The Baseball World Series

I cant believe it.  The Washington Nationals won the World Series!  It was a record-setting sequence of games...

It was so weird.  As a Wild Card Team they played a one game contest against the other Wild Card Team, the Milwaukee Brewers.  The Nationals won.

Both of the best-of-five National League Division Series went the full five games. This was the first time since the 2012 NLDS that both series went to five games.

The Washington Nationals, winners of the National League Wild Card Game, upset the top-seeded Los Angeles Dodgers. The Nationals were 19–31 on May 23, then went 74–38 the rest of the season to finish in the top NL wild card spot.

They then played the St Louis Cardinals, winning in a 4 game sweep.

That meant they would play the Houston Astros, the team with the best record in MLB this year.

The Nationals won the 2 games at the Astro's stadium, suggesting an overpowering series.  But then, at home, the Nationals lost all 3 home games.  All the Astros had to do was win one of 2 games at home.

They didn't.  For the first time in MLB history, the home team lost every game.  From down 2-3 games and having to win both of the last 2 games on the road, the Nationals won both.

The Washington Nationals are the World Series winners.  On Saturday, the town held a parade.  Basically, all the roads were closed.  People went crazy. 

We are used to having winning teams here.  Yeah The Washington football won a few decades ago.  But suddenly, we have the Championship Hockey Team, the Championship Womens Basketball Team, and now the Championship Baseball Team.

I don't expect that will last, but it sure is enjoyable while it does!

Washington Nationals Baseball

The Washington Nationals, my local team, swept the St Louis Cardinals 4 games to none to win the National League Championship.  They will be playing in The World Series in a few days.  It is the first time a Washington baseball team has competed in The World Series since 1932.

The Washington teams have a long history of failure.  The joke used to be (playing on George Washington) "Washington, First in War, First in Peace, and Last in the American League". 

Teams moved away to other cities.  IIRC, one team became the Minnesota Twins, one later became the Texas Rangers, and the area was without a team for about 30 years.  I moved to this area the year the last team left, so I never had a local team.

The current team came from Montreal where the fanbase vanished after years of failure.  It was so bad, the MLB actually took over the team and moved them to Washington DC and sold them to a local wealthy family group in 2005.

The first years were difficult but the the new owners dedicated themselves to improved organization, new players,  and built a minor league farm farm system from scratch.  They traded for and drafted young players showing talent, hired creative coaches and managers, and treated players well with long contracts and fair pay.

The Nationals have experienced considerable success in recent years, winning division titles in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017, and winning the National League pennant tonight.  Some players have been with the team 10 years and new players have joined the team with great success.

One aspect of the team that impresses me is that the players enjoy playing together.  Good hits result in the player getting a "whole team dance" when he returns to the dugout.  And it doesn't matter if someone can't dance well so long as they try enthusiastically.  The excitement is contagious.

The Nationals started out the season badly.  They were 19-31 at one point and were written off by all the professional sports commentators.  And then things changed.  Injured players started returning.  The manager pushed 2 phrases:  "Tomorrow we go 1-0" and later "Stay in the Fight".

In August and September, the Nationals caught fire.  From failure, they became the hottest team in baseball.  They earned a Wild Card one-game playoff spot and won that.  Then they beat the LA Dodgers who had won 106 games (serious lots of wins). 

They earned the right to play the St Louis Cardinals who have a lot of experience in recent playoff games and won that series.  They not only won, they killed them.  They held the Cardinals to no earned runs for 35 innings.  The Cardinals got 4 runs tonight, but the Nationals had gotten 7 in the 1st inning. 

They will now play the winner of the NY Yankees and Houston Astros in the World Series.  I have no idea what will happen, of course.  But the Nationals have won something like 15 of their last 17 games and they are ready to play anyone.

If they lose, they lose (one team has to), but it has been a fabulous comeback from a bad start.  Whatever the outcome, I will remember this season.

Washington DC has a history of losing teams (other than the football team back in the 80s).  But the Washington Capitals Hockey team won the championship last year, the Washington Mystics Womens Basketball team won the championship last week, and now here come the Washington Nationals into the World Series...

