Record drought: Nats aim to be first repeat champ since Yankees

WASHINGTON (AP) » Manager Dave Martinez got a kick out of seeing World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg and other Washington-Nationals finally open their championship rings a couple of weeks ago in the clubhouse — even if it was months later than originally planned and with no one around but other members of the organization.

“It’s definitely sad that we couldn’t have the fans here with us,” Martinez said, then relayed his players’ reaction while checking out the bling: “They all said, ‘Hey, let’s try to go get another one.’”

Easier said than done, of course, especially lately. Beginning with Thursday night’s opener of the pandemic- delayed season against the New York Yankees, the Nationals will attempt to do something no major league club has done in quite some time: win back-to-back World Series.

It’s been two decades since the 2000 New York Yankees capped a run of three titles in a row, making the current stretch the longest drought without anyone winning consecutive championships in baseball’s century-plus history.

Used to be a pretty regular occurrence: There even were three straight multiple-title clubs in the 1970s, when the 1972-74 Oakland Athletics of Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter were followed by the 1975-76 Cincinnati Reds of Joe Morgan and Johnny Bench, whowere followed by the 1977-78 Yankees of Jackson and Ron Guidry.

“You have 30 teams now, so it’s harder to win. In the older days, you didn’t have free agency, so you could keep groups together,” said Max Scherzer, the three-time Cy Young Award winner scheduled to start Game 1 for Washington against New York’s Gerrit Cole. “You start looking at systematic changes. How are those at play?”

When the Yankees claimed banners in bunches — 1936-39, say, or 1949-53 — there was no such thing as free agency that makes it harder to keep a group together. Wild- card berths and play-in games, Division Series and Championship Series didn’t exist, either.

The path is much longer nowadays. There’s more parity, too.

Miami Marlins CEO Derek Jeter was the Yankees’ shortstop during the sport’s most recent multiyear run. Asked why it hasn’t happened since, he offered a simple reply: “It’s hard to win one, let alone to repeat.”

So howdid his teams do it? “We were pretty good at forgetting about the past — good or bad, whether wewon or lost. We forgot about it and moved on. We never walked around wearing championship rings. It was, ‘How are we going to get another one?’” Jeter, said. “We never took it for granted. We understood a lot of hard work and a lot of luck have to come into play.”

Paul O’Neill, Jeter’s teammate on clubs that won four titles in five years from 1996 to 2000, praised the off-field folks who built and molded that group, including frontoffice executive Gene Michael, manager Joe Torre, bench coach Don Zimmer and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre.