(A weekly look at the players, teams, trends, up-shoots and downspouts shaping the 2015 season.)

Jonathan Papelbon’s crime, beyond of course the assault and battery, is the ego. He sees more of himself than is actually there. In that way it is surprising he did not fit in better with the Washington Nationals.

On his way to becoming a rarity in the game – the object of derision by home fans in two cities in the same summer – Papelbon grabbed himself a fistful of neck (not his own) and a handful of trouble (his own), though this time his crotch was not involved, and for that we can be thankful. As such, if every clubhouse you walk into seems to have a locker for a boorish bully, maybe it’s not the clubhouse.

The Nationals knew the closer they acquired was a decent pitcher and an incendiary character, and were willing to take the former in trade for the latter, because this was how they would win the NL East. Again, this speaks to a view of themselves that may not have been totally honest but perhaps excusable, given they were in first place at the time.

View photos Jonathan Papelbon (C) after the dugout altercation. (AP) More

The Nationals now have choices to make. Some will be easier than others. Papelbon’s participation beyond this season will be part of the discussion, presumably. Whether he stays or goes, Papelbon may have provided a service.

That is, what would possess a man who’d been invited into the club two months before to behave in such a way? Ignore, for a moment, the possibilities of temporary insanity and permanent incivility.

Papelbon, a pitcher, stood at the dugout rail and scolded Bryce Harper, the best player in the league, for the manner in which he comported himself on a baseball field. What was Papelbon – in his bug-eyed, vicious, spittled performance – saying about team leadership?

About Mike Rizzo? About Matt Williams? About the men in a clubhouse that wilted – flat wilted – in a season that was supposed to be about them, not about the New York Mets? About the men responsible for leading them?

It was not Papelbon’s place to lecture anyone, let alone Harper. And in spite of the show of harmony that followed Papelbon’s attack of Harper, the notion of a Papelbon-Harper clubhouse in 2016 is toxic for a team that has to wonder what it’s made of and now must go about fixing it. The Nationals can’t be wrong this time. They can’t be wrong again. They have to start with who makes the decisions, who sets the examples, who makes the rules, however high – or low – that goes. It also starts with the kind of men they want to have playing for them and, maybe as important, standing at their dugout rail.

It’s a helluva lesson. A dumb one. A borderline criminal one.

And yet the Nationals need to ask themselves about what would possess the new guy to take on a man who busted his butt for seven months, who performed, who produced, who actually gave a crap about how all this ended. Harper wasn’t the problem. But there were plenty of others.

Maybe, in the most miserable, dangerous and knuckleheaded way ever, those were what Papelbon was addressing. The systemic problems. He did the Nationals the favor of including himself in his assessment, in case they missed the boorish bully in the room.

For the damage he’s done, and that which he is still capable, the Nationals could at least thank him for that.

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