Hail Nats!

What I did last summer. I followed the Washington Nationals. I listened to them on my cell phone ($8 a month with Sprint). I watched them on DirecTV (a little more than $8 a month). I trekked to Washington three times to watch them play in person.

The Nationals for all practical purposes fell from the playoff race with two weeks to play when Miguel Olivo raced home in the bottom of the 9th on an error by pitcher Joey Eischen to lift the San Diego Padres to a 2-1 win in a game the Nats had led 1-0 going into the bottom of the 8th. This was on the heels of a 12-inning 8-5 loss that saw Khalil Greene blast a grand slam off stellar 23-year-old Chad Cordero in the bottom of the 9th. For good measure the Nats dropped the first game after the Padres series to the San Francisco Giants on a home run in the 9th by Moises Alou, with staff ace Livan Hernandez on the mound trying to finish a 2-1 victory. They dropped these three in a row with leads in the 9th inning to all but eliminate themselves from the the pennant race, and as I write this today, the regular season is over, the playoffs are in full swing, and the Nats managed only to limp to a .500 finish, 81 wins and 81 losses.

A bad team suffers through the final two months of the season with no hope, and with little reason to look forward to next year. One team will win its last game of the year and cover itself in glory. The rest of the best will proudly go down to defeat in the playoffs, their final moment a bitter one. But sometimes a good team's season ends early, before the regular season is over, yet with the adoration of all its followers. The 2005 Nationals were that bittersweet team. Projected for 71-91, they were in the race until the next to last week of the season in spite of injuries. Joey Eischen, their only left-handed pitcher, broke his arm fielding a grounder. Ryan Church, an emerging rookie hitting over .300, was never the same after smashing into the outfield wall making a game-saving catch. Star second baseman Jose Vidro, their best-known player, was on the DL for most of the first half of the season. Nick Johnson, their hottest hitter at the time, bruised his heel on home plate avoiding the other team’s catcher to score an important run. Third baseman Vinny Castilla battled a bad knee all year, and when a game-losing ground ball once went between the former Gold Glover’s legs, it was easy to forgive him because he was a hero for suiting up.

This was a team of castoffs that by all rights wasn't supposed to be at the dance. Manager Frank Robinson once put it this way during a slump after the All Star break: "I don't see any hope offensively." Yet these Nationals pieced together a formidable bullpen, a strong starting staff, and some timely hitting. They had rattled off such a string of small-ball wins early in the year that you started to believe in miracles when, a week before the All Star break, they were 19 games over .500 and leading the NL East. They’d won so many 1-run ballgames, and they had so many come-from-behind wins, that you started to take it as an article of faith that a 2-0 deficit in the 6th would end in a 3-2 win. Their starting pitchers never seemed to get credit for the wins. John Patterson finished the year with only 9 wins. Esteban Loaiza managed 12. Only rubber-armed Livan Hernandez topped 12 wins, finishing with 15.

The stats paint a picture of a team that battled in every game all year long. Most of the best teams in baseball suffer a couple of dozen lopsided losses. The Nationals were rarely blown out; their specialty was the agonizing defeat. They lost one in the rain on a 9th-inning error by slick-fielding shortstop Christian Guzman; one on a balk-off by Mike Stanton in his first appearance for the Nationals; one on a walk-off walk; one on back-to-back home runs in the bottom of the 9th inning; two in extra innings after dramatic comebacks to tie games, once at 8-8 and once at 7-7. One more was lost after a pinch-hit, 9th-inning homer by Carlos Baerga had tied a lost game. In one shutout loss, Jose Guillen got it into his head to bunt into a force with no outs and two on in the 4th inning. (This was in the afternoon of the same day the Washington Post ran a story in its sports pages showing that a good hitter should never bunt in that situation.)

The summer had its moments. Chad Cordero led the league with 47 saves. His late struggles don’t overshadow the early glory when he repeatedly slammed the door with runners on the bases. Gary Majewski and Luis Ayala looked more like bona fide closers than setup men. Hector Carrasco learned a changeup and resurrected his career, first in the pen, and late with 3 stellar starts in a row (only 1 was a win, naturally). Ryan Drese showed up off waivers from Texas and pitched a shutout. (He injured his shoulder later.) Rookie Ryan Zimmerman, who started his season in February, in college, was called up in September and hit .397, 23 for 58. Career minor leaguer Rick Short had an RBI single in his only at bat in the big leagues early in the year, then went to New Orleans and almost hit .400 there, earning another stint in September with the big club. Brad Wilkerson once scored the winning run in the 9th by stealing 3rd and racing home when the throw went into left field.

It would be wrong to note the high-water mark and label the second half of the year a flop. The Nationals battled their way through crucial games down the stretch, losing more than they won, but always managing to stay in the race until that sad weekend in San Diego. I go into the winter with this memory: August in Philadelphia. Livan Hernandez beats the Phillies on the 15th, but you get the sense that the Nationals have fired their only bullet when they go down meekly in the next two, 4-3 and again 2-1 in a game that gives the Phils the wild card lead. Both games are saved by flamethrowing, practically unhittable closer Billy Wagner. It’s now the last game in the series, the second of a doubleheader that opened with the 2-1 effort, and with the Phillies in the lead, 4-0 in the 4th, you’re thinking about what it means to lose 3 out of 4 to drop from sight in the race. But the bullpen holds (again!) and there is hope starting in the 5th when Jose Vidro doubles two home and Nick Johnson follows with a double of his own to cut the lead to 4-3. Then in the 8th Jose Guillen doubles, and Preston Wilson singles him home and advances on the throw, and Carlos Baerga singles home Preston for a 5-4 lead, and now the Phillies learn that we have a closer, too. Cordero comes on early, with one out in the bottom of the 8th and a man on. He gets an inning-ending double play, then puts them down in order in the 9th and the Nats have escaped with a split. That’s your season. That’s the way I’ll remember it.

I have no idea what to expect from the Nats next year. We don’t even know who their owner, GM and manager will be. There is speculation that MLB might keep them ownerless during the free agent frenzy, to keep them from being competitive for one more year. But a .500 summer was never so much fun. Next year can bring us .400 or .600 ball—nothing will erase the memory of this year, the Nats’ first season in D.C.