Oral History: Ryan Zimmerman's rise from UVa to 'Mr. National'

Addie Burrow was recently pulled aside to be told that he would soon become a footnote in Virginia baseball history.

Burrow, a sophomore outfielder who has only appeared in five games this season because of an injury, has worn No. 11 the past two seasons. A few days before the school announced publicly last week that No. 11 would be retired on Saturday in honor of infielder Ryan Zimmerman, Burrow was informed privately that he’d need to find a new jersey number next season.

Zimmerman retired in February after a 16-year Major League career, all with the Washington Nationals. ‘Mr. National’ is the franchise’s all-time leader in a bevy of stats including games played, hits, home runs and RBIs. Before Zimmerman was Washington’s first-ever first-round pick (the franchise moved from Montreal in 2004) in 2005, he was a career .355 hitter and a two-time All-ACC third baseman at UVa.

Burrow grew up south of Nationals Park in Spotsylvania County. His two older sisters both attended Virginia, so he’d been a fan of the Cavaliers his whole life too. When asked last weekend, he couldn’t contain his excitement at being the last UVa baseball player to wear Zimmerman’s old jersey number.

“I’ve definitely thought about it,” Burrow admitted. “I grew up in Virginia. I was a big Nats fan. The reason I chose No. 11 was because of Ryan Zimmerman. He’s been a good person to look up to.”

This weekend’s three-game series against Virginia Tech at Disharoon Park will be a celebration of Zimmerman’s career, and what he has meant for both the growth of the UVa baseball program and the Charlottesville community. In 2016, he made a $1 million commitment to the expansion of the Cavaliers’ home ballpark. The ziMS Foundation—founded by Zimmerman with the goal of treating and ultimately curing Multiple Sclerosis, the disease his mother Cheryl was diagnosed with in 1995, has raised more than $3.5 million, with much of that money going to UVa’s Department of Neurology.

But Zimmerman wasn’t always a household name among UVa or Nationals fans. CavsCorner is using this weekend as an opportunity to catch up with some of his old coaches and teammates and reminisce about Zim’s rise from a lanky high school infielder to a top-5 MLB Draft pick to ultimately a world champion and ‘Mr. National.’

Growing up in Virginia Beach, Zimmerman played on a star-studded Tidewater Mets high school travel ball squad that included several future big leaguers. But Zimmerman wasn’t among the most coveted players on that roster. In fact, Kevin McMullan, UVa’s current associate head coach who at the time was an assistant at East Carolina, says he doesn’t recall paying much attention to Zimmerman while watching other players on that team.

KEVIN McMULLAN (UVa assistant/associate head coach, 2004-present): Just think about, Ryan Zimmerman was the No. 4 pick overall, and he was like the sixth or seventh best player on the team. You had a couple Upton brothers that came through there. David Wright was on that team. Mark Reynolds was on that team. There were some really, really elite guys from that beach area.

MIKE BALLARD (UVa pitcher, 2003-05): We didn’t lose too many games. It might have been just one or two. And blame that on the pitching because our lineup was pretty strong from top to bottom. If we lost a game it was because we gave up too many runs, because we definitely scored plenty. Between BJ and Justin [Upton] and David Wright and Mark Reynolds, and then Zim. We had some speedy outfielders. We were pretty good, top to bottom. The Tidewater Mets were a force to be reckoned with.

STEVE HEON (UVa assistant coach, 1986-2003): When [Zimmerman] got to his junior year, he played on a team with David Wright and BJ Upton, two very high prospects back then. I think he always believed himself to be as good. I guess Ryan’s always had that kind of mentality and belief in himself.

DENNIS WOMACK (UVa head coach, 1981-2003): Steve basically ran our recruiting at the time. He identified players, and he identified Ryan. And Steve’s assessment early on was, ‘I think Zim’s a good hitter, but I think he’s a better fielder. I think he’s gonna swing the bat pretty well but you probably need to go see him play, just to kind of get a feel for him.’ Just wasn’t quite sure, because we were looking for somebody to really attack the baseball. James Madison was all over Ryan, and I’m not sure anybody else was at that time. I give Coach Heon the bulk of the credit because he’s the one who identified Zimmerman first.

STEVE HEON: I saw him over at Bridgewater, there were some travel teams playing over at Bridgewater College. And I saw his team taking infield and just noticed him, he was a tall, relatively lanky kid at the time. But he had good actions and good feet, and he’s a kid you would project if he had developed strength. So we just stayed on him and connected, tried to see him when we could.

