Castrodale: The care and feeding of Stephen Strasburg

Congratulations on the purchase of your brand new Stephen Strasburg jersey, Nationals fan. Now here’s Jelisa Castrodale to tell us how that garment may or may not become worthless by this time two years from now.
***
By Jelisa Castrodale
For almost twenty years, Tom Petty has reminded us that the waiting is the hardest part but — at the risk of disrespecting the head Heartbreaker — I’d argue that he’s wrong. The hardest part is the disappointment after you’ve spent countless hours building something up, only to discover that your expectations beat the crap out of reality. Life has a tendency to let you down, whether you’re Ralphie Parker, whose decoder ring unscrambled a freakin’ Ovaltine commercial, or a Star Wars fan who unpacked his lightsaber after sixteen years only to come face-to-irritating face with Jar Jar Binks.
On the other hand, you could be Stephen Strasburg. The four long-suffering fans of the Washington Nationals and 41,884 more recent converts filled Nationals Stadium on Tuesday night wondering whether the highly anticipated righty could live up to a year’s worth of hype. He could. He did. Strasburg carded fourteen strikeouts and zero walks in a 5-2 win over Pittsburgh, proving why he’s been D.C.’s most talked-about twentysomething since Monica Lewinsky crawled under the Oval Office desk.

Strasburg’s seven innings were described with the kinds of adjectives you read in toaster reviews on Amazon.com: electric, sizzling and crisp. “He pitched probably the best game I’ve ever seen pitched,” Nats first baseman Adam Dunn said. Strasburg hit 97 on the gun with his first fastball and broke into triple digits twice. In ninety-four total pitches, he gave up four hits, two runs and stacked the box score with more K’s than Vanna White sees in a week.
Less than 48 hours have passed since his inaugural appearance but the Hall of Fame has already asked for a piece of his uniform. Tonight he’ll read the Top Ten list on the Late Show with David Letterman before likely making his second start in Cleveland on Sunday. His Topps rookie card is averaging $40 on eBay and BGR: The Burger Joint has already added the Strasburger — a beef patty topped with a hot dog and cheese — to their menu, just in case you don’t want to live to see his third start.
That’s the kind of ride this kid has been on for the past year, since last June when the Nats took him as the No. 1 overall pick in the draft. In August, he inked a four-year, $15.1 million contract and began the 2010 season with the Class AA Harrisburg Senators. After a 3-1 record and an ERA that looked like Lindsay Lohan’s blood alcohol level, he was quickly called up for five starts (4-1) with the Class AAA Syracuse Chiefs.
Then Tuesday happened and the newly-minted Nationals fans are ready to kick Lincoln out of his oversized marble easy chair and replace him with a carving of Stephen Strasburg. And can you blame them? Washington has had back-to-back 100-loss seasons and their last ‘Can’t Miss’ player was a 19-year old shortstop who turned out to be a ‘Can’t Hit’ 23-year old. This time last year, they were stocking the concourse with Jordan Zimmermann jerseys. Baseball America named the right-hander the team’s top prospect in January; by July his elbow was undergoing Tommy John-style renovations and he’ll spend this season parked on the bench.
Maybe the bigger question is whether it’s fair — or even feasible — to stack five years worth of expectations on the broad shoulders of a kid with one game in his Career Stats summary. Yeah, he had one hell of a game. Only J.R. Richard (Houston, 1971) and Karl Spooner (Brooklyn, 1954) struck out more batters in their major league debuts and if manager Jim Riggleman hadn’t yanked Strasburg after 94 pitches, he probably would’ve bested their record of fifteen each.
The then 23-year old Spooner was the Strasburg of the early-50s, a fastballer who catcher Roy Campanella called “the greatest pitcher [he'd] ever seen.” So why hasn’t he been an answer on Jeopardy! or had his personal life picked apart by countless biographers? Because he blew out his arm in his sophomore season and had permanently emptied his locker by 1956.
Spooner makes my list of could’ve beens, along with other curveball-throwing cautionary tales like Mark Fidrych, Todd Van Poppel, Ben McDonald and Kerry Wood and Mark Pryor, the latter two my favorite chronically DL’ed Cubs. All of them came into the game with Strasburgian hype, with Rated Rookie-stamped Donruss cards and head-spinning signature pitches. They left with injury-shortened seasons and a decade’s worth of unused potential.
There are no sure things in baseball, no guarantees written into the Memo sections of those seven-digit checks, especially not for pitchers whose arms can snap and pop better than anything John Harvey Kellogg ever invented. The Nationals are being cautious with their starting savior, who will pitch every five days until next month’s All-Star break. After that they’ll rearrange his schedule to try to keep him under 105 innings in the hope that they’ll make the playoffs, even though the team has the same slim chance of seeing October as 97-year-old Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Strasburg has a lot of pitches to throw between now and then, a lot of numbers to add to his arm’s odometer. Whether or not the Nats are part of FOX’s postseason coverage, those brand new fans wearing their brand new No. 37 t-shirts will agree: he was well worth the wait.
***
Jelisa Castrodale is a writer and comedian who has learned a lot about life by making a mess of her own. She chronicles her failures at The Typing Makes Me Sound Busy, covers music for London’s BitchBuzz and twitters while she waits at stoplights. Castrodale was featured in the book Twitter Wit and was named one of Mashable’s 10 Funniest Twitterers.
Also by Jelisa Castrodale …