Washington Nationals: They won’t stop the dance; Nor should they

Washington Nationals: They won’t stop the dance; Nor should they

Calvin Coolidge was a month from winning the White House in his own right, and J. Edgar Hoover was named director of the FBI. Rhapsody in Blue premiered in New York with composer George Gershwin himself at the piano, and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade stepped off for the first time. A couple of hundred miles north, IBM was founded. Hitler got five years for the Beer Hall Putsch and Al Capone’s brother got his from Chicago police.

So 95 MLB seasons isn’t 108 the Chicago Cubs waited from 1908 through 2016? Nobody cared in October, and the Washington Nationals probably don’t care now. Nor should they.

Daniel Hudson still savors having to holler for a lane to throw a few more bullpen warmups when Juan Soto‘s two-run wild card game single turned into three runs on a hit, an error, and Soto out between the bases for the side.

“They were jumping up and down, screaming. I yelled, ‘Get out of the way!’,” he told Boswell. “Nobody could hear me. That whole game, I’ve never been in a ballpark with energy around me like that.”

That was nothing compared to the high energy to come. And that was the top moment in retrospect for the guy who turned up the last man standing in Game Seven of the World Series, striking Michael Brantley out for game, set, and lease to the Promised Land. Just . . . wow.

“There are too many good things . . . especially because every single guy on the team had a really big moment somewhere along the way,” Boswell got from Max Scherzer, whose own favorite moments were the Nats’ three aces—himself, Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin—taking relief roles when needed; and, when manager Dave Martinez charged an umpire for an argument in Game Six.

Martinez himself isn’t going to forget that one. When he exploded over the umps calling runner interference on a play that saw Astros pitcher Brad Peacock throw errantly enough to pull first baseman Yuli Gurriel off the pad and into the path of Nats batter Trea Turner when a better throw would have left Gurriel unobstructed.

Two Nats coaches had to restrain Martinez, well aware that the skipper was only six weeks removed from a jolting heart procedure. Martinez only laughs and loves it now. As he told Boswell, “I threw Chip Hale away like a fly. My mother said, ‘You need to calm down.’ I said, “Do you realize what we’re playing for?’”