A Bad Break

Last spring, I listened as Robinson went into a 10-minute fuming monologue about how the Nationals had insulted him -- by not giving him the right cellphone plan. Others in the front office had a different plan. What did it mean? Was he out of the loop? Was it a hint he wasn't wanted? Why, it was an injustice. To him, anyway.

"That's a glimpse. He's not a guy who endears himself," a team source said. "He has a long history of a short shelf life."

The Nationals are one of the rare teams in baseball history with a chance to completely remake itself. They're in a new town, getting ready to play in a new revenue-spewing park in 2008. If you have such a blank canvas, and are confident-to-cocky that you can create a masterpiece, then maybe the last guy you'd want walking around your painting with a bottle of ink in his hand is a grouchy Frank Robinson after he's been sacked as manager.

Robinson has said: "I'm not bitter. I'm just disappointed."

So am I. Both sides have powerfully valid points. But a compromise should have been possible.

The Lerner family and especially Kasten, with his spectacular record in Atlanta, have every right to pick their own people. And avoid problems. The Braves' front-office operation usually was a lake without a ripple. Everybody had input. But nobody made waves. Frank can be a tsunami.

However, Robinson not only is one of baseball's largest figures but also one of its most admirable characters, too. How could he have accomplished all he did, as a player and as the first African American manager, if his backbone had been rubber, if his heart had pounded less strongly or if his brain, once convinced he was right, had waffled? You take, or leave, Frank as a whole.

Baseball in general and the Expos-Nationals in particular, have a debt to Robinson. At a minimum, those like Robinson who kept the Expos competitive on the field added $100 million to baseball's pockets when the team was sold for $450 million. That debt, measured in money or simply in loyalty and forbearance, hasn't been paid. It's simply been torn up and tossed away.

The Nationals' president, on whose desk this buck stops, speaks no ill of Robinson. "I was really torn," Kasten said yesterday. "That's why the decision took so long."

But sometimes actions equal words. Clearly, Kasten has decided he would rather take the public relations heat than live indefinitely with Robinson in the midst of his and Bowden's operation.

When Kasten arrived in town, he spoke like a Robinson fan, time after time. Now, by his winter deeds, he's clearly shown that his summer words no longer apply.

What's next for Robinson now that he and Washington have divorced? Perhaps his former team in Baltimore, a franchise that has specialized in bitter separations and public-relations nightmares for the last decade, can find a dignified, but not too vital consulting position for a savvy, crabby old Oriole. After all, what do they have to lose? Their canvas got slashed long ago.