Note: there are many more obscenities in this article than those that usually appear on our site. If you find such things offensive, I recommend that you choose to read one of our other great articles by our amazing authors. Thanks.
I’ve spent the better part of a day trying to decide what to say, and if I wanted to say anything at all. I am still struggling with that, but I decided it was better for my mental health if I just started to type and see what came out. After all, that’s how I started getting into this in the first place when I started my first sports Nationals blog in 2010. What’s below are the ramblings of an incoherent person, one still feeling a wide range of emotions related to the Washington Nationals latest NLDS debacle, another baseball season gone by, and many years of closely following this team.
I am angry. It’s a ridiculous thing to be angry right now for a lot of reasons. I logically know this. The world has bigger problems than the Nats, once again, shitting the bed in the postseason and letting us all down for the fourth time in six years. But I am still irrationally fucking angry. I’m not mad at the players; it’s not like they weren’t trying. The same goes for Dusty Baker and the coaching staff and for Mike Rizzo and his front office. Everyone did the best they could. They are talented athletes and teachers and executives, as proven by the 97 wins they put up during the six-month long regular season.
But I am still so, so fucking angry. I haven’t been able to figure out why yet. I haven’t figured out why my rage at the situation caused me to leave my house in the sixth inning of Game Five and take my dog on a very, very long walk, only to come back inside and decide it would be better to go back outside and just sit and tune the game out. It wasn’t that I was sure of the result to come. I wasn’t. I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I tuned back in for the final six outs of the game (Sean Doolittle was predictably impressive), and then I deleted Twitter from my devices and went to bed.
While I am not angry with anyone inside the organization today, I sure am angry at a lot of narrative-feeding assholes out there. People who say the Nats are cursed, or that DC sports are destined for perpetual failure, or any of those other ridiculous things. Fuck you and your unenlightened, tired bullshit. It is just sports. There are no curses. One team beat another team over five games. Some day, the Nationals will do that, too. That is how it always works, and it probably will happen in the season we *don’t* expect it, not the one where we do.
With emotions in the Nats universe existing in a lot of states for a lot of people right now, ranging from sadness to indifference to anger to frustration to whatever else there is out there, I’m trying to not overreact. After all, I am the person who regularly says that people should enjoy the ride and that a 97 win season isn’t nothing, even if the postseason sucks. Well, this postseason sucked. I thought the Nats were going to make the World Series. I thought Cleveland was, too. Sometimes, nay often, the best teams don’t make it.
I’m not going to make some blanket statement today that I am done with baseball. That would be absurd. Hell, I’m probably going to sit on my couch and play MLB The Show tonight. But I’m also not sure I can continue to consume sports the way I have for the last several years. It’s not the 2017 Nationals’ fault, but it probably was the catalyst to make me recognize that I need to reserve such anger and frustration for bigger things than a postseason run. Maybe that does mean I need to consume sports differently than I have been. I’m not sure, but I’m going to spend a whole lot of time pondering that between now and February.
Finally, I do want to encourage everyone reading this to do one thing. Reject the tired narratives. It’s way, way too easy to look and say “DC sports suck, they don’t want it enough.” That’s bullshit, and if you have a logical bone in your body, you should know that’s true. Life isn’t that simple. Don’t be so lazy that you accept that as fact. It’s okay to be irrationally angry and frustrated while at the same time avoiding your inclination to be Chicken Little. I hope you succeed in doing so.
I don’t have a good way to end this, because it originally started as just a way for me to get all the frustration and anger out of my head, and then people asked me to post my thoughts. Well, these are my thoughts.
I hope it helped you to read them like it helped me to write them. I hope you are able to quickly find your peace after another gut- and heart-wrenching postseason series. I hope that some day soon, the day after the NLDS ends, this blog will host a celebratory piece, not one that sounds like this. Enjoy your offseason. We’re here for your baseball fix when you’re ready again.
Tags: Dusty Baker, Mike Rizzo, narratives, Nats, Washington Nationals
Stunned. Bummed.
Vehemently resentful towards Jerry Layne and Instant Replay in NY.
The narratives are a lack of creativity on the part of radio and tv.
Baseball fans and baseball writers know the most improbable moments are more probable than not in October.
I can say it felt worse last year. So much worse.
For the sake of my sanity I’m rooting for the Cubs & Yankees to be swept and that Astros to win it all.
Grew up an Indians fan, am a die hard Nats fan, still love baseball, still hold out hope every year and still believe that our turn is coming.
Thanks for posting sir.
Another great season. Remember Billy Beane saying that his shite didn’t work in the post-season? Five games is far too short to draw any conclusions from about really anything during the series.
The differences between MLB teams are far less than in basketball or football. If the Padres take three out of four from the Nats over a four game regular season series, do any of us really become surprised or indignant? No, because we know that baseball has a very large random component. Yes, the Nats have lost five coin flips in a row, but that happens with actual coins and more often than one might realize.
This was worse than the others because with the others I could blame mostly the players and managers. Storen, Gio and other pitchers blew the 6-0 lead in 2012. Davey didn’t help by not walking the 8th batter to force a pitching change in that 9th inning. He also should have yanked Gio earlier and let Stammen pitch longer. Williams and Storen, as well as hitters, blew it in 2014. Pitchers blew it in 2016 as did Dusty by not matching Scherzer against Kershaw in game 4 – both on short rest – rather than the injured Ross.
But this time, hitters, especially Taylor, were largely great in Game 5. Some pitchers like Doolittle and Albers were excellent. The decision to start Gio over Roark was questionable given that Gio wilts in big moments. But the main reason the nats lost was by umps giving the Cubs at least three runs. Every big decision went against the Nats.
Anyway, I wrote my own piece, with fewer cuss words, at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-i-give-damn-washington-nationals-win-playoff-series-shay/
I live in Denver, which is a difficult thing for a baseball fan. The Rockies are bad, their fans are all football fans so their rants about how to fix the Rockies usually center around getting a new QB* and who can sell tickets. And everyone here is from somewhere else, usually Chicago, so the pink Cubs hats abound. “Oh we were cursed” as if it took supernatural interference to lose 100 games year in and year out for decades. And they’re also stupid and SO DAMNED OBNOXIOUS. You have no idea.
Anyway, I am also enraged at the Nats’ futility. This is a better team, and from the awful “balls” called against Storen in 2012 to the 3 gifted calls to the Cubs, I find it exceptionally difficult to be a good sport about it and say “they just beat us and we’ll get ’em next time.” What are we supposed to do? Just beat everyone by 8 runs every game?
This post is both elequent and accurate in being unable to pinpoint the origin of all our anger. I think the anger originates from the season, players, the games etc feeling so ‘right’ -for a lack of a better word. The players are so likeable, there is a great chemistry, the media reporting (especially in the Washington post) built the team up and they just played exciting baseball to watch. They made baseball fun again!! But this is just baseball and it sux at times….and you’re right, one day we will get a bit further when our expectations aren’t the highest they’ve ever been in the nats history and this shitty end will be an important stepping stone and the glory will be all that more glorious.
Laying blame is not the way to get over the anger, but it sure is an easy way to channel the anger and feel momentarily happier. My coping mechanism is to tell myself that we should of won Game 1 and we were lucky to get to game 5…….