MIKE BALLARD: He was kind of on the fence between JMU and UVa, JMU and UVa. Not heavily, heavily recruited. I don’t think he was getting big-time looks from big-time programs, your big powerhouse programs. But you definitely know the athleticism was there, the skill set. I think the big thing for everyone that age is all right, let’s see how he fills out. Let’s see how he grows into his 6-3, lanky frame.

JOE KOSHANSKY (UVa infielder/pitcher, 2001-04): I hosted him on his recruiting visit when I was a second-year. Quiet kid. He was young; he was 17 at the time. Laid back. Just a humble kid. Taking it all in.

DENNIS WOMACK: So I went to see him play in the fall and I came back and told Steve, ‘I really like him.’ When I went to see him play he was very aggressive at the plate, and you could tell he had the defensive attributes that you would need. So as it turns out, we got an early commitment from Ryan. We were very fortunate that he chose us over James Madison.

JOE KOSHANSKY: He was pretty well-recruited by Coach Womack, but I don’t think anybody knew the player he was gonna turn out to be at the time.

TOM HAGAN (UVa infielder/outfielder, 2003-06): Ryan was certainly not near the top guy in our class.

STEVE HEON: He was more of an in-state kind of guy, relative to some other kids.

DENNIS WOMACK: Spanky [McFarland, former JMU baseball coach] had identified him very early. We were fortunate he wanted to come to UVa, and I think the more that he played in the fall, all of a sudden everybody’s looking like, ‘Man, we should have signed Ryan.’ Everybody got on the bandwagon. But he had already committed to us, which was great.

Zimmerman arrived in the fall of 2002 as part of a recruiting class that also included Ballard, a longtime family friend who had been teammates with Zimmerman going back to Little League and middle school as well as with the Tidewater Mets, and Hagan, who also spent two seasons punting for the football team.

With Reynolds, another former Tidewater Met, entrenched as the Hoos’ shortstop, the coaching staff decided to shift Zimmerman from his high school position to third base.

DENNIS WOMACK: What a lot of people don’t know about Ryan, when he first came to school he was only 17. Because you have to fill out all these forms when you get there. Most kids can sign their own because they’re 18. I think we had to send his back to his mom and dad because he was only 17. But he played like a much older player and he acted like a much older player, and just kind of had his stuff together. Right from day one.

STEVE HEON: Sometimes you get lucky. And I would say in some ways we hit with Ryan. Look, baseball is probably the most imperfect of the sports to predict, but you gather the information you can. We felt comfortable that Ryan was gonna be a good college player. I couldn’t sit here and tell you he would develop into the No. 4 overall pick and a franchise player. Now his makeup was always capable of that, I will say that.

TOM HAGAN: Ryan has been the same guy on and off the field—certainly off the field, makeup-wise—since the first day I met him. From his ability to be a leader, his ability to be a teammate picking up everybody on the roster, one through 26; it’s special.

MIKE BALLARD: Any time you have a parent who gets diagnosed with something such as an MS, it kind of forces you to grow up a little quicker than you were intended to. It kind of forces you to mature a little faster. I think that definitely played a huge role in that, because by the time he’s 16, 17, 18, he has the maturity of an older person. Now don’t get me wrong, we’d still cut loose and have a good time. But to have something like that happen in your personal life, I think it stays with you.

JOE KOSHANSKY: He had the respect of the veteran guys immediately. He was kind of a quieter, humble guy. You’ve got to learn your place on any team and you want to try and go about your business and allow that to be the most important thing. He did a good job of that.

DENNIS WOMACK: I can remember the players, we’d be playing an intrasquad game and Ryan would make plays at third base that we hadn’t seen. We hadn’t had a third baseman that could make plays like he did. So when the team, when your own players are ‘ooohing’ and ‘aaahing’ over in the dugout. ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe he did that. I can’t believe he did this,’ and he made it look so simple, you kind of know you’ve got a special guy.

JOE KOSHANSKY: Probably the biggest thing that was immediately noticeable was how he would charge a bunt and throw the guy out at first base. And I was playing first base, so I was on the receiving end of all of that. Some of the plays he made on defense, even that first year, were really impressive and showed what kind of player he was going to be.

TOM HAGAN: His baseball IQ was through the roof, and his ability to, maybe even not make the slow roller, but if a player is coming around second trying to get to third on a bunt, his ability to see how plays or different things on the field play out, and to put his team in the best position to win, was amazing.

