Hump day: Martinez opens morning workout with live camels

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - The daily Circle of Trust meeting began just any other. As players gathered around the Nationals logo at the center of their athletic turf field outside FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches, bench coach Chip Hale went over the good and the bad from yesterday's exhibition game, then detailed the plan for this morning's workout.

And then things got a little weird.

A recording was played of third base coach Bob Henley, frequently the most boisterous speaker at these gatherings, apologizing for being late. Then, from one corner of the field, there they were. Henley and first base coach Tim Bogar. Riding camels.

Yes, camels.

As players watched in astonishment, Henley began yelling out "Hump day!" over and over as a group of handlers guided the large dromedaries over toward the entrance to the Nationals batting cage. And with The Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps" blaring over the loudspeaker, manager Davey Martinez instructed his players to walk through the tunnel Henley and Bogar created.

The point of all this? Martinez wants everyone to acknowledge and then symbolically get over the hump that has proved so elusive for the Nationals since they first reached the postseason in 2012.

"My intentions were to bring the hump to us," the first-year manager said. "The proverbial hump question that we all try to answer. I want these guys out there. I want it out there. For me, as I thought about it, the hump is every day. And I want them to embrace it, not fear it. And have fun with it."

The Nationals have become known for a lot of things over the years, but "fun" isn't the first description most would use. This is a veteran-laded club, a talented one to be sure, but one that has more of a professional, buttoned-down vibe than anything else.

Enter Martinez, who for the last decade coached under the most unconventional, fun-loving manager in the sport in Joe Maddon. Now the 53-year-old Martinez is trying to bring out some personality in his Nationals.

"I've always believed, as a coach and as a player later in my career, we need to make this fun and enjoyable," Martinez said. "I want these guys to wake up in the morning wanting to come to the ballpark every day. For me, the baseball field is my sanctuary. I love it, and I want them to feel the same way."

It's a delicate act for any manager, let alone a rookie manager who inherited a team full of stars and established veterans, to figure out how to win over his new players. Based on the immediate reaction after this morning's stunt, Martinez successfully threaded the needle.

"It's great," said reliever Ryan Madson, in his 13th season and playing for his sixth manager. "It serves a purpose, but it's fun. It's nice to have a camp loose. It's nice to have the courtesy to have a loose camp when you've got a good team. I've had every different kind of camp, from Dusty Baker to Charlie Manuel to Larry Bowa. This style of camp is great. It lets guys feel comfortable, allows everyone to shine, just do their thing."

"It's fun to mix it up a little bit," first baseman Ryan Zimmerman said. "Camp can get pretty boring every day, the same with the season. So someone who kind of keeps you loose and keeps it fun, it's definitely better to have that than someone who is the other way."

Martinez said he first came up with the idea over the winter, after he already had been asked several times about what the Nationals needed to do to get over a hump that has included four first-round playoff exits, three of them in decisive Game 5 losses at home.

Pitchers and catchers reported for spring training two weeks ago. Games started five days ago. So why wait until now for this stunt?

"It took a while to pull off," Martinez explained, "because I didn't know if we could get the camel."

In the end, they got three camels, all property of a local family that was happy to bring them to the ballpark. They have names. Henley was riding atop Lawrence. Bogar was on Blondie. The third camel, Brownie, just tagged along because "Blondie and Brownie are best friends, and she won't go anywhere without Brownie," according to Bogar.

"I thought it was a great idea," said Bogar, who had never ridden a camel before. "I think it was something to get everybody on the same page and understand where we're headed. We had fun with it. And I think it went over quite well."

The camels stuck around for a while, joining the players on the practice fields as they stretched and warmed up. There was one unfortunate incident involving a bodily function - "No. 2 on Field 3," center fielder Michael A. Taylor confirmed - but otherwise the animals were well-behaved.

The obvious angle is to accuse Martinez of stealing ideas from Maddon, who has been known to bring a wild creature or two into his clubhouse. But when one fan standing outside the fields asked Martinez if this was him "channeling Maddon" the new skipper retorted: "No, that's me channeling me."

And what would Maddon's reaction to this have been?

"Man, why didn't I think of that?" Martinez said with a laugh.

There will be those who say this was a great idea, and there will be those who roll their eyes. If the Nationals finally win in October, someone will say it all began with the Feb. 28 camel stunt. If they fail to make the postseason, someone surely will say it's because they weren't focused enough on serious matters back in spring training.

Just know this: For a ballclub that has a tendency to be a little too dry and buttoned-up, this was most definitely a breath of fresh air. And evidence that no matter what happens on the field this year, things will be different off it.

"We need a little bit of that here, a little bit of show-off," Madson said. "We've got a lot of straightforward, professional, kind of older-school players. So it's nice to have a manager that's loose, a little showy in a good way, and bring a little swagger out of the team."

"I think him doing this and keeping it loose, it's just a different feel," Zimmerman said. "I don't want to say that's good or bad compared to the other guys before him, but we've never had anything like this. And that's a good thing."