Tim Tebow strikes out swinging. (Photo by Stan for TalkNats)
The early season games against the New York Mets had Tim Tebow in the starting line-up against the Washington Nationals. By the time Tebow was sent down to the the minor leagues, he was batting .056 with a shocking 61.1% K rate. Tebow’s only hit of the spring actually was against Erick Fedde of the Nationals. For tonight’s game, the Nationals will see a Mets line-up that will more closely resemble who the Nats will face in the regular season on April 5th at the Nationals home opener.
This game will be the last for the Nationals outside of Palm Beach County on the Grapefruit League schedule in 2018. After tonight, there is only three more days in Florida before the Nats return to Nationals Park for a quick one-game exhibition game against the Minnesota Twins which are the former Washington Senators franchise that left after the 1960 season with Harmon Killebrew, Camilo Pascual, Pedro Ramos, and the young Jim Kaat along with others. A year later the New York Mets were born. These 2018 Mets have a new manager named Mickey Callaway.
In the small world department, Mickey Callaway made his MLB debut in 1999 with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and on that same team was Nationals manager Dave Martinez. In Callaway’s debut, he won the game and exited with a 3-2 lead thanks to Dave Martinez’s go-ahead RBI single. The team they beat was the Montreal Expos. Callaway only won four games in his entire career. His final win of his career was 4 seasons later when he beat the Texas Rangers the team formerly known as Robert Short’s Washington Senators. Callaway’s career marks were 0-2 against the Twins, 1-1 against the Expos, and 1-1 against the Rangers which is a collective 2-4 and a .333 winning percentage and a reason why Callaway did not last long in the big leagues. Callaway’s playing career ended in 2004 with those same Texas Rangers and he was teammates with former Nats Alfonso Soriano and Laynce Nix who of course were teammates with Ryan Zimmerman.
Do you think Callaway remembers that he was teammates on those 2004 Rangers with a kid making his debut named Adrian Gonzalez? That same Gonzalez is a player with the 2018 Mets.
This is like playing the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon which is a parlor game based on the “six degrees of separation”.
Washington Nationals vs. New York Mets
Stadium: First Data Field, Port St. Lucie, Florida
1st Pitch: 6:10 pm EDT
TV: Mets TV and MLB App
Nats Radio: Mets radio and MLB App
Line-up subject to change (without notice):
- Adam Eaton LF
- Howie Kendrick 1B
- Anthony Rendon 3B
- Matt Wieters C
- Michael Taylor CF
- Ryan Raburn RF
- Reid Brignac SS
- Tanner Roark RHP
- Wilmer Difo 2B
