The Most Wonderful Day of the Year

It's Cristian Guzman Day, at least at MLB.com.

Guzman lost eight pounds and had laser eye surgery in the offseason.

I don't care if he grafted Ted Williams' head onto his neck -- mere body modification isn't going to make Guzman a good player.

The eye surgery appeared to work, at least for one day, as Guzman was hitting mostly line drives in batting practice.

See why I hate Spring Training journalism?

"Last year is the past," Guzman said. "This is 2006. Everything is new. Everybody is going to know the Guzman of a couple of years ago."

He just makes it too easy. The Guzman of a couple years ago sucked. So did the Guzman of three years ago and the Guzman of the year before that. True, they didn't suck as bad as the Guzman of last year, and that's the point. All Cristian has to do is suck as bad as he did in 2004 and suddenly Bowden's a genius.

"[Tuesday] is the first day I took batting practice in the [United States], and I can see the ball real good. I took BP in [the Dominican Republic], but it was a little bit dark," Guzman added.

I guess because of when the Dominicans scorched the sky during their war with the machines.

The Post chooses not to focus on Guzman today. Unfortunately, Sheinin leads off today's report with a discussion of makeup of the Nats' bullpen, and that is exactly the dividing line between stuff I care about and stuff I don't. It gets better later, though.

The issue of how to fill the Nationals' backup catcher job may have revealed an acute difference of opinion between Robinson and General Manager Jim Bowden.

There are exactly three things I'm looking forward to this season: 1) ¡Livan! 2) Dutch and 3) Frank vs. Bodes.

Last week, Bowden said he envisioned the team eschewing a traditional backup catcher and using the combination of Robert Fick and Matt LeCroy -- both of whom are more comfortable as first basemen and have limited catching experience -- to share the backup duties behind starter Brian Schneider.

I still don't think it's going to happen, but it is a neat idea.

On Tuesday, when Robinson was asked his thoughts on that possibility, he said, "From what I read, that's the perfect scenario. . . . I would think that would be something coming from the manager, wouldn't it? I'm not going to comment and second-guess the general manager."

Uh oh. I choose not to read anything into the fact that MLB.com's Bill Ladson omits any mention of this comment from Frank.