For Nationals' Guzmán, A Rewarding Comeback

Seven years creates a cognitive gap too long for the mind to bridge, so when Cristian Guzmán looks back on 2001, his first great summer as a major league baseball player, he sees not the early end of his career's spectrum, but a different career altogether.

Now, as in 2001, Guzmán is an all-star. But in 2001, Guzmán was 23. He played with a different style and a yet-untested confidence. He earned $325,000.

Seven years complicated a career, filling it with riches, injuries, surgeries, self-doubt and scorn. Among all position players chosen for tonight's All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium, nobody has a longer gap separating his first appearance from his next. Nobody else in baseball, you might argue, has traveled so far to end up in the same place.

Just more than a week ago, when Guzmán, 30, learned he would represent the Washington Nationals as an all-star, he reacted with a pure appreciation. His voice high as a flute, he talked about the chance to play at Yankee Stadium, where everybody could watch him. He talked about how excited he felt, and laughed when asked if this was his best season.

"Um, I think so," Guzmán said. "What do you think?"

Just as telling, though, were the things Guzmán did not say. He withheld the told-you-sos. He never said he proved everybody wrong. Here, standing at the highest high of a yo-yo career, Guzmán didn't once indicate that he ever expected to regain all-star status.

That was just the first telltale of how seven years changed things. When Guzmán, in 2001, made his first all-star game, he was a flashy, triples-hitting shortstop for the Minnesota Twins. His career, so alive with speed and energy, was all upswing; he formed part of Minnesota's promising rebuilding movement, and he headed toward his career prime right alongside friends and teammates Doug Mientkiewicz, Torii Hunter and Corey Koskie. When Guzmán arrived in Seattle for the 2001 All-Star Game, he thought it was the start of a streak.

"I felt like I could go every year," Guzmán said. "But then, everything -- the injuries, just everything. It has hurt me."

That hurt prompted an evolution, though -- long, labored and, ultimately, beneficial. In November 2004, Guzmán, whose play dipped just slightly during his final three seasons in Minnesota, signed a four-year, $16.8 million deal to play in Washington. At the time, many in baseball ridiculed the deal. Guzmán was a slap hitter, and he capitalized on the Metrodome's marble-hard turf by drilling balls into the ground and watching them bounce over the infield. A career .274 hitter on turf, Guzmán's average dropped to .255 on grass.

As a result, General Manager Jim Bowden said, "I got ripped on the signing."

"He loved that AstroTurf, because it was lightning, probably the fastest turf you'll see," Twins Manager Ron Gardenhire said.

"The player that Washington signed was a guy who had been playing on AstroTurf his entire career, and his career was curtailed to take advantage of the turf," said Barry Larkin, a former shortstop and 12-time all-star who's now an assistant general manager with Washington. "That was definitely a transition he was going to have to make."