Mike Rizzo, the man who built the Washington Nationals "Twelve years of driving the highways as an area scout," Rizzo said early this month. Not many GMs have done that. I know that for a fact. The man who built the Nationals wasn't born with some innate gift for judging baseball talent; he has no secret formula. Everything Rizzo knows - everything that helped him build the Nationals from hapless doormat to World Series contender - he learned on those highway odysseys, staring at the spot where the road met the dull, gray horizon. In the spring of 2009, Rizzo took over as interim general manager of a team that went on to win 59 games that season, fewest in the major leagues. Entering Saturday's games, the Nationals had won 95, tied for most in the big leagues. Of the 25 players on the Nationals" projected playoff roster, Rizzo signed, drafted or traded for 20 of them since arriving as assistant general manager in 2006. "You're either a baseball man or not," Nationals Manager Davey Johnson said. To me, Pat Gillick is a Hall of Fame GM. I think Rizzo can be that good, if not better. He has all the same attributes. Rizzo built Washington's first playoff team in 79 years with the methods ingrained over all 51 years of his life: hard work, acquired wisdom, fierce loyalty. In the modern game, the rise of advanced metrics and MBA-laden front offices came to dominate how teams constructed their rosters. Rizzo will not watch the movie "Moneyball" because he believes it disrespects scouts. The Nationals employ a staff devoted to statistical analysis, but Rizzo prefers information from the scouts he handpicked - men he trusts, men who work like he does. He embraces analytics, but he feels they have become so widespread that they can offer only a marginal edge. The advantage, he believes, lies in people. "We go with the eye," Rizzo said. I don't know if you weigh it 65-35 or 70-30, but we'll lean toward the human element. Driven and focused Rizzo grew up on sports in a lower-middle class Chicago neighborhood, where he and his three siblings scrapped with kids from other neighborhoods and protected each other. "It was a neighborhood where you either stood up for yourself or you got run over," Mike said. They played baseball on the corner of Waveland and Mobile, sewer covers as bases. When the ball got stuck in a gutter, Rizzo shimmied up to retrieve it, his left foot on one bungalow and his right foot on another.