DENNIS WOMACK: He could have played shortstop. He could have played anywhere. But after watching him at third base I thought he’d be very, very special. I wasn’t quite sure what he was gonna do with the bat—and I don’t mean he wasn’t gonna be a good college hitter. He was definitely gonna be a really good college hitter. But was he gonna be a great college hitter? I just wasn’t sure.

STEVE HEON: He was more of a contact, gap-to-gap hitter. He made good contact, but I think a lot of it was just his physical development. Once that came, he developed some real power.

TOM HAGAN: Always carried himself like a big leaguer. Physically, he filled out. He was always long and lanky. Didn’t hit any home runs early on, but just his ability to put barrel to the ball prior to the lift in his swing getting there was exceptional.

JOE KOSHANSKY: He was just consistent. He wasn’t hitting for a lot of power; he developed that as he got a little older. But he would make consistent contact and would just get base hits. I remember there was a series where he maybe went 11-for-15, something ridiculous in that series. And nearly every one of those hits was a single, but every time he would get up to bat he was making good contact and finding a hole somewhere.

DENNIS WOMACK: I never felt like Ryan as a first-year player was overmatched. Never. I think we opened up at Auburn that year—his freshman year, a first-year player—and Auburn didn’t overmatch him in any way, shape, form or fashion. He was never overmatched as a hitter. And really a guy that was kind of a clutch hitter, too. You wanted him up at the plate at the right time. Even as a first-year player. And off the top of my head, the only guy that I can really remember like that, of the guys I coached, was Billy Narleski. Billy came in and batted third in the lineup from day one. Ryan had the same type of ability.

MIKE BALLARD: It was smooth as can be. Athletically, he was there. And then okay, now we’re gonna have you with a strength coach? You have someone who from a skill set standpoint is already really talented, and then you add strength onto that? Okay. I want to say he hit over .300 his freshman year, I think he had a great summer with the Peninsula Pilots, and then it kind of kept snowballing, in a sense. It kept building off of that.

Zimmerman started all 54 games for UVa as a freshman, hitting .308 for the season with no homers and 36 RBI. As a team, the Hoos went 29-25 in 2003.

Womack retired after the season, with Notre Dame pitching coach Brian O’Connor hired as his replacement. O’Connor was unaware of the skinny third baseman he’d inherited, but Womack alerted him that “you’re gonna find out pretty quickly about this special player.”

Womack was right.

BRIAN O’CONNOR (UVa head coach, 2004-present): Within days. All you had to do was see him take ground balls at third base. After two or three days with him taking ground balls at third base you were like, ‘Oh my gosh, this guy is,’ I never played or coached another guy that played defense like this guy played at third base. And then his intangibles, understanding of the game, was really special. The game was slow for him. He could play it fast, but his understanding and reactions to the game were really, really special.

KEVIN McMULLAN: The guy would put his body in position to handle the ball like it was pouring milk out of the container. It was very easy for him. The ball stuck in his glove, and he could make every play on the field. You go, ‘This guy’s special.’ No. 1, he’s coachable, and no information is bad information to him. It’s him taking information and saying, ‘Okay, how do I use this?’ It’s refreshing, but those elite players want all the information to make him better.

MIKE BALLARD: It was just a shift in attitude, in mindset. We’re still gonna have fun, and obviously we still had a good time and fond memories, but it was a shift from the top down. Those guys—especially at that time when Oak and Mac and Ks, those guys were all young and hungry. These were all big opportunities for them and they were like, ‘All right, we’re gonna get after you and no one’s gonna outwork us.’ It builds character but it also builds mental toughness.

JOE KOSHANSKY: It was a complete change of the culture and the mindset. The goal was to win. They were not going to put a team out there that wasn’t going to win, and from the first fall practice, everything was done in preparation for going out on the field and winning during the season. Finding that mental toughness to grind through things that weren’t going to go perfectly.

TOM HAGAN: We were about a .500 club our first year, if I remember correctly. Might have been on the bubble for a second. Big leaguers walking all over that locker room, after the fact. And I think Ryan, when the new coaches came in, there was a gap for somebody to step up. And he’d had a great freshman year, first year, and I think the new coaches came in and lit a fire under the program and players, and held everyone accountable that much more. Ryan kind of grasped that opportunity to be a leader, probably maybe quicker than if nothing had changed from a coaching perspective. Not that he was ever overly vocal; he still isn’t. But the way he handled his business kind of ramped up to another level.

