WASHINGTON’S PAST IS HARD TO IGNORE
Whether it’s Caps or Nationals, city’s teams have a long history of coming up short
Late in Game 4 on Saturday night, the scoreboard at Nationals Park showed a package of game highlights. The presidential mascot race featured prominently.
The presidential mascots had Halloween costumes on, and Teddy Roosevelt created a diversion by dumping a bucket of candy, slowing down Abe Lincoln and George Washington and an uncertain fourth mascot. Teddy snuck out the dramatic win, but not a great sign when the between-innings entertainment is the best thing to happen to the home team.
Unfortunately for the Washington Nationals, the mascot races were one of the few high points of the entire three-game home set. They came to the District of Columbia with a 2-0 lead in the World Series, ready to play the first championship home games in franchise history, stretching to its birth in Montreal in 1969.
They scored three runs and gave up 19, lost all three games, and their ace starter, Max Scherzer, can’t lift his arm due to a nerve issue. So, not great.
Even Baby Shark couldn’t save them. The unofficial anthem of the Nats, played when Gerardo Parra comes to bat, ideally sends the home fans into riotous, clapping glee. Over Games 3, 4 and 5, Parra pinch-hit with the Nationals trailing 4-1, 4-1 and 4-0. It is tough to get really into singing a children’s tune while facing a late-inning deficit when your bullpen stinks.
The only emotional high points of Sunday’s Game 5 came when Juan Soto hit a solo homer to finally put the Nationals on the board, when the ballpark was seething with rage at the calls from home-plate umpire Lance Barksdale, and when much of the crowd was enthusiastically booing President Donald Trump.
The Nationals are, of course, not ready to roll over despite their once-thunderous bats having turned into soggy noodles.
“We actually hit some balls hard, we really did,” said manager Dave Martinez. “We just can’t get nothing going these last three days. But we hit some balls hard.”
Perhaps it will do them some good to leave town. As much as this run to the World Series has been the story of a team finally learning how to not face-plant in October in a town that had been riddled with sporting heartbreak until it finally broke its streak of futility, the events of the past weekend were enough to make one harbour second thoughts.
Prior to the spring of 2018, the last 12 times one of Washington’s big-four sports teams played a game with a conference semifinal berth on the line, they lost. 0-12. It wasn’t that D.C.’s teams had a history of failing on the big stage, it was that they were woefully unable to get to the big stage.
The Nationals were a big part of that ineptitude. Before this season, they went to the NLDS four times since 2012 and failed to advance each time. Three of those losses came in a deciding fifth game at home.
The Capitals seemed to be on the verge of barfing all over themselves again in 2018, losing their first two playoff games on home ice, in overtime, but then they started winning and did not stop. Washington’s playoff demons were dead. Dead!
Or, perhaps just having a pleasant slumber. The Nats now have three dispiriting home losses. A potential starting pitcher for Game 7 who had to get his wife to help him get dressed on Sunday. A 3-2 deficit, going on the road to face a 107-win team. Martinez, at least, was resolute. “We’re here playing Game 6 of the World Series. We’re going to fight. We’re going to finish this thing.”
That much is true, one way or another.