The Washington Nationals are getting their fair share of headlines for the major trade they pulled in the offseason, but for all of the wrong reasons. The mercuric Alfonso Soriano has thus far refused the National's desire to move him from his second base position to the outfield. His stance has hardened to the point where he refused to take the field in a recent spring training game. And this after the Nationals were required to pay him $10 million in salary after the arbitration hearing. It's damn hard to feel any sympathy for a person making ten million dollars a year to play a freaking game, and then to have him whine about the team's plan for him. Let's be realistic - most of us will never see $10 million in our lifetime. And here's a gifted athlete, awarded ten million (he wanted twelve) and then refused to take the field when the team has the audicity to move him to left field rather than moving their existing All-star second baseman Jose Vidro somewhere else. The Nationals made this move to shore up a weak offense. I guess they thought that paying Soriano would be enough, but he made it clear almost from the start that he wasn't willing to move. I cannot fathom the arrogance of Soriano right now. He's never been considered much of a defensive standout; most teams wanted his bat and would take the leather problems just to get that same bat. But here's Washington - a team looking to improve on offense, and grabbing an available and intriguing player for that very purpose. But since NL teams don't have the DL...Soriano has to play the field somewhere. In what has become a comedy of errors, the Nationals are doing a fantastic job of ruining Soriano for this season. Their threat to DQ him for the season, thereby retaining his rights and preventing him from adding a year of service, will do nothing except infuriate him further. If anything, I'd think that if he was already upset at the prospects of playing the outfield, that this move will cause him to dig his heels in deeper. If the Nationals cave and move him to second base, what will Jose Vidro do? Vidro has equal cause for concern; after all, he's already proven his mettle in the league, and has earned the right to play his natural positon. So, in the end, this is a complete disaster for both sides. Soriano has shown himself to think that he's bigger than the team, and arrogant beyond compare. Washington made a critical error in thinking Soriano would shift, and then compounded it by throwing down the gauntlet. The only way get out of this mess is to search for a trade, but there's not a lot of teams in baseball capable of paying $10 million to a player who's already demonstrated he's a bit of a head case. So there's probably no easy way out of this mess. As an aside and a general comment on the state of this, its sad that baseball has never quite figured out how to operate their teams as a team - from the owner to president to GM to coach to players and then on into the minor leagues. Baseball is the most selfish of the team sports. It's the least governed. It has the most hostility between players and owners, and the owners are far weaker than the players. All this, and the continued dominance of big-money teams, makes it far more difficult for ordinary fans of the game to really fall back in love with it. And that's the shame of it all, for baseball has a grace and joy that no other game can match. There's the one-on-one side of the game and the team side of the game. But, no matter how enjoyable the sport is to watch and play, it strikes me that the professional game is not so much fun anymore. There's too much animosity, and too much grandstanding. The sport does not understand that the competition among teams is paramount, but a distant second to the entertainment value that the fans seek. The more players like Soriano that come along, the more casual fans distance themselves from that very game. Baseball had best think about that one of these days; otherwise, the empty stadiums in cities like Pittsburgh and Kansas City will be the norm and not the exception. And what will the players do then? Or the owners?