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D.C. traffic jams don’t jam the Astros

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2019-10-26 GeorgeSpringerCarlosCorrea.jpg

George Springer and Carlos Correa celebrate the Astros’ Game Three win Friday night.

The Washington Post‘s nonpareil baseball essayist, Thomas Boswell, couldn’t contain his joy. World Series Game Three loomed in Nationals Park, and Boswell—who never kept quiet about wanting to see baseball back in Washington in all the years it was absent—was almost beside himself.

“With every post-season game,” he tweeted, “the Nats crowd arrives earlier & earlier. I just looked up and realized the place is full—FULL—and it’s 30 minutes before first pitch. And I don’t even know how long it’s been that way. Metro stop & Half Street jammed, all red, hours before game.”

And well enough before Nats Park jammed full, the word came forth that Donald Trump wouldn’t be invited to throw out a ceremonial first pitch, even though President Tweety planned to attend Game Five if a Game Five proved necessary. The usual suspects on one side hemmed, the usual suspects on the other side hawed, but just because a man is a screwball doesn’t necessarily mean he can throw one.

Finally, both sides came out of their dugouts to line up on the foul lines. The Nats played the gracious hosts and laid the red carpets out from both dugouts for the Astros and the Nats to trod on their way out to the lines. The appropriately named church singer D.C. Washington sang “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Then Astros leadoff hitter George Springer gave Nats catcher Kurt Suzuki a good-luck pat on the chest protector as he checked in at the plate. The two exchanged friendly glances. And from that moment until the final out, we learned that the Astros are less unnerved by Washington traffic jams than Washingtonians are about Dupont Circle rush hours.

It proved easier for the clunkiest SUV to pass through the eye of a pileup than it did for the Nats to cash in all but one of the men they planted on the pillows en route the Astros’ 4-1 Game Three win Friday night. All the adoring home racket in the ballpark couldn’t coax the Nats into cashing in nobody from second base or better all night long, any more than all the adoring racket in Minute Paid Park stopped them from bushwhacking the Astros in Games One and Two.

This time, the Astros’ bats produced a strong enough version of the ones that delivered the American League’s third-most runs in the regular season, even if they weren’t yet total destroyers again. The Astros in the field made it look as though Game Two was just a one-in-a-thousand nightmare. And the Astro bullpen, pressed into service after four and a third innings, actually out-pitched starter Zack Greinke.

In other words, the Astros made this World Series look good, close, and tight all over again, even if the road team is doing the winning so far. And they guaranteed themselves at least a Game Five with Gerrit Cole on the mound. But the better news for the Astros was rediscovering their better selves just in time.

Overcoming 2-0 and now 2-1 posteseason deficits is a lot simpler than being in the hole 3-0. And the Astros have been 2-1 before. They won a World Series two years ago after falling into such a hole. They can afford to get their Alfred E. Neuman on now. What—us worry?

Which is exactly how they came into Game Three after a players’ meeting following the Game Two disaster. But don’t kid yourselves. They didn’t win Game Three because of any sort of rah-rah or black magic, even if they might have been tempted to rock around the cauldron in the clubhouse beforehand. They won Game Three because they’re still one helluva baseball team.

“The key was that we stayed confident,” said Jose Altuve, who wears the sash as the Astros’ true heart and soul, and who continued his own solid hitting pace, told reporters after the game. “We didn’t panic. Yes, the first two games, we didn’t do some things, but we keep believing in us. And guess what? Tonight we went out there and we make it happen.”

They made it happen and the Nats didn’t. The Nats became the first World Series team to go 0-for-10 with men on second or better in a Fall Classic game since the 2008 Phillies and the seventeenth in Series history overall. The good news for the Nats is that those Phillies went on to win the Series, anyway.

They’ve been in worse places this year and lived to tell about them. But they also have to remind themselves that the Astros weren’t going to look like a lost tribe forever. The Astros didn’t put up three straight 100+ win seasons or get to shoot for a second World Series trophy in three years by cowering after any pair of back-to-back losses.

They also loved getting to play what their future Hall of Fame pitcher Justin Verlander called old-time baseball. “Tension, traffic, strategy, decisions,” Verlander told reporters Friday night. “People were standing up most of the time. These are the two best teams in baseball at putting the ball into play. It should be like this.”

