Zim playing with injury...great ballplayer. In about ten years, when he's retired, he'll be the player that kids have grown up admiring. The re-birth of Washington baseball.
Then we can look at the chain of Washington 3B, at least those I've watched: RZim, Ken McMullen, Harmon Killebrew, Eddie Yost. Kenny Mac did not have the publicity machine that Brooks Robinson had, but he was a better fielder, and a leader. Killer was the boy wonder, signed at 17, forced to stay with the big team by bonus rules, scrutinized, ridiculed when he didn't star at 18, disappeared into the minors for two or three years, then returned in 1959 like Joe Hardy. Yost "a good glove man" says my Dad, and plenty of pop when he pulled the ball to left...but nobody saw that with the old Griffith Stadium fences. But look at Yosts's OBP...something like .395 over 20 seasons. So many walks, such a batting eye that he says umpires eventually let him call close pitches, just like they did with Ted Williams. If the pitch was close but Yost didn't swing, it was a ball.
It will take some time before the kid fans have grown to teenagers with only the Nats in their heads, but that's on the way.
