The Washington Post - 20.02.2020

KLMNO

SPORTS

thursday, february 20 , 2020. washingtonpost.com/sports M2 d

BY JESSE DOUGHERTY

WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. — The remind-

ers are on the walls, on his shirts and at t he

start of a conversation just after 8 a.m. on

Wednesday. Will Harris was asked wheth-

er he had a few minutes to answer ques-

tions. He looked up from his phone,

squinted across the clubhouse, then

locked eyes with an analog clock. Behind

the ticking hands read “2019 WoRLD

seRIes CHAMPIons” in small font. The

words w ere stripped across a tiny image o f

the Commissioner’s Trophy.

There a re even reminders on the clocks.

“I had to take a few weeks to think about

it and reached a pretty simple conclusion:

I could o nly come here if I knew the World

series stuff wouldn’t bother me,” Harris

said. “And once I realized I could get past it

pretty quickly, I was really excited to join

the nationals.”

Harris arrives as a critical part of Wash-

ington’s baseball history. He threw the

cutter that Howie Kendrick sliced into the

right field foul pole inside Minute Maid

Park on oct. 30. That Game 7 homer left

Harris in disbelief, hands on his knees,

head shaking, and gave the nationals a

lead they didn’t lose. They won the World

series two innings later. Harris signed a

three-year, $24 million deal about two

months after that, and now he finds him-

self in an ongoing celebration.

The nationals were sized for World

series rings Wednesday. They will take

part in a parade in West Palm Beach on

Thursday night. They face the Astros on

saturday, a club full of Harris’s former

teammates, and this will seep into the

season. A banner will go up at nationals

Park on April 2. Players will receive their

rings April 4. And Harris will watch, and

he will clap for his new buddies, and he

may get stuck remembering a pitch h e can

never have back.

“It’s not like anybody is rubbing it in my

face,” Harris said. “I’m happy for these

guys. Really happy.”

It w as an odd s tart of spring training f or

the 35-year-old. He spent the past five

seasons with the Houston Astros and

helped them to a title in 2017. But that has

see nationals on D3

Stuck in the middle

For former Astros reliever Harris, reminders of World Series loss are everywhere

John Mcdonnell/the Washington post

Will Harris gave up a two-run homer by Howie kendrick in Game 7 of the World series in october. Months later, Harris is a reliever for the nationals.

BY SAM FORTIER

WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. — W hat could be

one of the final hand grenades in the

spring training war of words over the

Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal

landed in the middle of Dusty Baker’s

news conference Tuesday. The Astros

manager heard how, across the state that

morning, soft-spoken Atlanta Braves out-

fielder nick Markakis had said of Baker’s

team, “I feel like everybody over there

needs a beating.”

“That’s cool,” Baker said. “I ain’t com-

menting on everybody’s comments. so go

ahead. You want to beat on us? Go ahead.”

In the middle of the next question, he

paused to add, “I didn’t think Markakis

talked too much.”

“He doesn’t,” a reporter responded.

“okay,” B aker said. “Well, maybe he had

his Wheaties.”

Later that day, new York Yankees out-

fielder Aaron Judge unloaded on the As-

tros, too, calling on Major League Baseball

to invalidate their 2017 World series title,

but the aftershocks of the sign-stealing

scheme felt lessened on Day 6. Judge and

Markakis, while bold, echoed others and

were among the last in baseball to address

the scandal. The fuel behind their ferocity

won’t wane completely — spring training

games, after all, begin Friday — but the

daily back-and-forth seems nearly settled.

The Astros’ own message shifted as well

as they continue trying to push public

conversation about them back to where it

has been for the past three years. Players

will ride phrases such as “We’re moving

forward” and “We just want to play base-

ball,” but the further from the start of the

apology tour they get, the more audacious

they have become. Listen, they’re saying,

see astros on D3

Despite bad deeds, Astros too good to ignore

Karen Warren/associated press

Justin Verlander said the astros are

“still pretty set with talent” on the

mound, even after losing Gerrit cole.

auto racing

Just two days after his

horrific crash at daytona,

ryan newman walks out

of the hospital. d2

pro football

the redskins exercise

adrian peterson’s option

for 2020 , keeping him

in their backfield. d4

college basketball

the hoyas fall at home

against providence after

Mac Mcclung’s return

becomes short-lived. d5

observing how Johnson and

Knaus went about their business,

and one thing he noticed was a

consistent ethic in everything

they did, even seemingly

meaningless details, from the

spotless floors of the shop to how

everyone kept their shirts tucked

in. Rivera was so intrigued he

even taped and transcribed a

four-hour conversation, asking

questions such as, how do you

coordinate so many disparate

elements and people, from the

tower to the pit, all working on a

complex high-performance

see Jenkins on D4

Johnson and his Hendrick

Motorsports team, who had just

won one of a record-tying

nAsCAR Cup series seven titles,

to a surging nFL team might be a

useful exercise. As Joe Gibbs has

proved, a stock car operation and

a football squad have a few

things in common. “We’re all

talking the same things through,”

Johnson says.

