Ageless Nationals outfielder not ready to walk away just yet

The tall man with his hair pulled back stood in a corridor at Dodger Stadium looking through the glass, behind which were stacked a half-dozen silver bats.

From behind him, a voice: “One a yours in there?”

Jayson Werth turned and smiled.

“Like a museum in here,” he said.

He’d last been a Dodger 10 years ago, and had last been on the field in their uniform a year before that.

He continued on toward the visitors’ clubhouse, a series of underground lefts and rights and stairways. As he walked, he talked about his son, Jackson, who is 14 and becoming a ballplayer.

“Great hands on that kid,” Jayson said. “Musta skipped a generation.”

Jayson’s grandfather was a big-league shortstop, as was Jayson’s uncle – Ducky and Dick Schofield – which left Jayson between them and his boy, and that was where the joke lay.

He always has been prone to a laugh. He always has enjoyed the game – playing it, talking about it, waiting it out through various injuries, winning at it, failing at it, seeing what came next. And now, you may have heard, he is 37 years old.

Now that doesn’t seem ridiculously old in the age of Big Papi and Ichiro and Bart, unless, for example, one were to hit .221 over a half-a-season or .211 the following April, and then folks start sizing you up for black socks to go with your sandals.

Well, Werth just hit .302 for five weeks with four home runs and 18 RBI, and on the occasion of last week’s walk-off hit against the Chicago Cubs grabbed a live microphone and invited ageists everywhere to, “Kiss my ass!”

Anyone who’s ever been old or hopes someday to be old could appreciate that. It also was perfectly and beautifully Jayson Werth, with a bright smile poking through all that fur and a twinkling eye and the fight of a man who’s earned his 14 big-league seasons. Not that long ago there were two or three baseball men who really believed in Werth – “If that many,” he interjected – and here he is today, 14 years in, hitting in front of 23-year-old Bryce Harper and doing his part for a team leading the NL East by a healthy margin.

Time waddles on, and it can get uncomfortable, which would account for the black socks.

“Well,” he said, “in light of what made you ask about all this, what’s important is I don’t feel 37. I don’t feel like I’m old. I don’t feel any older than I did 10 years ago.”

In fact, he said, if he were to count up the games he’s missed because of bad injuries (or bad diagnoses), he’s probably younger for it. Though I’m not sure it works that way, he was earnest in this analysis, so I let him run with it a while and nodded at the major points.

“I feel like it’s a little unjust, but probably just D.C. chatter,” he said. “I guess I didn’t do myself any favors starting off ice cold.”

Fact is, he said, “I could see playing for three years after this contract. I mean, what else would I want to do?”

When he was a boy and became aware his grandfather, Ducky, played major league baseball, he’d draw his finger down Ducky’s statistics page and count the years. Ducky played 19 seasons. He was never an All Star. He was once, in his mid-20’s, a World Series champion, with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Clemente and Mazeroski were on that team. Nineteen was more years than Jayson had been alive, and it occurred to him that 19 wouldn’t be a bad goal. Maybe he could do that, too.

Werth has a year after this one remaining on his contract with the Nationals. He is lean and fit. And he has the advantage of having been given up on before. A little more fight won’t scare him off.

“I feel way closer to how I felt when I was 30 than anything else,” he said. “I feel like I still have a lot to offer. Really, looking back, I feel like I’m that player I was all those years.”

When it’s time, he said, “That’s going to be my decision.”

He grinned.

“Maybe it’ll be a manager’s decision,” he granted. “But it’s going to be clear.”

Besides, he added, there’s still a championship to be won in D.C. He wouldn’t want to miss that. Not while he’s got so much to give. Not while he’s still young enough to enjoy it.

A WEEK BEHIND:

The Miami Marlins are winning some games, which is what a couple weeks against the Twins, Diamondbacks, Padres and Rockies should bring.

What’s important is that Giancarlo Stanton seems to be finding his way, too, a hopeful moment for the team after Stanton’s two-plus months of so many strikeouts and, among other frailties, a .180 batting average with runners in scoring position.

Over six games (and 22 plate appearances) through Monday, Stanton hit .450 with a home run, a double, two walks and just four strikeouts.

Though they held on to mediocre for long enough, nothing really good happens for the Marlins without Stanton.

A WEEK AHEAD:

It’s not a great sign when you’re moving around starting pitchers in search of better matchups in June, but that’s the position the Mets have played – or, really, hit – themselves into.

The past three weeks the Mets have outscored only the Phillies in the National League, down from a May in which they also outscored the Braves. So, pending help in a trade for an outfield bat, or any bat really, the Mets reworked their rotation so Noah Syndergaard – and not Bartolo Colon – would open their series in Washington on Monday.

In four career starts against the Nationals, Syndergaard is 2-0 with a 1.33 ERA. He’ll be followed in that series by Matt Harvey and Steven Matz.

SAW IT COMING:

Jay Bruce has OPSed 1.007 for a month.

What, exactly, are the Reds waiting for?

DIDN'T SEE IT COMING:

Is there a better moment in this baseball season than a third-string catcher hitting his first home run – a wall-scraping, glove-grazing, and glove-slamming home run – in two years against a top-five pitcher in the game for a 1-0 win?

Erik Kratz hit it, Angel Pagan nearly had it, and Madison Bumgarner gave it up, and yet it’s not the names that matter as much as the possibility of such a thing happening. We watch because, hey, never know.

Kratz, playing on Monday night because Francisco Cervelli is on the disabled list along with other reasons of circumstance and symphony, had been hitless in 16 at-bats with the Pirates and was 2 for 45 between Houston and Pittsburgh. Since November, he’d been signed by the Padres, traded to the Astros, released by the Astros, signed by the Angels and purchased by the Pirates. Otherwise, pretty mellow year.

Then, on an ordinary day in Pittsburgh, he got a fastball and the wall was just close enough and low enough and the ball drizzled from Pagan’s glove and not only did he catch a shutout, he was the entire offense as well.

That’s cool.