After spending a few days with Nick Johnson in Sacramento, Washington Post reporter Barry Syrluga wrote a fantastic piece on Johnson’s long road to recovery. It has been 16 months since Nick has played in a baseball game. 16 months since that horrible collision in Shea Stadium. Johnson was expected to be back and ready to go for the 2007 season, however the pain in his leg wouldn’t disappear and playing baseball was not an option. Nick’s return date went from spring training 07, to June 07, to July 07, and finally to spring training 08. Some seemed to think his career in baseball was over for good.

Thankfully that’s not the case. According to Barry, Nick has been dedicated this offseason, losing weight, and getting back into shape. Better yet, he’s done it all with no limp or pain in his leg. Nick is poised to compete with Dmitri Young during spring training for the starting role. Manny Acta sounded confident in Johnson’s return also. He noted that the Nationals would really benefit from Nick’s offense and OBP. So the Nats have two solid first basemen heading into spring training. There’s nothing wrong with a little healthy competition. It will be exciting to see how it all plays out and who wins the spot.

We’ll be there to see the fight for first base, the depth of the new outfield, and who wins a spot on the starting 5 in less than a month. We purchased our spring training game tickets this morning. Baseball is just around the corner!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 10:14 am and is filed under Injuries, Spring Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.