Heart and Soul

Nick Johnson finally hung up the spikes today, according to MLB Rumors. Only 34 years old, Johnson will be remembered as the backbone of the first Washington Nationals team in 2005, and to those of us who wore his name proudly on the back of our first Nationals jerseys, he was the heart and soul of that team.

The article highlights Johnson’s ability to get on base, his “keen eye at the plate” that helped him achieve a ”15.7% walk rate” that the article notes is “ the 29th-highest mark  of any player in baseball history with at least 3,000 plate appearances.”

Washington fans will always remember Nick Johnson for his 2005 season. It was early in that year that Nick Johnson played his most inspired baseball. In May Johnson went on a tear, hitting .346 for the month with five homers. For the first two months he hit .322 and he continued the pace in June with a .315 clip. His OBP for the first half of the year was an amazing .444 which included 10 HBP. He scored almost as many runs as he drove in and maybe the most enduring image of Johnson from 2005, was the burly man taking his elbow pad off and casting it aside as he jogged toward first base, yet again.

It was in June that the Nationals won 10 straight games to climb into first place in the NL East. The Expos had not seen the upper reaches of the National League in more than a few years, so it was heartening to a new fan base in Washington, DC to find themselves on June 5th in first place. Even the New York Time s took note of the watershed event, “First in War, First in Peace, First in the NL East,” read the headline proclaiming the ascent of the Nationals to the top.

There were many fan favorites that season in Washington. Livan Hernandez made the All-Star Team along with Chad Cordero. Vinny Castillo played a surprising third base and Jose Guillen added both temper and flare. But it was Nick Johnson who made it all fit together.

One of my favorite memories of that year was one of those dust-ups where Jose Guillen lost his cool. No one stopped the presses when Jose went off on an umpire or an opposing pitcher. It was par for the course. But in one game that season, Guillen was at his worst and had to be dragged to first base by his teammates. He stood there taunting the opposing pitcher who had plunked him on his elbow pad that he often left dangling over the plate.

Nick Johnson came up to bat with Guillen still pointing to the mound. To quiet the hub bub, Nick deposited the first pitch into the second deck of the right field bleachers. “Here’s how you do it, Jose,” Nick seemed to be saying. And as long as Nick was there to show the way, the Nationals followed. But at the end of June Johnson was injured at home plate trying to avoid the catcher’s tag. “Heel contusion” was all that was said officially, but Johnson missed 24 games and when he came back he was not the same player as he had been before the injury.

While Johnson was out the Nationals managed to win only nine games and lost 18. They fell off the pace and on July 26th they gave up the NL East lead to the Braves. In the month of August Johnson was back but Nick hit only .221 and got on base to a paltry .325 rate. The team fell all the way to last place in the NL East by the end of that first season, but managed to finish with a .500 record, 81 wins, 81 losses.

For all of the eventual heartbreak, Nick Johnson led the Washington baseball brand back to respectability. With a contending team playing at RFK, 2.7 million fans came out to the old stadium to see them. It was enough to impress the Commissioner’s Office into following through on their promise to sell the team to local ownership the next season. It was enough to convince the Washington City Council that there was a reason to sign off on the bond sale that made the new stadium a reality.

The following season Nick Johnson got off to an even better start. The Nationals were horrid. John Patterson tanked. Esteban Loaiza was gone. Vinny Castilla’s knees were shot as were Livan Hernadez’s. But Nick had his best season in the majors. He managed to log 500 at bats and hit 23 homers–his career high–with a .290 batting average, and, oh yeah, “old eagle eyes” had a .428 OBP.

But from the midst of all of that ecstasy, Johnson managed to pluck defeat. On September 23, with a meaningless season just about in the record books, Nick went out into shallow right field for a routine fly ball. Austin Kearns came running in and Johnson was not called off. The collision broke Johnson’s femur. Nick was only 27, just entering the prime of his career and the Washington Post had noted numerous times that it was the first season that Johnson had played without injury. He came so close, but that collision ended Johnson’s career in many ways.

He missed all of the 2007 season and in 2008 was a shadow of his former self. He played well in 2009 and the Nationals took advantage of the sudden market for an “oft-injured player” and dealt him to the Marlins. It was his final year as a full time regular.

Nick Johnson finished with a career OBP that was under .400 by a hair–.399 to be exact. He hit fewer than 100 home runs, batted only .268 for his career. But for Washington Nationals fans he will always be the “Heart and Soul” of that first team. It was a first love kind of thing. You had to be there. It had real meaning though. Nick Johnson helped to prove that baseball belonged in Washington, DC, that there were hungry fans who would brave the decrepitude of RFK Stadium to watch a winner.

When and if the 2013 Washington Nationals are contending for the NL East flag again this summer, I hope Nick Johnson is watching. He deserves just a little piece of that flag. He was one of the first and he will be remembered for that.

Photo courtesy of George Clark, Esq. Washington. DC