#Natitude

This is about a month overdue. My team won the World Series! And instead of writing about it, I’ve mostly been finishing college recommendation letters, and commenting on student papers. I have a lot to say about the Nats, though, and for the past month, I’ve been replaying key moments in my head. Key moments from this past October, and from the last fifteen years or so.

I've always felt a special connection to the Washington Nationals. I moved to DC in 2006, a year after the team relocated from Montreal. I had just turned 24, and in some ways, this year felt like the beginning of my adult life. It felt like a good time to adopt a new team, particularly this team, since both of us were new in town.

Outside Marlins Stadium, with my friend Tony, for a game in 2009. Long before Nationals gear was a common sight in opposing ballparks.

To this point, I had been a Red Sox fan. My Dad is from Boston and he brainwashed me when I was young. Plenty of people change religions when they reach their twenties, once they’re out from under their parents’ roof. I did the same thing with baseball allegiance: I hung on to the Red Sox, but the Nats quickly felt like my own team - the one I had chosen instead of being born into. After all, I had never actually lived in Boston, and in the days before the internet, it had been especially difficult to follow the Sox from New Jersey and then from Ohio. Once I was in D.C., it seemed like a luxury to be able to read about my team in the local paper, or to hear them discussed on sports talk radio.

Hayden and I pose before a 2014 game at beautiful PNC Park in Pittsburgh. Nats got the win that afternoon, behind Doug Fister.

Sadly, the team was so bad in those early days that hardly anyone talked about them on the radio or anywhere else. Chad Cordero, their two-time all-star closer, who was one of the few bright spots in those early days, could have walked the length of Connecticut Avenue without being recognized. During my first five years in DC, the Nats averaged 95.6 losses per season. They were worse than bad: they were utterly irrelevant - basically just fodder for the Braves and the Phillies to feast on. Because the team was so awful, tickets were dirt cheap (especially during the first three years at RFK Stadium), and being single, I had plenty of time of my hands. So as a result, I ended up going to a ton of games – as many as fifteen per year, many of them by myself.

Hayden and I won ten tickets to a luxury box, and invited a bunch of friends to see what turned out to be a pretty crappy game against the Marlins. Still, it was a beautiful day and Maya and I wandered the Mall afterward.

The Nats' reward for a terrible 2008 season was the first overall pick in the draft, which they spent on pitcher Stephen Strasburg, a super-prospect with the reputed ability to alter the fate of a franchise. (I actually went to his introductory press conference, held on the infield at Nationals Park, because what else did I have to do?) His debut in 2010 was the easily the most important date in the history of the franchise since it made its debut in Washington half a decade earlier. After Strasburg dominated a handful of starts at Harrisburg and Syracuse, the team announced that he would make his first major league start on a Tuesday night game against Pittsburgh at Nationals Park. I immediately snatched a pair of cheap tickets.

The game turned out to be one of my most satisfying experiences at the ballpark. Strasburg gave up a home run early, but grew stronger as the game went on. He struck out 14 Pirates and earned an impressive win. The team went nowhere in 2010, but I can't overstate the importance of that game for the franchise. In many ways, the prognosticators were right: his first start was the moment where the Nats became an actual baseball franchise, instead of an off-brand imitation. (Nine years later, he would be named World Series MVP. So indeed, a major turning point in several ways.)

Two years later, in 2012, the Nationals became a truly great team. I remember watching incredulously as they rose in the standings and then stayed there. It was like watching my high school garage band take the stage with Pearl Jam. By then, I was in Baltimore, so I never got to experience D.C. in the full throes of play-off fever. Still, I wasn’t too far away – close enough, in fact, to view all Nats games on local cable – and I still followed attentively.

Having no kids yet, and thus no major expenses, I picked up tickets to Game 5 of the NLDS against the Cardinals. Of course, they had to make it to Game 5 first, which they did courtesy of Jayson Werth’s walk-off home run in Game 4, which until this year was the biggest hit in team history. I remember the sheer joy of a hit that both a) won us the game, and b) guaranteed I would attend another game the following night.

