Insider | Short Hops | Love Letters
Early afternoon. The RFK Stadium gate swings open for major-league baseball in Washington, D.C. Heart thumping, Tommy McCraw passes through the players entrance, walks toward the clubhouse and -- and here's where this story splits and begins to follow parallel paths.
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| As a player, Tommy McCraw ended a D.C. era. As a hitting coach, he's helping start a new one. (Getty Images) |
"It's amazing," says McCraw, batting coach for the Washington Nationals, and with that, he's certainly in the correct D.C. Zip Code.
No other sport weaves together generations as tightly as the red stitching holds together a baseball, and as the Nationals add to the history books with the game's long-awaited return to our nation's capital Thursday, the game's master tailors are hard at it again, looping one more well-placed stitch through the years.
As the old Washington Senators closed out their term in RFK Stadium on Sept. 30, 1971, a 30-year-old veteran named Tommy McCraw played first base, lined the final hit in Senators history and recorded the final putout of an era.
As the new Washington Nationals open another chapter in RFK Stadium on April 14, 2005, a 64-year-old coach named Tommy McCraw will be in their dugout as the team's hitting instructor.
Amazing?
"Astounding," McCraw says. "People ask me, 'Did you ever think ... ?' Hell no, I didn't think I'd still be in baseball to make that circle. How do you think that? I can't think that. You can't think that. There's no way. It is going to be very emotional for me."
It is one of the neatest, latest twists in a game where the tie from one generation to its past is always shorter than it might appear.
And so it will be that while the old Senators might be frozen in time, one man who long ago wore the red cap with the pretzel-twist W will be proudly wearing it again Thursday night as that time melts away. And through him will be felt the presence of another man, an utterly important man who pulled the strings as manager when baseball last called Washington home.
"The tremendous lessons I got from Ted Williams, that's probably the reason why I'm a hitting coach today," McCraw says.
Isn't that something? You never know where the years will take you or what influences life will place into your path. One of baseball's greatest legends has been dead for nearly three years, remains unthinkably frozen in some new-age facility in Arizona, yet specks of his being continue to appear up and down the Nationals lineup, placed there with care by Tommy Lee McCraw.
