Tales from the clubhouse: Stanton's balk-off

This extended break is offering us a chance to write some stories we wouldn't normally write and to take a few trips down memory lane. So here's a trip back in time for you that includes an epic behind-the-scenes story from the postgame clubhouse. Maybe this will be the first of several such stories that can be shared with you until we have real baseball again.

The date is July 15, 2005. The Nationals are in Milwaukee, facing the Brewers in front of a packed Friday night house at Miller Park. The inaugural ex-Expos are surprisingly in the thick of a pennant race, owners of the best record in the National League (50-31) on July 4 but now starting to slip a bit with six losses in eight games.

The Nats have already dropped the series opener to the Brewers, but they're in good position to win this game, up 3-2 with two outs in the bottom of the eighth and Liván Hernández cruising on the mound. Alas, the big righty makes one critical mistake and serves up a game-tying homer to Carlos Lee. And when neither team can score in the ninth, this game goes into extra innings.

The Nationals go down in order in the top of the 10th, so it's up to Luis Ayala to put up a zero in the bottom of the inning and extend the game. But Milwaukee's Chris Magruder rips a leadoff double to left-center, and now the Nats are in trouble. The Brewers bunt Magruder to third, then Frank Robinson elects to intentionally walk Rickie Weeks to put runners on the corners with one out.

With the left-handed Lyle Overbay coming up to bat, this is a perfect opportunity for Robinson to call upon his newly acquired veteran lefty, Mike Stanton, to try to get out of the jam. Though Stanton had recently been released by the Yankees, the 38-year-old figured to be an important addition to a Nationals bullpen that was one of the strengths of this team but was being asked to try to protect tight leads on a nightly basis and was in danger of running out of gas.

This was exactly the situation Stanton was brought in for, to try to get a tough left-handed hitter out in a big spot. Except he never actually got a chance to throw a pitch to Overbay. Or to anyone.

As he came set for the first time as a member of the Nationals, Stanton looked over to first base, saw Weeks taking a sizeable lead and decided to throw over there. He did so using the same move he had used with success throughout his career: He totaled 35 pickoffs in the major leagues while allowing only 34 runners to successfully steal a base off him.

And now it looked like Stanton had just added to his pickoff total, catching Weeks leaning the wrong way. First baseman Brad Wilkerson caught the throw and immediately stepped to his right to tag Weeks, who was going to be caught in a rundown for what should've been a huge second out of the inning.

But then came the call from first base umpire Paul Schrieber: "Balk! Balk!" He pointed at Stanton, who couldn't believe his eyes. Then he pointed at Magruder at third base, motioning for the runner to trot home with the winning run.

Stanton was furious. Wilkerson was furious. Robinson was furious. How upset was the manager? Upset enough to be waiting for reporters right in the middle of the clubhouse next to a video monitor as we entered.

Robinson didn't even wait for someone to ask a question. He started the session off on his own.

"He stepped toward home but threw to first: That's what the umpire said," Frank began. "Now, take a look at this!"

He pointed to the monitor, where a freeze-frame image of Stanton at the moment he released the ball was waiting for us. His right foot was pointed much closer toward first base than the plate.

"Does anybody here think that is a step to home plate?" Robinson asked the group, then started going down the line seeking our answers.

This is not a situation any reporter ever wants to be in, becoming the interviewee instead of the interviewer. But what are you supposed to do when a fuming Hall of Famer directly asks you what you see on a TV monitor in front of you?

So the three of us who covered the Nats for a living all said something to the effect of, "Nope, he's stepping toward first," both believing that to be the truth but also recognizing Robinson wasn't looking for any dissenting opinions in that particular moment.

But then he came to an unfamiliar face who had joined the beat writers. I don't know his name or his affiliation, but he almost certainly was an intern from a Milwaukee radio station, sent over to the visiting clubhouse by the professional he worked with to gather sound from the opposing manager and a player or two. All the kid needed to do was hold out his microphone, let us ask the questions and then return to the press box with all the sound bites his colleague needed.

Except now the poor kid had been put on the spot by an irate Hall of Famer. And though the simple response would've been to just echo what the rest of us had said, this lad decided to express a dissenting opinion.

"Uh," he began in a voice that can best be compared to the pimple-faced teenager on "The Simpsons," "it looks like he's stepping toward the plate."

Robinson was not amused.

"Looks like?!" he shot back. "Son, how old are you?"

"Uh, 19."

"Nineteen?! I'm 70 damn years old and I can see he's stepping toward first!"

Robinson let it go after that. He marched back to his office and the rest of us followed for a more formal postgame session.

The kid got his soundbites. And a story to tell for the rest of his life.

I've always hoped that incident didn't scare him away from the profession forever.

As for the Nationals? They would continue to swoon throughout July. Though they bounced back to win the next night, they still lost three of four in Milwaukee during a brutal stretch that saw them lose 15 of 18, 10 of those losses by one run, four of them in walk-off fashion.

Their 2 1/2-game lead in the National League East morphed into a five-game deficit, and though they hung on in the wild card race into mid-September, they never got themselves back in gear and finished 81-81, last in a very competitive division.

Stanton would eventually throw a pitch for the Nationals, and he would pitch fairly well for them: a 3.58 ERA in 30 appearances. During the final week of the season, Jim Bowden traded him to the Red Sox (who needed another lefty for one last series against the Yankees, even though he wouldn't be eligible for the postseason) for two low-level prospects.

But the most memorable moment of Stanton's brief Nats career came before he ever threw a pitch. It was only the seventh balk he had been called for in 997 big league games.

Everyone inside the visitors clubhouse at Miller Park that night believed his career total should've remained six. Everyone, that is, but a poor radio intern who had no idea what he was getting himself into when he showed up for work that afternoon.