Thom Loverro: Drafting a road map to the White House ...

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen

By Thom Loverro

In the interview room in the bowels of Nationals Park, the 2008 Washington Nationals did not exist Thursday.

There was no indication anywhere that there was a game going on outside between the Nationals and the St. Louis Cardinals. When Albert Pujols pinch-hit a home run off Joel Hanrahan on this woeful team's way to another defeat, a 4-1 result in the first game of a day-night doubleheader, it might as well have happened on Mars instead of just outside on the field.

While that was going on, Nationals staffers were figuring out the right order of identifying name signs to place on the table where Jim Bowden, Dana Brown, Mike Rizzo and Bob Boone would sit to discuss not the 2008 Nationals but the future Nationals on this day of the major league baseball player draft.

I asked Bowden whether this was the best day to be a baseball general manager, and he didn't bite. Instead, he answered, "The best day is when you are at the White House and they give you the World Series trophy."

No kidding.

Draft Day, though, is the day that a general manager can talk about the players who will supposedly someday put the Nationals on the White House lawn - even if it never happens. It's the day where you can talk about players that nearly none of your fans have ever heard of or seen and say how great they are - even if they never wear a major league uniform, and many do not.

Draft Day is job security for general managers because the decisions you make on this day won't be judged for several years - and then you get to do it all over again a year later, with another highly touted player who will help put you at the White House someday.

It is a day of faith for baseball fans, and, given the disappointing performance of this year's major league squad that fans are paying mucho dollars to see, the Nationals did all they could to divert attention from that team and promote that faith.

Behind the stage where the Nationals' braintrust sat was a banner made just for Draft Day. Above that were poster-sized photos of three past Nationals draft picks - Ryan Zimmerman (on the disabled list) and Chris Marrero and Ross Detwiler (both at Class A Potomac).