Blog

WARNING: Once again, I veer from the path to discuss something unrelated to this website and overall theme of the "Blog." If you read further you might conclude that my interest in sports exceeds what it actually is. I'm one of those guys who pays the minimum necessary attention to the standings in any sport to be able to engage in what used to be called water cooler conversation. If I watch games, it means that playoffs are happening, and even then I'm probably not following religiously. Notwithstanding, the Washington Nationals are my de facto Home Team in major league baseball, and their recent victory struck one of those underdog bandwagon nerves. Continue at your own risk.

The baseball gods had an absolutely wonderful time in 2019. (Note: the second and third commandments put the kibosh on idolatry. However, I have it on good authority from my friend Randy, a Lutheran Pastor, that the baseball gods operate in a special zone all their own. They represent a subcategory of the pantheon whose ability is limited to toying with the emotions of fans of a less than 200 year old sport. While they might upon occasion be feared, they are not worshiped. So everything’s cool).

I should note for the record that no other sport has such coyotes[1]. There are no football, hockey, or basketball gods. The Olympics and various World Cup competitions are not subject to the imprecations of mischievous minor deities. These other sports experience the same things: human error, sudden and inexplicable hot spells and cold spells affecting individual athletes or entire teams, instantaneous switches in competition momentum, and so on. Same experience. No celestial imps to point to. Go figure.

I have no more clue than you do as to why baseball is the only sport having such supernal oversight. One possibility has to do with the unique nature of baseball itself. Randy puts forth the proposition that all other team sports are, in fact, variations on the same game: the objective is for these guys over here (offense) to move an object (ball, puck) past those guys over there (defense) into a receptacle (net, hoop, end-zone). Whoever does this the most within a specified amount of time wins. Baseball, in contrast, is – simultaneously – one guy (pitcher) against one other guy (batter) and one guy (batter) against nine other guys (pitcher, catcher, infield and outfield) and, on occasion, the batter has some other guys in the mix (players already on base). Finally, the method of scoring has nothing to do with moving an object into a receptacle – it is to run around a square 90 feet on a side and return where you started. With no clock; the game takes as long as it takes.

Those other sports have well defined playing surfaces and boundaries. With the exception of the infield, no two baseball parks are the same. A home run in one ballpark might be a fly ball caught for an out in another one. The annual championship is called the World Series even though no country outside North America can play. The game itself and the places it is played are so convoluted and obscure that it would be a surprise if gods were not part of the package.

Back to 2019. The Washington Nationals, or Nats (or perhaps “gnats” if you’re a Brewer, Dodger, Cardinal, or Astro), won the World Series on October 30. They were not supposed to. Their season started in a shambles, their bullpen is dubious, and they’d lost one of their marquee names to free-agency. And they operated under a curse. Not a decades in the making curse such as once applied to the Red Sox and the Cubs, but a curse, nonetheless. No matter how well they played during the regular season they had never advanced beyond a Division series. That curse was the baseball gods just messing with them and their fans. And it started sometime after 2010, so let’s call it a curselet.

It is now well known that after losing a ton of games early in the season, they began to turn everything around in the middle of May. Pitching and hitting and fielding all played their parts, and that’s just the on-field stuff. Somehow they managed to take the most annoying song since It’s a Small World and make stadiums full of people dress like sharks and act like kindergartners. As for themselves, they acted like total goofs in the dugout. But if down in the last couple of innings, they’d shrug off their toddler personas and go out there and knock in a bunch of runs. The baseball gods must have noticed.

I think the baseball gods might have become bored the past few years. They’d toyed with Red Sox and Cubs fans so long that decades-long curses just weren’t as fun as they used to be. They’d experimented with home-run records and new and improved performance metrics (WAR? Seriously?). They needed something new and different. Hey, what’s going on down there in DC? They’re having fun. They’re playing hard. They’re what baseball is all about; it’s a game, after all.

I do not mean to imply that the baseball gods deemed this to be the season for the Nats to go all the way. That would imply predestination, and, whatever the baseball gods may be, I sincerely doubt they’re Calvinists. No, I tend to think that the Nationals with their deadly starting pitchers, big bats, and dugout beep-beeps amused the B.G.s. I suggest to you that the baseball gods took October off to watch the fun.

There had never been a World Series in which no team won a game at home. It is tempting to attribute its happening this year to the baseball gods, but we’ve established they don’t predestine outcomes. On one hand it was not a “great” series because it didn’t have much in the way of great games. So many scores were not even close. The away team dominated, and the home team choked. I’m tempted to attribute the game five Nationals loss to the baseball gods, because it was such a gut punch to the fans and because the officiating especially stank that night. But no. Houston kicked Washington’s butts fair and square.

On the other hand, this series was definitely one for the ages. The home team losing pattern, for one, which will result in the 2019 series being referenced by sportscasters every year until the end of time. The officiating drama (one ump who couldn’t tell a ball from a strike to save his life; that whole base running B.S. call thing). The pitching staff dramas (both teams). The baseball etiquette mini-drama.

And Game 7. The game where Zack Greinke absolutely owned the Nationals without even cracking a sweat and for the only time in the series the momentum shifted to a home team. Until the seventh inning, that is, when Anthony Rendon unleashed an enormous yawn in the dugout then picked up his bat and stepped on deck.

My brother lives in Houston and we had fun texting jibes back and forth throughout the series. I take my hat off to the Astros. They played a great season and knocked off some terrific competition to win the American League. The team played hard and they played classy.

The Nats, though, serve as a reminder that you don’t have to be the best to be the best (if that makes any sense). They didn’t have the best regular season record by a long shot. They’re not the youngest team around. Their bullpen is essentially nonexistent. Not the best; they just had fun and didn’t give up and that was enough.