KEVIN McMULLAN: I asked Zim one question during a cage session one time. I said, ‘How do people get you out?’ And he said, ‘Vertical fastballs and sliders away.’ Then I watched him for three or four days and said, ‘Maybe you need to work on keeping your posture on your upper half a little bit more consistently, because you’re taking your head to the ball instead of seeing the ball with your eyes. And when you take your head to the ball, you’re gonna chase sliders and you’re gonna have a tough time on vertical fastballs.’ So the next day I see him talking to himself body language-wise to keep his chest up for better posture, and that’s the only thing I had to say to him in the three years he was here, and he did it.

TOM HAGAN: I just remember him being so sound and so steady. And when you play at such a high level defensively, you don’t realize how good that person is until you compare him to the next guy, or see the other team’s third baseman try to make that play. Because you get used to the excellence.

KEVIN McMULLAN: Here’s the best part of his makeup, in my opinion. One of the best stories. Zim goes away the summer after his sophomore year. He’s an invite to the tryout, not gonna make the US national team potentially, and he winds up being the MVP of the team. Comes back in the fall, his junior year, and he went about his business like he was trying to make the team again. Nothing was below him and he worked like he was trying to make the roster. That’s the best I can describe his makeup. He never took anything for granted, he respected and appreciated everything he got and he respected the game 100 percent, every day.

Zimmerman helped the Hoos end an eight-year NCAA tournament drought in 2004, earning first-team All-ACC honors after setting a UVa record with 90 hits. He finished the year with a .361 batting average, one homer and 45 RBI in 59 games. Zimmerman came back and broke that school record with 92 hits in 2005, when he hit .393 with six home runs and 59 RBI in 61 games.

Following his All-American junior season, Zimmerman was taken at No. 4 overall in the MLB Draft by the Washington, becoming the highest draft pick in program history to that point. The third baseman spent less than three months in the minors before getting called up by the Nationals and making his Major League debut on September 1st, 2005.

KEVIN McMULLAN: I remember all the scouts coming through here, and I had a pretty good conversation with an old scout friend of mine. He said, ‘Well, tell me about Zim.’ And I said, ‘I’ve never coached in the big leagues but if this is what they look like, I wouldn’t be shocked if he was in the big leagues by September.’ He said, ‘I wouldn’t be either.’

BRIAN O’CONNOR: I still think the amazing thing is 88 days. Eighty-eight days after wearing our uniform. That is unheard of as a position player. You see it as a pitcher from time to time; it is incredibly rare as a position player.

TOM HAGAN: Two months in the minor leagues, that just doesn’t happen anymore. Especially for a 100-loss Washington Nationals team. He’d be buried for two years in the minor leagues. Service clock.

KEVIN McMULLAN: The game was never fast for him. He could always adjust, whether it was base running, whether it was bunt for a hit, whether it was drive the ball in the gap, and keep the ball on the infield with a man on second base and two outs. He just did everything that the game asked him to do, and those are the guys that play on television.

MIKE BALLARD: Three months, four months prior, we’re teammates with the guy. Just to see that progression that quickly, one, you can’t be any more excited or any more happy for someone, just to see that all come together like that. But also, from your own personal perspective you’re like, well if that just happened to him, that could potentially happen to me or any one of us.

TOM HAGAN: We snuck back up to the baseball field, a handful of us. Because it was so connected to that part of our lives, that field. We snuck back up there after dinner and just kind of watched in awe, five or 10 of us, make his debut. We just all kind of gathered and were like, ‘Dude, this guy was just with us here in this locker room two-and-a-half, three months ago, and we’re watching him on TV.’

BRIAN O’CONNOR: A little bit didn’t surprise me because the Nationals were awful. They weren’t very good. And what he showed to me in his career, one of the many things that he showed in his two years that I was with him, was that he was always his best against the best guys, against the best competition. So it didn’t surprise me that—it surprised me that somebody would make the big leagues that quick, but it didn’t surprise me that he had the immediate success and stayed there the way he did.

The night he was called up, a 20-year-old Zimmerman struck out as a pinch-hitter in Atlanta. He picked up his first MLB hit the next day in DC against the Phillies. Zimmerman made his first Major League start—at shortstop—the following week. He was the Nats’ starting third baseman for the season’s final 10 games.

Zimmerman remained a big leaguer from that point forward. He played in 1,799 Major League games, all in a Nationals uniform. That’s the most by any player in franchise history. So are his 1,846 career hits, 284 home runs, 1,061 RBIs and 963 runs scored. Zimmerman was an All-Star and won a Gold Glove at third base in 2009, then made another All-Star team as a first baseman in 2017. He won back-to-back Silver Slugger awards in 2009 and 2010, and named the 2011 winner of the MLB Lou Gehrig Award.

