The refusal of their new second-bagger Alfonso Soriano to move to the outfield in what was supposed to be his spring training debut on Monday has the Washington Nationals drastically rethinking their defensive alignment.  General Manager Jim Bowden had hoped to shift four-time All Star Soriano to the outfield because he already had three-time All Star Jose Vidro at second.

   "If I haven’t done it before, I won’t do it now”, said Soriano about the move, forcing the Nats to get creative in order to keep both men happy.

 “Right now we’re considering playing them both at second”, said a team insider, “and covering the outfield with only two guys”.

  Asked exactly how the two men would be deployed at the same position, he indicated they would stand next to each other and take turns handling balls.  “They’re both team players.  We think they’ll be able to share the balls, you know, like car salesmen dividing up customers”.

For official scoring purposes, the two second basemen would be 4A and 4B.

“We’ll be giving up something in the outfield, sure”, said the spokesman, “but should be stronger on the right side, especially against weak left-handed ground ball hitters”.

 The team is also considering pulling its catcher on certain pitches and having him run down and cover first base, freeing up the first baseman to act as a third outfielder.  This would only occur if there was nobody on base and it wasn’t a possible third-strike situation. "We've all played without a catcher as kids", said the spokesman, "there's no reason not to try it in the big leagues".

 Under the rules, the catcher has to line up in foul territory behind the plate, but is free to move out of the box to make a play. “Once the pitcher starts his windup, our catcher can sprint down to first base", said the spokesman, "just like an outfielder anticipating the swing of the bat and moving before the ball is actually hit.”

The Nats’ experiment may bring an end to the era of slow, squat catchers, with teams looking more for wide receiver-type athletes to handle the rigors of the regular sprints down the first-base line.  The Nats’ current catcher, Brian Schneider, is not known as a speedster, but does have two career stolen bases.

In the absence of a catcher, the home plate umpire is expected to take quite a few hits and the tempo of the game will be slowed considerably while balls are chased down near the backstop.  “Slowing down the game is not really our issue”, said the spokesman, “our issue is winning ballgames any way we can”.

Soriano will earn about $10 million for the 2006 season.