Tony DeMarco

There he stood in front of the MLB Network camera, a smiling, 6-foot-7, Cajun-drawling reminder that draft day mega-hype doesn’t always turn into big-league stardom.

Ben McDonald — remember him? He was Stephen Strasburg 20 years before Stephen Strasburg; Mark Prior 12 years before Mark Prior.

A polished pitcher with a big-league repertoire, not just a hard thrower; proven against big-time collegiate competition, not a risky, 18-year-old high-school arm; a clear-cut No. 1 overall pick in the 1989 June amateur draft, represented by Scott Boras.

It took two months for the Baltimore Orioles to sign “Big Ben” — at numbers that seem miniscule now, but weren’t then. Long after rejecting an initial offer of just more than $250,000, McDonald agreed to a major-league deal worth $800,000 that included a $350,000 signing bonus, and spent that September in the big leagues.

McDonald is 41 now — five years younger than Jamie Moyer and four years younger than Randy Johnson — yet hasn’t thrown a big-league pitch since 1997. In front of the camera, he talked about the hype of that pre-draft period — but nothing about what followed.

McDonald's career numbers spread over nine often-injury-interrupted seasons, the final two of which were spent in Milwaukee: 78-70, 3.91 ERA, 1,291 innings pitched and 894 strikeouts.

He won as many as 14 games in a season (1994), and twice reached 13. Not bad by any measure except the one he was held to: bonus baby/franchise savior.

Prior’s sad story still is unfolding. Prior was better in one season than McDonald ever was — 18-6-2.43 in 2003 — two years after the Chicago Cubs got him second overall because the Minnesota Twins fortuitously chose hometown kid (and more-affordable) Joe Mauer instead.

But a succession of injuries and surgeries have left Prior — regarded as the best college pitching prospect ever at the time — with no big-league innings pitched since 2006, only 42 career wins and dim prospects for more, even though he won’t turn 30 until September.

Which brings us to Strasburg and his fastball clocked as high as 103 mph. His college manager, Tony Gwynn, knows a little something about big-league pitchers, and uses the “special” word for Strasburg, saying he’s a big-league, front-end-of-the-rotation starter right now.

That only helps the case of Strasburg’s agent, Boras, who will try to create the scenario of leverage where there is none. So let’s make this clear: Strasburg’s talent might exceed that of Daisuke Matsuzaka, but their situations are entirely different.

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Strasburg is not a free agent; there can be no bidding war here. His only leverage is not signing before the Aug. 17 deadline, playing independent league ball for awhile or returning to school, and going back into the draft next June.

So talk of a $50 million deal has no merit. The relevant bar is the $10.5 million Prior received as a drafted player. More recently, David Price got $8 million from the Tampa Bay Rays in 2007.

Boras already is on the offensive, arranging a conference call with media members a day after the draft, throwing around adjectives such as “extraordinary.”

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Hopefully, that means much different than the other No. 1 overall picks who have been pitchers. Because McDonald’s career numbers are better than most of that group, as for every Andy Benes or Tim Belcher, there have been two Bryan Bullingtons, Paul Wilsons, Brien Taylors or Matt Andersons.

Boras does have the Nats’ vulnerability on his side. The nation’s capital already lost two versions of the Senators, and the Nationals’ early history isn’t much better. Their issues are many, starting with not enough big-league or organizational talent everywhere on the diamond.

Lucky the Pittsburgh Pirates are still in business, otherwise the Nats franchise would have little competition as the worst in the big leagues.

As the losses mount, there are too many empty seats in Nationals Park, and no team needs another face of the franchise to join Ryan Zimmerman more.

The Nats didn’t even sign their No. 1 draft pick last year; can they possibly fail to do so again in this high-visibility situation and retain credibility? (Even though they would be compensated with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2010 draft).

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We’ll have an answer in two months or less — and if it’s going to take anything more than $15-20 million to get a deal done with Strasburg, the Nationals can point to history as a legitimate reason for just saying no.

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