In 2019, Zimmerman hit the first World Series home run in franchise history while helping the Nationals win their first-ever championship. The Nationals will retire Zimmerman’s familiar No. 11—he switched to his old college number in 2006 after initially wearing No. 25 following his September call-up—on June 18.

Zimmerman also retired as the best Virginia alum in Major League history. His career .277 batting average, .341 on-base percentage and .475 slugging percentage are all best among UVa products with at least 500 MLB games played. He’s the school’s all-time MLB leader in at-bats, hits, runs scored and RBI, and second behind his former college (and Nats) teammate Reynolds in home runs.

Another of his former college teammates, Hagan, has served as Zimmerman’s agent with CAA Sports since 2009.

TOM HAGAN: I made him hit the tweet button on my phone to send the message when he announced he retired.

DENNIS WOMACK: Virginia’s had a lot of good players. But if you had to pick out just one guy, if you had to bear down, you couldn’t probably find anybody better than Ryan Zimmerman to represent UVa.

KEVIN McMULLAN: Think about all the lessons that you can use Ryan as an example to your current team, your former players, your future players. ‘This is what a Virginia baseball player, if you could put a model together, this is what it looks like.’ We have a pretty good example for the last, we’ve been here 19 years, so for that timeline to be able to say this is what it looks like, and we reference it quite often because he is, in my opinion, the example that you want to show.

STEVE HEON: You wish the best for your former players, and for Ryan to be drafted No. 4 overall, making it to the big leagues that same summer he was drafted, that was cool. Being a Nats fan, to have him with that franchise and so close was neat. So to be able to follow him as closely as we’ve been able to has been special, and for him to become the Major League player that he became and have the success—the Gold Glove awards, making an All-Star team and ultimately winning the World Series—it’s been pretty cool to see.

JOE KOSHANSKY: It put us on the map. I think Zim’s last year before he got drafted, and then being drafted as a first rounder and so high in the draft definitely solidified the program that O’Connor and the rest of the staff were trying to develop, and it showed that that caliber of player was coming out of Virginia. No doubt it had a huge impact on other players that decided to come and created the program that it did.

BRIAN O’CONNOR: I think it’s had a lot to do with the growth of our baseball program. We recruit players in Northern Virginia, right now we have players that come to our program that when they were little boys, Ryan Zimmerman was their hero. They would go to Nationals games, they identified with Ryan Zimmerman and the Nationals and Virginia baseball. So his success has made a huge impact on our program, and still does today in the recruiting process and will continue to do.

KEVIN McMULLAN: He’s not above anything. He wants to help people. He’s always giving back. A lot of athletes don’t have that quality because they worked so hard to get what they want, they want to keep it and take care of their family. Zim was at a certain point in his career, he wants to help people. His mom is fighting the MS battle every day and he’s got heart strings tied to it, and it’s not fabricated. It’s real. You know it’s real by his continuing to do what he does.

BRIAN O’CONNOR: This guy’s done a lot. That foundation’s written some pretty significant checks back to the UVa hospital and whatnot. That’s been a really, really important part of his journey as a professional athlete. He’s been highly engaged in making something better.

TOM HAGAN: Ryan has always gone out of his way to connect. Every element of what that organization does for 15 years has Virginia ties, UVa ties. Virginia Beach events, DC events. That’s just how he lives his life. He’s so kind and honest and straightforward. He doesn’t have anything to hide, and I think people in today’s age really appreciate that. Not that he hasn’t had speed bumps professionally, or probably even personally, but I think for him to be the same guy every day, those are really good people to be around. Kind of a magnetic personality that a lot of people gravitate toward.

KEVIN McMULLAN: My son is 16. He knows Zim, he hears the stories. ‘I remember when we were playing in Jacksonville at the ACC tournament and this is the play he made.’ I think it’s pretty cool and it’s very real, and I’m grateful to be a part of it.

DENNIS WOMACK: No matter where Ryan Zimmerman went to school, it doesn’t make any difference where he ended up, he was gonna be Ryan Zimmerman. That’s what you were going to get. And every coach would have seen the same thing that Steve and I saw in him. Put him out there, let him play from day one. He was going to be a special guy no matter what. I take pride that he came to UVa, but I think I had very little to do with where he ended up.

MIKE BALLARD: It could not be any cooler. I feel like when someone like that, that you’ve kind of grown up with since you were eight years old, 10 years old, and to see that all happen, it almost feels like you were right there along for the ride. Couldn’t be more proud, more excited, just to see how it all unfolded. Just to stay in one big league city, and the one closest to home, it’s just kind of a storybook thing.

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