Stephen Strasburg on the tee. (Chelsea Janes / The Washington Post)

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A tiny white ball flew high into the air, toward the fence that separated success from failure, and every Washington National stood rapt and listened. Three soundings of the air horn would signal a miracle, a last-minute, game-tying piece of magic that would keep hope alive for all those trying to vanquish the ever-victorious villain. One or two soundings of the air horn would signal Max Scherzer and his handpicked team the insufferable winners.

Ryan Madson sent that ball into the air, toward a sinking set of balloons that marked the bull’s eye. When the ball fell, he held his arms to the side, ear toward the target, waiting for news, his teammates encroaching around him. The horn sounded once. The horn sounded twice. It never sounded again.

Scherzer raised his arms. Teammates patted and praised Joe Ross, whose last-minute bull’s eye had forced Madson to be perfect or perish. Third base coach Bob Henley, clad in an all-white caddie’s uniform, had already declared that there would be no consolation.

“There is no second place,” he hollered, when announcing the scores with military bravado tempered somewhat by his all-white jumpsuit. “There are only winners and losers.”

Henley might as well have been writing a Washington Nationals manifesto. When the front office let Dusty Baker go, the given reason was he could not get them to the World Series. When the Nationals hired Dave Martinez, the implied message was that he could. The pressure is oppressive. He does not seem to feel it yet.

Instead of worrying, Martinez spent much of this spring masterminding ways to keep a veteran team interested. Friday’s golf tournament was the product of brainstorming by Martinez, Henley, and director of advanced scouting John Tosches, who devised a plan. Martinez had once organized a long drive competition in Tampa, but that devolved into dangerous territory quickly. He figured a short-game competition would be better.

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So he had a target painted on one of the back fields, about 125 yards and three visibility-obscuring fences away from the turf field where he set up six hitting mats for six teams. A few helium balloons were attached to a weight in the center of the target so the players could see the “hole” and judge the wind. Tosches camped out nearby, sounding the air horn once for a ball that landed in the big circle, twice for one that landed in the second circle, and thrice for a bull’s eye.

Six captains — Howie Kendrick, Max Scherzer, Adam Eaton, Brandon Kintzler, Daniel Murphy, and Stephen Strasburg — chose teams.

“Have you ever played golf before?” Kintzler asked Victor Robles. The 20-year old laughed at the notion. Kintzler bet on the tools and picked him anyway.

The teams assembled on the turf field around 9:30 a.m. Friday, which happened to be the day MLB Network was in town for its 30 Teams in 30 Days tour. Because Gio Gonzalez started Friday’s game, he was held out of the competition, leaving Kendrick’s team a man short. After Henley explained the rules of the competition (“Heckling: Allowed. Encouraged!”), Kendrick’s team drafted an innocent bystander to fill Gonzalez’s spot — MLB Network analyst John Smoltz, an  experienced golfer who took the competition’s first shot.

More experienced golfers tried to read their situation. Henley told them the target was “approximately 125 to 126 yards away.” The Post’s Thomas Boswell paced it out, finding it was more like 100 yards, a message he passed along to Tanner Roark, though the insight didn’t help his team beat Scherzer’s.

Scherzer hit the first bull’s eye. Miguel Montero, the steal of the draft, hit two bull’s-eyes. Reid Brignac hit a fence pole, sending a golf ball ricocheting back at Roark, who caught it on the hop as General Manager Mike Rizzo watched the whole thing from a balcony. Roark’s outstretched hand was probably the most imperiled body part of any player in the competition. He, like his teammates and the fans, survived with their health intact — if not their dignity.

Many of the Latino players hadn’t been brought up with the game like their American teammates, which meant Robles, Pedro Severino, Wilmer Difo, and Enny Romero occasionally sent teammates and fans running for cover. At one point, Romero whiffed on his swings twice in a row, at which point his turn was deemed over. At another point, Difo sent a ball into the crowd of fans 60 or so yards to his right.

“Cuatro! Cuatro!” his teammates yelled, creating their own unofficial translation of “fore!”

Martinez offered the diplomatic assessment of a more experienced manager when asked what he made of Difo’s swing.

“I try not to make too much of it,” Martinez said. “The effort was there.”

Kintzler tossed his club over a fence with a particularly vigorous follow-through. Bryce Harper hit a ball so far that Henley declared him the “longest drive winner,” which didn’t do much for him in this particular competition. Shot after shot yielded horn after horn until one ball remained for each team, and Henley read the scores.

“Team Four, nine!” he called. “Terrible!”

Henley then went on to announce that Scherzer’s team and the one for which Madson would take that final shot were tied at 25. Scherzer took the last shot for his team. One horn sounded. Montero took the last for his. One horn sounded. Each team had to pick another.

Ross, who has not played in a baseball game since June after undergoing Tommy John surgery, shot for Scherzer’s team. Bull’s eye. Then came Madson, the last hope for the rest of the Nationals sick of seeing Scherzer win clubhouse pools and day-to-day competitions. The horn sounded twice. They simply couldn’t beat him.

Scherzer’s team will be awarded Martinez’s version of the green jacket — personalized camouflage jackets that say Circle Masters, as in Circle of Trust, the daily pre-workout meeting Martinez instituted this spring. All of the Nationals will live to tell about the event, which carried as much injury risk as intrigue.

Controversy swirled in the aftermath. Did every team get the same number of balls? Were Tosches’s measurements to be trusted? Those discussions will linger long after Team Scherzer gets those jackets.

So will the memories of a sunny March morning in what are normally spring training doldrums, one on which the Nationals seemed to have as much fun with anything as they have in years, and looked carefree in the process. Perhaps, six months or so from now, they’ll watch another white ball fly into the air, their fates hanging there with it. No one was too worried about that Friday.

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