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Nationals/MLB

Denard Span comes to Washington Nationals ready to take step up in his career

By Adam Kilgore,February 08, 2013

Nationals center fielder Denard Span participates in running drills as… (John McDonnell/THE WASHINGTON…)

One morning last month, Denard Span was inside a yoga studio, talking about New Year’s resolutions. As he unrolled a purple mat over the lacquered wooden floor, his instructor told him about all the people who sign up in January and drop the practice a month later. Standing in bare feet, black mesh shorts and a white T-shirt, Span shook his head. “Consistency, man,” he said.

He had driven from his home — high ceilings everywhere, framed baseball jerseys around a pool table upstairs, a batting cage in the back yard, and two chirping Yorkies running around — and parked his white Range Rover on the gravel driveway at the Lotus Pond studio as scheduled: every Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. Yoga has become part of Span’s routine since a friend recommended it a year ago. It keeps his muscles flexible over the long baseball season and it centers his focus, he said, “away from the trauma” — the concussion that briefly threatened his career.

Span, 28, conquered that hurdle, and now the reminders of his next baseball phase are all around him. The Washington Nationals traded their best prospect, pitcher Alex Meyer, to pry Span from the Minnesota Twins in late November. Span moved from the only franchise he had ever known, a team currently at the bottom of the American League, to become the leadoff hitter and center fielder for a World Series contender. In December, he looked at rental houses around Crystal City and Nationals Park. He got lost in Georgetown with his girlfriend, Shadonna, looking for new sneakers. When his family came to his house for dinner one night, they scooped grilled chicken breast and salmon onto their plates using a spatula with a curly W etched into it.

Playing alongside Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg, Span may not become the biggest baseball star in Washington. Odds are he will come to be adored, and not just because he gives the Nationals an unfamiliar leadoff threat and covers ground in center field with the speed that once earned him a scholarship offer from Florida — as a wide receiver.

The Twins gave Span an award this winter for his community service work, particularly the time he spent with children who, like him, are products of single-mother homes. In high school, he spent so much time inside the batting cage he made his weary coach regret installing lights. He speaks with his mother every day, he said, or else “it will feel like we haven’t talked to each other in two weeks.” He does not smoke, drink, curse or swing at bad pitches.

“They’re not going to have to worry about him,” said Henry Allen, Span’s uncle.

‘He wanted the ball in his hands’

Span began his preparation for his first season in Washington in December, and it brought him here, to the yoga studio designed like a log cabin, tucked into the woods. He sat cross-legged, forearms on his knees, his thumb and index finger forming a circle. The instructor told Span and his friend, Toronto Blue Jays minor leaguer Kenny Wilson, to focus and expel negative energy with their exhales. Wilson remained mostly quiet. Span, over and over, responded with a forceful, throaty “Hah!” The instructor complimented him on his breathing.

Span has always wanted to please people, he says, which did not always serve him well as he climbed the rungs of his career ladder. After the Twins selected him in the first round in 2002, the hitting instruction he received felt like a barrage. They wanted to change the way he hit, the swing he had taught himself.

Span learned to hit inside the batting cages at the Grand Prix Family Fun Center here on North Nebraska Avenue. The place boasts, in bright red letters on a yellow sign, the “FASTEST GO-KARTS IN TAMPA!” It also has a full arcade, mini golf and nine batting cages. The sign on the fence reads, “Can you hit a 95 MPH fastball? Try it here!!!!!”

Span learned, trial and error, one token at a time. He still calls it by its former name, the Malibu. His mother, Wanda Wilson, worked 12-hour days, first as an insurance claims adjustor and then operating a day-care center, to raise Span and Ray, his older brother. He has a relationship with his biological father, but he lived in Fort Lauderdale, largely out of Denard’s life. Span grew up in a middle-class part of Tampa wanting for nothing. “We were blessed,” he said. But his mother did not have the time or money for camps, personal instruction or private coaches.

“What clinic?” Wilson said, laughing. “He and Ray was the clinic.”

Once football season ended or after bad games during baseball season, Wilson took Span to the Malibu. One dollar bought 20 pitches, yellow, rubber balls flung at him by a mechanical arm. After he fed $4 or $5 into the machine, Span had ironed out the flaws in his swing.