Stephen Strasburg Shutdown Earns Nationals Mixed Reactions WASHINGTON - No baseball city has suffered like Washington, its losing teams so renowned they spawned a hit Broadway musical ("Damn Yankees") and a vaudeville joke: "First in war, first in peace and last in the American League." Twice, baseball franchises deserted the city. In 2004, Major League Baseball decided to try again, moving the Montreal Expos to Washington and renaming them the Nationals. The new team honored local tradition by immediately settling at the bottom of the standings, this time in the National League. With baby steps, however, the Nationals intelligently developed a powerhouse that now has the best record in baseball. But in a decision that will win the team some fans among doctors and parents of young pitchers across the country, the Nationals declared Saturday that the pursuit of a title was not worth risking damage to a young arm. Stephen Strasburg, Washington's fireballing phenom of a pitcher and one of the latest examples of advances in sports medicine, was told to go sit at the end of the bench until next year. Strasburg, 24, had elbow reconstruction surgery in September 2010, and to protect his long-term baseball health, the Nationals imposed a limit on the number of innings he would pitch this season, his first full season since the operation. He reached that limit, or came close enough, on Friday. Though pain-free and apparently healthy, Strasburg will not pitch again this year, not even in the postseason, if the Nationals advance that far as expected. In an American sports culture in which the ethos is always to go for it, especially with victory almost within grasp, the Nationals, pursuing their city's first baseball championship in 88 years, are voluntarily sitting down one of their best players in an endorsement of prudence and caution. The science of the decision is without verifiable precedent, which has left the logic of it to be argued here this weekend in the streets, in the stands and in the Nationals" clubhouse. No one knows for sure if the Nationals, in a pinch or during the final game of the World Series, would stick to their guns - or if they should. In Washington, where a good moral debate is always at home, the situation has people talking. "Someone's health and career is more important than a game," said Krystal Dehaba, who put on a Strasburg T-shirt before driving to Sunday's game from her Fredericksburg, Va., home with her husband and three children. I'm glad the Nationals are doing what's right and putting someone's safety first. Sitting two grandstand sections from Ms. Dehaba, also in a Strasburg jersey, was Robert Jackson of Chantilly, Va. "The whole thing upsets me," Mr. Jackson said. This is Washington baseball. The karma worries me. People say it's the right thing to do. What else do they say - no good deed goes unpunished? Even those who stood behind the decision conceded that it would make them uneasy if the team needed a big victory in the postseason and Strasburg remained unavailable. "That will be the big deal, because who knows if we'll ever get this chance again in his career?" said Benjamin Olson, standing beyond the center-field bleachers Sunday. I agree with what they're doing, but yeah, that could be tough on all of us. In the locker room, where no one player or coach was alive when the Washington Senators won the city's only baseball championship in 1924, the Strasburg decision - although forecast for months - nonetheless yielded prickly comment. The manager, Davey Johnson, who guided the Mets to the World Series title in 1986, was miffed that local talk show radio hosts and other sports commentators had questioned the team's judgment. "Even with all the so-called experts commenting on how to use him, how to get him through October, how to do this, how to do that, I have a little bit of experience on how to handle a pitching staff," Johnson, who at 69 is in his 16th year as a major league manager after a 13-year playing career, told reporters. None of those scenarios fit. If they did, I would have pursued them. Standing in the middle of the clubhouse not long afterward was Strasburg, and he was hardly conciliatory.