It actually feels rather weird to think of Washington DC as a sports powerhouse...

I'm not actually much of a sports fan.  I don't watch games between top teams.  I do watch local sports teams when they are doing well.  Yeah, I'm a "Homie". 

But I'll watch every minute of the World Series games.  Because things like that don't come around often...

Sports

I'm not a general sports fan.  On major events like the US Football Superbowl and Baseball World Series, I sometimes watch the last half hour out of curiousity. 

But apparently, I'm a "Homie".  I watch the Washington National baseball team games and am glad when they win.  I watch my University of Maryland women's basketball team games (but not men's because that is just a crude elbow-flying cage fight).  And the US women's soccer team...

So, I've been enjoying watching the Washington Nationals baseball team crawl up from a bad start to .500 today.  They had a tough start with several starting players injured.  But now that they are returning, the team has been doing much better and may even be in contender status by the end of the season.

Why this matters to me is a mystery.  I actually don't care a whit about my State University (a paper degree on a wall proving that I wasn't TOO stupid to get one), and professional teams trade players like brokers trade stocks. 

I suppose that part of it is that they are winning.  But part of it is that they play a game in a way I understand.  Not that the women players are soft (any of them could beat the crap out of me at almost anything), but they play in a way I "get".  More skill than elbows... 

And the Washington Nationals baseball organization seems to value skill more than power.  I admire that.

So for whatever it is worth, here it was...  Just some thoughts.

Baseball

I've never been one to sit and watch sports on TV.  When I was younger and more active, I would always rather play than watch, and now that my joints creak a bit, I generally neither play nor watch.  The local professional teams have always had a habit of folding when the going got tough, which is frustrating to watch.

But the Washington Nationals baseball team has been doing really well this year and they have a tendency to WIN those tough close games at the end, so I've gotten a bit more into a watching habit.  It also helps that they play most of their games at night just as I'm sitting down to dinner (when I'm going to watch "some" TV anyway).

They've won 7 games in a row, something like the last 6 of 7 games have been won by 1 run late in the game, and the last 3 games were "walk-offs" (which I think means that, as the home team, they score the winning run in the bottom of the 9th inning and don't even have to complete the inning).  So they just "walk off" the field in the middle of the last inning.

And their fielding is a delight to watch.  They make plays I never even heard of a decade ago.  Say there are runners on 1st and 2nd base.  The batter hits a ball to the 1st baseman.  Traditionally, the 1st baseman would just run to 1st base with the ball and force 1 out there while the runners advanced.  But no, the 1st baseman throws to 3rd, who throws back to first and its a double play!  I even saw a double play from a ball that went into the outfield!

I'm amazed!  And a fan who is becoming more knowledgeable with each game I watch.

Washington DC Pro Sports

Well, actually, the only two I really bother with are baseball and football.  My apologies to fans of other sports, but basketball is too much a contact sport these days, soccer is too boring to watch (and I even played it), hockey is unfathomable to me, tennis just doesn't seem to work as a team sport, and my interest in my alma mater (Univ of MD) is pretty much gone since they are moving to an out-of-area conference where they will be cellar-dwellers for a decade until they leave in shame.

And neither of the two I have followed are looking promising.  The Nationals are setting themselves on fire at the very end of the season, but it's too little too late.  Something like a 5% chance of them getting into the playoffs.  And with Atlanta coming to town next, that should pretty much end it. 

The Washington football team (with the team name I will not use) looks like it is setting up its fans for a seriously depressing season of falling behind at first and mounting a great comeback attempt that falls short each game.

So it looks like my evenings will be free of baseball until the World Series and the next 14 Sundays will be free for shopping at "guy-stores ".  Seriously, the best possible time to shop at a home project store is during a local NFL game!

Snowblower

My purchase of a fancy snowblower in October has been paying off well!  Here around Washington DC, we have had three 1" snowfalls so far.  We barely missing some serious snowfalls!  I take all the credit for that.

