick Johnson, Brian Schneider, Jose Vidro, John Patterson, Chad Cordero, Jon Rauch and Luis Ayala. Acta already has talked to Zimmerman about how the '05 Nats didn't have Soriano yet won games with defense, timely hitting and a bullpen that, with the return of Ayala, could be strong again.

"I hadn't thought of that," Zimmerman said. Mercifully, Acta neglected to mention starting pitching. But that's part of the trick of managing. Accentuate the positive, motivate, stress fundamentals. Let the smoke and mirrors begin. And hope that, by the time his two-year contract expires, enough pitching will arrive to make it all seem like magic.

"I hope Washington will be my home for the next 10 to 20 years," Acta said, "until I move up to take Stan Kasten's job."

The youngest manager in the show was smiling. But in the private place where he scouts himself, he probably wasn't kidding.