Strasburg-mania hits fever pitch in Washington

WASHINGTON – In the six seasons since Major League Baseball yanked the long-neglected Expos out of Montreal and deposited them in the capital of the free world, fans of the rechristened Washington Nationals have pined for a moment when their team might resemble a big-league contender.

That moment came Tuesday night.

And for the 40,315 people who packed Nationals Park to witness the major-league debut of 21-year-old pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg, it was well worth the wait.

Strasburg, the No. 1 overall pick in last year’s baseball draft, struck out 14 and allowed just four hits over seven commanding innings against the Pittsburgh Pirates – a performance that lived up to every bit of the hype that has preceded the rookie’s call up to the majors.

Never mind that Strasburg’s first start came against the perennially awful Pirates, a team that has had 17 straight losing seasons and entered the game with the third-worst record in National League.

The right-handed pitcher was dominant, striking out the last seven batters he faced en route to a 5-2 win. His 14 strikeouts, on just 94 pitches, set a team record. Strasburg’s only blemish on the scorecard was a two-run home run he gave up to Delwyn Young in the top of the fourth inning.

The victory provided a much-needed morale boost for a team that became a league laughingstock over the past two years, dropping a combined 205 games in 2008 and 2009.

Strasburg erased all those bad memories, one 100-mile-per-hour fastball at a time.

“I really can’t put it into words other than what you saw … He had it all going,” Nationals manager Jim Riggleman said after the game. “It was very exciting with everything that was on him. For him to respond that way, it was just a great night for baseball in Washington.”

Strasburg pitched before a rare sellout crowd in a city that has been starving for a winner since Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals bowed out of the Stanley Cup playoffs in April.

The team’s shiny $600-million ballpark – heralded as the engine that would drive the revival of Washington’s downtrodden southeast waterfront – often sits half-empty long before the July all-star break.

But with Strasburg as the draw, the Nationals-Pirates matchup felt more like a post-season game than a late-spring tussle between two division cellar dwellers.

Fans began arriving at Nationals Park three hours before the first pitch. They snapped up Strasburg’s No. 37 jersey by the hundreds, gamely predicting glory days ahead.

“It’s been a rough couple of years,” said 21-year-old Dillon Henry, a Nationals fan who was wearing a faded Expos T-shirt “out of nostalgia” for the team’s days in Montreal.

“I hope Strasburg just turns the team around. With a power arm like he has, anything is possible.”

The six-foot-four, 220-pound Strasburg, who played his college ball at San Diego State, was widely regarded as one of the biggest prospects in decades even before he threw a single pitch as a professional.

In Washington, Strasburg has been a legend-in-waiting from the moment he signed a record $15.1-million, four-year contract last August.

With the money comes expectations. Strasburg’s task is not merely to win games.

It is to make Washingtonians care about baseball again. The same way it cares about the Redskins. And the same way they care about the Capitals every spring before their inevitable early exit from the playoffs.

“It’s been frustrating to watch the Nationals lose,” says Betty Lupinacci, who lives in suburban Maryland and travelled to Viera, Fla., to watch Strasburg play in spring training games.

“He seems cool. He doesn’t seem to get rattled. But I think there is an awful lot of pressure on someone that young.”

Strasburg’s performance in the minor leagues this spring – where Washington sent him to hone his skills and learns the day-to-day demands of professional ball – only heightened the anticipation about his arrival in the majors.

The right-handed pitcher, who complements his fastball with a plate-hugging curveball and a 90-m.p.h. slider, ran up a 7-2 record with a 1.30 earned-run average in 11 starts with the Nationals’ AA-affiliate Harrisburg Senators and triple-A affiliate Syracuse Chiefs. He struck out 65 batters.

“He has got one of the most wicked curveballs I have ever seen,” says Jeff Saffelle, a Nationals season ticket holder who writes the Nats320 blog.

“He comes right over the top (with his delivery). It looks like the ball is going to hit the batter in the head, and then it drops off the table and goes right across the plate. You can see the batter’s knees shaking.”

The Nationals’ management, for their part, have tried to shield their young rookie from the spotlight by tightly controlling the media’s access to him.

“They have limited the access so he doesn’t feel the pressure of being over-exposed to all of this,” says Saffelle.

All the same, team president Stan Kasten has done his best to promote Strasburg as the next big thing. He has described the pitcher’s arrival in Washington “the biggest thing since the inauguration” of President Barack Obama.

Longtime baseball analysts are predicting Strasburg’s mere presence in the Washington dugout brings legitimacy to a city that still mourns the loss of its last big-league team, the Senators, in 1971.

“A city that went to only two World Series in 71 seasons, then lost two franchises and waited 33 years to get a team back, is re-entering the baseball mainstream at last,” Thomas Boswell, the Washington Post’s baseball columnist, wrote in Tuesday’s newspaper.

“From the moment Strasburg throws his first pitch, probably a sinker close to 100 m.p.h., everything will, finally, be possible for the Nats.”