The snow demons KNOW I now have a serious snowblower and they avoid the area just to spite my desire to try it out...

It's like when I watch a local sports team.  If I watch, they lose.  If I don't watch, they win.  If they are winning and I turn on the game in the middle, they immediately fall apart and lose.

So my ownership of the snowblower should provide assurance to the rest of the DC area.

Cash donations from grateful local residents are encouraged...

UPDATE:  I just heard that 71% of the US is covered with snow.  Consider THAT you people who deny climate change...  The only State free of it is Florida and their usual crops are dying.

Sports

I don't live and die by the ups and downs of local sports teams.  I've lived here for 42 years and I doubt many of the team players have.  I know it is a job to them and that they get moved around.

But I also know that many of them try very hard to play well at hard games.  Professional level athletics are cruel.  In any sport, a few bits of bad luck can send a career off to another city, or to a car dealership.  Those people get banged up, beat around, and criticized for failing to do perfectly the things that over 99.99% of us could not even attempt to do.  Being a pro athlete is a hard and chancy life.

So I want to do something that most people won't do.  I'm going to thank a bunch of basically out-of-town guys for doing something they are highly paid to do.  I'm thanking the Washington Redskins football team for losing to Dallas today.

Not because they lost, but because so many of them tried so hard to win.  They came so close to winning that game on a team that has so many problems.  I respect that. 

I won't mention any particular problems.  Football plays are so interconnected that it is very difficut to single out any one problem.  If the offensive line is better, the quarterback has more time to throw a good pass.  If the receivers are better, they can catch imperfect passes.  If the quarterback is better, the recievers have a better chance to catch passes, etc.  No one player makes or breaks a team.  Its called a team for a reason...

And I'm tired of everyone screaming for the head of some poor kicker who is doing one of the weirdest athletic events possible - shoving an oblate ball through a narrow place, using his foot, and depending on 2 other guys to arrange the launch point...

Same on defense.

So I am thanking THE TEAM  for a great effort yesterday in a loss.  They got into a hole, and they fought their way out of it.  They came from far behind to tie the game toward the end.  They gave it their best.  They lost.  Well, someone has to lose.

They deserve applause for the effort.  Not for just showing up, for the effort.  I didn't see any person on the team who didn't try hard to win from the first second to the last.  That's what makes me follow a team.  Win, lose, or draw, if you try your best, I will follow you.  As I will support friends, family, and co-workers who try their  best...  We all owe support to anyone who does the best they can.

I played some high schools sports.  I was a 3 letter athlete.  I know what is is like to stand out on a field, exhausted, in the rain, knowing that you are losing the game in spite of the best you had to give.  And people booing from the sidelines...

I've kicked a soccer ball into midfield knowing that I was going to get smashed by someone equally desperate to prevent me from doing so.  I have had my ankle kicked apart so badly that when I landed on it on the next step, I could feel the joint pushed back in.  And couldn't walk for a week.

I've made a 20' putt that helped the team win.  And missed a 3' one that lost a match.


I've hit a tennis serve that aced a match.  And double faulted one that lost it.

For what it's worth, I have missed checkmates that would have won games and found moves that saved lost situations.  There is no fixed law of competition.  The best player doesn't ALWAYS win.  And the worst doesn't ALWAYS lose.  That's why you play the games...  Luck can be cruel.  Or wonderful.

So I think I understand the pro athletes a little bit.

So Washington 30, Dallas 33...  Its OK, because every one of you tried your best.  And I think I sense a team forming.

Superbowl Game

I'll admit that football is not my favorite sport.  I'm more an individual player, so I prefer baseball, tennis, soccer, or golf.  And I prefer to play rather than watch.

But I do like the Superbowl ads (not many outstanding ones this year) and it seemed both teams were evenly matched, so I watched most of the game.  It WAS a good game and neither team has to feel too badly about it.  Both played well.  A little change of luck and the results could have been reversed.

I rooted for the Saints.  It was their first Superbowl appearance, and besides, I felt New Orleans needed a bit of happiness.  So "Hurray" for the New Orleans Saints.  Let the good times roll...