Well, it’s about time

Wow. Finally, after nearly half the season is gone and in the books, the team seems to be at least DOING the right things off the field. On the field will come, but we all know that the stuff off the field (i.e. practice, clubhouse karma, getting your ass chewed out when need be) spreads to the field like wildfire. It’s why the 2004 Red Sox were so good. It’s why the current Rays and Marlins are turning heads. It’s also why the O’s need to lose Peter Angelos and the Mariners are a shell of where they are supposed to be. And now, the Nats can leave the latter list and join the former.

It seems that I am not the only one who got fed up with the way they have been playing. Apparently Manny Acta was watching too - which is surprising at times. Before last night’s 5-4 win over the Angels in dramatic fashion, Acta simply posted a note in the clubhouse that read “Meeting 4:15.” It was the first closed door meeting of the season and almost too late. As I noted in previous posts and on the show, the Nats are horrible, especially this month when… If I’m reading right… they were 6-22 for the month of June including a three game sweep of the only team with a worse record, the aforementioned Mariners.

I read somewhere that the win made the meeting worth while, and that if they had lost the words of Manny would have been a waste. This I can’t argue with. However, the fact that the soft spoken manager, the Tony Dungy of baseball, called together the troops and ripped them for poor play (although he reportedly stayed true to form and didn’t yell). They responded with a homer from Lastings and a walk off double from “Nobody messes with the” Jesus Flores.

The team is miles from where they need to be, and I don’t want to get crazy here, but at least the team seems to understand all this. A win is great, but the fact that they responded to Manny speaks volumes. They respect him enough to listen and understand he is right and they are wrong. This doesn’t always happen in these meetings. Sometimes they go south and people start throwing chairs and later find themselves “accidentally” spending the night with their spring training roommates’ wife.

Now I don’t know what Manny said, although I am hoping he used the word lollygag over and over, but I appreciate him saying it. The next test will see how they respond past this game. Do they need to get this once a month? I hope not. The time is yours boys. Play ball.