Inside the Phillies: No. 28 breaks out against his old team

WASHINGTON - When the news broke that Jayson Werth had signed a seven-year, $126 million contract with the Washington Nationals, Ruben Amaro Jr. had a cocksure response.

"We'll get him out - a lot," the Phillies general manager said that evening from the winter meetings in Florida. "Oh, I believe that we will."

It was a surprising answer that elicited an obvious follow-up question: Do you know the secret to getting Werth out?

"I believe that we do," Amaro said.

He would not reveal the secret that December night, and apparently it is still locked away in a hermetically sealed envelope.

Or perhaps Joe Blanton was left out of the team meeting when Amaro's secret was revealed, because Werth had the best game of his brief Nationals career in his first meeting with the Phillies on Tuesday night at Nationals Park.

After spending a considerable amount of time with his former teammates, coaches, and manager Charlie Manuel, Werth doubled and homered off Blanton, leading his new team to a 7-4 victory over his old one.

"This was only one game," Werth said, declining an invitation to respond to Amaro's remarks.

Werth's performance came after an abnormal day in what figures to be an unusual series for the man who was immensely popular during his career in Philadelphia.

"The whole thing is going to take some getting used to, but I'm going to be here a little while, so at some point I'll get used to it," Werth said inside the Nationals' clubhouse.

Werth knew this night was going to be different before it started, and it was different right from the start.

Four of the Phillies' first seven outs settled into Werth's glove, and after each of those catches the large contingent of Phillies fans in attendance booed.

"I don't know if that was unexpected or not," Werth said. "I was kind of waiting for it. Once I got it, I thought it was kind of funny."

It was difficult to tell whether anyone among the 13,413 in attendance was a Werth fan early in the game, but that changed in a hurry when he started a three-run fourth inning with a double to left field off Blanton and later scored the run that put the Nationals ahead for good.

An inning later, Werth launched a low line drive just inside the left-field foul pole for his first home run with his new team, giving Washington a 5-1 lead.

"Obviously, any time you hit a home run you're going to have some satisfaction," Werth said. "Was it extra special against those guys? Probably a little bit. I was trying to perform for Charlie. I hadn't seen him in quite a while."

The early portion of Werth's day was reserved for getting reacquainted with old friends.

"The last time I saw these guys was after that last game we played last year [against San Francisco]," Werth said. "You know, there are still a lot of feelings there. We really accomplished a lot together. I went to war with those guys, most of them, for four straight years. You create some everlasting bonds."

The pregame hello that seemed to mean the most to Werth was the one with Manuel.

"It was good to see Charlie," Werth said. "I've been through a lot with Charlie. I went from kind of not being one of Charlie's guys to being one of Charlie's guys."

Werth went into detail about the sequence of events that allowed him to go from a bench player on the disabled list to a platoon rightfielder to an everyday rightfielder on a World Series championship team.

Ultimately, it all led Werth to Washington because the Nationals see him as a linchpin to building something similar to what the Phillies already have, while Amaro saw the rightfielder as expendable, especially at such an exorbitant price.

In addition to the millions of dollars the Nationals will pay Werth, they also have plastered a larger-than-life image of their new rightfielder on the parking garage beyond the left-field seats. Werth seems to like that almost as much as the money.

"It is a big picture," he said. "I was surprised to see a picture of myself that big."

He said he used to look at similar images of J.D. Drew and Jeff Kent when he was with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2005.

"I always remember telling myself, 'One day that's going to be me,' so here I am," Werth said.

Werth said Manuel always encouraged him to take the money as a free agent by using an anecdote about when Jim Thome left the comfort of Cleveland for a new home in Philadelphia.

"That's one of his life lessons," Werth said. "I learned a lot about life other than baseball from Charlie Manuel. There were a lot of good times there."

And at least on this peculiar night, Werth had a great time at the expense of his former team and manager.