Of course, they lost. And it was heartbreaking. They were up 6-0 after three innings. They had knocked out the Cardinals’ star pitcher, Adam Wainwright. But the bullpen blew it and they lost.

I was in attendance again two years later when they lost in eighteen innings to the Giants. (Everyone would ask why Matt Williams pulled Jordan Zimmermann in the ninth. I was more upset by the team’s inability to score a run over the final fifteen innings of the game.)

Two years after that (2016), I was there for a play-off win against the Dodgers. Less than a week later, the Dodgers would eliminate them, courtesy of Clayton Kershaw.

I didn’t drop money on play-off tickets the following year (2017). A good thing, because I spared myself from watching the Nats lose another heartbreaking Game 5, this time to the Cubs.

I had spent the first half of my life rooting for a snake-bitten franchise. (People forget how painful it was to be a Red Sox fan pre-2004. Especially during the Yankee’s great run in the late 90’s.) The Nats had been in D.C. for less than fifteen years at this point – a far cry from the Red Sox’ 86 years of futility. Still, it seemed I had unwittingly joined the fan base of another cursed team.

In 2019, I felt myself starting to pull away. The team had under-performed in 2018 and the departure of Bryce Harper felt like the end of an era. Plus, fatherhood duties made it tough to get down to D.C. for games, and ultimately compelled us to get rid of cable.

On May 21^st, I went to a ballgame in Detroit with some college friends. I remember glancing up at the out-of-town scoreboard to see that the Nats game had gone final: Mets 6, Nationals 5. The season was over. Two days later, when the Mets had completed the four-game sweep, it was even more over.

Of course, we know now that it wasn’t. After what turned out to be a two-month false start, the Nats played as well as anybody. They were viewed as an underdog once they entered the play-offs. I admit I didn’t have much hope. In each previous play-off appearance, they had been the division winner. What reason did I have to hope for better in a year where they ended the regular season in second place, four games behind the Braves?

I was thrilled when they beat the Brewers in the first game: at last they had won a play-off series (or, “series,” since it was only one game). At least now, the inevitable loss to the Dodgers, owners of the NL’s best record, might feel less disappointing.

And then they beat the Dodgers – with two big home runs off Kershaw, no less. And after that, they buzzed right through the Cardinals. Dominated them, in fact. In an odd twist, I found myself at the St. Louis Airport for the first few innings of Game 3. While I have nothing against Cardinals fans, I can’t say I minded seeing them shake their heads in despair when their team fell behind big in the early going. They’ve won plenty of championships, after all.

I didn’t have $1000 to drop on a standing room only ticket to the World Series. (To be fair, prices did drop to the $700 range in the days leading up to the three games in D.C., but still.) As a consolation, I journeyed to Nationals Park for Game 4, determined to at least be present for what promised to be a huge party. The game turned out to be a bust (Astros 8, Nats 1), but I was glad I went. (I wound up watching from a far a few blocks away from the stadium.) Only twice before had I witnessed such a state of excitement in D.C.: the All-Star Game during the previous summer, and the inauguration of Obama.

Because I no longer live in D.C., and because I have more responsibilities than I did in my twenties, I wasn’t as present for the play-off run as I would have liked. For God’s sake, I fell asleep while watching a number of the games. The low point was undoubtedly Game 2 of the Dodgers series, in which I tapped out before the end of the top of the first inning. (Really though, who decides a play-off game must start at 9:30 PM?)

But no matter. When I started rooting for the Nats, I liked feeling that if the team one day got to be good, I could say I had gotten in on the ground floor. Well, now they’ve gotten good. My Nats: a team so amateurish that they once took the field in jerseys emblazoned with a misspelled version of their name. (The Natinals.) Now I get to say I knew them when.

Really?