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Nationals Have a Field Day
Ryan Langerhans, right, is congratulated by Austin Kearns after his three-run homer in the fifth gave the Nats a 7-2 lead.
(By Gerald Herbert -- Associated Press)
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So he threw Lee's ball across the diamond. Young came off the bag to catch it.
"I kind of anticipated the play," he said. "It was up the line. I saw him going. Just threw a strike."
Flores was waiting. "Perfect," he said, and Berkman was out. The lead, for that moment, was preserved. Young, the National League's leading hitter at .342, had come through on defense, hardly his strength.
"Hard work," Young said. "If I was to not do what was asked -- take ground balls, try and dig balls out of the dirt, anticipate plays -- I'd be terrible at it."
The harrowing moments, though, weren't over. After Jon Rauch worked a perfect eighth, Cordero took the ball for the ninth. Munson, the eighth-place hitter who went 3 for 4, hit a ball to -- guess who? -- Zimmerman's left. He dived, but couldn't get the throw across in time. Munson, though, was erased on a double play, and the crowd breathed easily again.
For about 10 seconds. Leadoff man Chris Burke followed with -- couldn't be, could it? -- another ball to Zimmerman.
"I don't know how that works," Zimmerman said.
This one was a blazing one-hopper, and Zimmerman did well to just keep it in front of him.
"I was trying to pretty much block it so it wouldn't be a double," he said.
It wasn't, but it scalded off his right wrist. Still, Zimmerman picked it up. The mantra remained the same: Don't have any regrets afterward. He tracked the ball down and tried to throw Burke out at first.
"If I make a perfect throw, I might get him," Zimmerman said. "But it's probably better that I just hold onto the ball there."
He didn't, and the ball sailed wide. Burke, the tying run, ended up on second on a play scored a single and an error -- Zimmerman's 14th. He made 15 all of last year.
"He'll learn in the future that if the leadoff hitter hits a ball like that and it rolls away from him, he doesn't need to throw the ball to first base," Acta said. "But that's why I don't want people to lose the fact that this kid is only 22, and he's still learning. Regardless of what people are thinking, that he might be struggling at times, he's not, because over 60 percent of our farm system is older than him."
With that, the dangerous Pence came to the plate. Burke advanced to third on a wild pitch. With the tying run 90 feet away, Pence hit a difficult grounder -- not to Zimmerman, but to shortstop Felipe Lopez, who made the play. Just another little piece of a victory that -- had any of those plays not worked out -- might have been a loss.