Chiefly, they’re both made up

of a lot of moving parts that have

to fit. “A nd they all got to be

orchestrated and working

together,” Rivera says.

Rivera, 58, spent an afternoon

circuit, he carries some thoughts

from the nFL coach in his head,

and as Rivera installs his system

with the Washington Redskins,

he will be borrowing some things

he learned from watching the

no. 48 car.

They s tarted trading ideas in

Charlotte in 2014 just after

Rivera had flipped the Carolina

Panthers into a winner and was

named nFL coach of the year. He

got a call from Johnson’s

longtime crew chief Chad Knaus

inviting him to kick around some

management ideas. It struck

both of them that comparing

A lot of attention
is paid to cross-
training but very
little to cross-
thinking. That’s
probably because
the latter is done
mostly indoors in
a chair, and it can
make your head hurt worse than
blackstrap rum. But two
practitioners of it, Ron Rivera
and Jimmie Johnson, have found
cross-referencing their
professions to be a pretty useful
mutual tool. As Johnson makes
his last full run on the nAsCAR

In search of a winning culture, Rivera hit the garage

Sally
Jenkins

BY SAMANTHA PELL

With the acquisition of Bren-

den Dillon in a trade Tuesday

with the san Jose sharks, the

Washington Capitals added a

top-four defenseman with play-

off experience, physicality and a

veteran locker room presence at

a time when they are trying to

get back on track after a pro-

longed slump.

“He checked a lot of boxes for

everything we thought we need-

ed,” General Manager Brian Ma-

cLellan said Wednesday, noting

Dillon’s reputation for strong

defensive play. “ I think one of the

things that’s been frustrating for

me is the play in front of our own

net, the compete level in front of

our own net, and this is some-

thing he brings to the table here.

I think he does a great job in

front of our net. so I think we

addressed that through him.”

Dillon is in the final season of

his contract and can become an

unrestricted free agent July 1. He

was expected to arrive in Wash-

ington on Wednesday afternoon,

and it had not been determined

whether he will play Thursday at

Capital one Arena against the

Montreal Canadiens.

Capitals Coach To dd Reirden

see capitals on D3

Capitals

get Dillon,

now hope

to get going

Team looks to break out

of slump with veteran,

physical presence

canadiens at capitals

today, 7 p.m., nBcsW, nBcsn

BY STEVEN GOFF

In 2018, Jill ellis guided the

top-ranked U.s. women’s national

soccer team through 20 matches

without a loss and earned a berth

in the World Cup the following

summer in France. Her base sala-

ry was $389,409, 30 percent high-

er than she earned the previous

year a nd, by all accounts, the most

in the world for a women’s n ation-

al team c oach.

The same year, Gregg Berhalter,

coach of the middling U.s. men’s

squad, received $304,113 in base

salary and a substantial bonus —

except he had been on the job for

only a month.

Those figures came to light this

week in the U.s. soccer Federa-

tion’s latest tax form. They illus-

trate a significant, if narrowing,

pay gap b etween t he head coaches

of senior national teams with dif-

fering levels of success.

They also come as the U.s.

women’s players prepare for an

unrelated court case this spring

involving a gender discrimination

suit against the nonprofit govern-

ing body.

Ta x records show Berhalter, a

former MLs coach, received a

$200,0 00 signing bonus upon ac-

cepting the offer in fall 2018, plus

$104,113 in salary and moving ex-

penses after starting the job in

December.

His 2019 annual salary was not

specified, but based on the latter

figure, he was to make between

$1 million and $1.2 million.

A UssF spokesman said the

organization did not want to com-

ment on the salary differences.

The latest 990 tax form is for the

fiscal year from April 2018

through March 2019, but the

UssF said salaries are for the en-

tirety o f 2018.

see U.s. soccer on D12

Records

show pay

disparity

by USSF

Taxes reveal more spent

on the coaches for men

than for No. 1 women