Give the Astros gifts, though, and they will say, “Thank you, sir,” before either doing what Astros usually do or making sure the other guys don’t. And Nats manager Dave Martinez gave them a carnation wrapped in a big red bow almost halfway through the game.

The Nats’ Game Three starter Anibal Sanchez gritted and ground his way through four innings, three runs, and no small volume of Astro peskiness, then got a small reward when Ryan Zimmerman led off the bottom of the fourth with a full-count walk and, a strikeout later, Victor Robles shot one fair past third baseman Alex Bregman and down the left field line for an RBI triple.

But Sanchez was due up next with the absence of a designated hitter in the National League park. Perhaps even the Astros couldn’t believe Martinez elected to let Sanchez hit rather than pinch hit for him despite having five serviceable-at-minimum bats on the Game Three bench, namely Matt Adams, Brian Dozier, Yan Gomes, Howie Kendrick, and Mr. Baby Shark himself, Gerardo Parra.

And, despite the fact that, unlike Greinke, who handles a bat very well, Sanchez with a bat is tantamount to having Lucky Luciano heading a task force to battle organised crime. And for all Sanchez’s heroics to open the National League Championship Series, he looked only too human Friday night with the Astros hitting his pitches firmly enough and knowing opponents hit .288 against him the third time around the order all year.

Yet with rookie Tanner Rainey warming in the pen all inning, Martinez let Sanchez hit. Then, he bunted foul for a strikeout and Trea Turner couldn’t push Robles home. And then Sanchez went out to work the top of the fifth, surrendering a run. Then, he went out for the sixth.

With one out Astros catcher Robinson Chirinos swung for the history books with a high liner off the left field foul pole net for what proved the Astros’ insurance run. It made number three in the first World Series ever to feature three catchers hitting bombs while in games as catchers. Suzuki and the Astros’ Martin Maldonado also did it, both in Game Two, and Maldonado after he replaced Chirinos behind the dish late in the game.

For just about the first time in the Series it left Martinez looking foolish. He had a chance to let bigger men do the clutch hitting in the bottom of the fourth, but he may have let his edginess about most of his bullpen not named Fernando Rodney, Daniel Hudson, or Sean Doolittle overcome his need in the moment.

When Grandpa Rodney, forgotten man Joe Ross, and apparent former arsonist Wander Suero pitched three and two thirds’ shutout ball following Sanchez’s evening-ending walk to pinch hitter Kyle Tucker (right after Chirinos’s net shot), it only amplified Martinez’s temporary brain vapor.

Now it almost seemed like a too-distant memory that Robles stole a first-inning run from the Astros when, after Springer opened the game beating out a nubber toward the mound, Altuve sent him to the rear end of the field where he reached up and back and made a twist-and-shout one-handed catch on the track just in front of the fence.

And it wasn’t as though the Astros battered the Nats into submission, Chirinos’s blast to one side. With Carlos Correa aboard on a one-out double down the left field line in the top of the second, Josh Reddick dumped a quail into shallow left that neither Turner out from shortstop nor Juan Soto coming in from left could reach as Correa alertly got his Road Runner on. It didn’t hurt him that Soto’s throw home took off like an airplane and sailed above both his catcher and his pitcher backing the play.

Altuve tore a double down the left field line leading off the top of the third that gave Soto trouble and an error when the ball rolled under the pads on the walls and Soto couldn’t find the handle soon enough to stop Altuve from making third. Then Brantley whacked a grounder that took a classic ricochet off the mound, upside Sanchez’s right side, and let Altuve practically cruise home.

And in the fifth, after Springer opened first pitch, first out on a smash to shortstop, Altuve hit a liner that bounced into left near the line for another double, and Brantley settled for old-fashioned through-the-infield hitting instead of playing Ricochet Rabbit, shooting a clean single through the right side to score the third Astro run.

Sanchez’s grit didn’t stop him from looking nothing like the same junkyard dog who somehow got thatclose to no-hitting the Cardinals in the NLCS. Greinke’s outing wasn’t a lot prettier despite him limiting the Nats to one run, and times enough he looked to be running on wings and prayers.

So let’s count the ways the Nats made a guy who wasn’t having the easiest night of his life, plus the Astro bullpen, feel as though they were just taking leisurely strolls through an overcrowded Union Station:

* Anthony Rendon fought to a seventh pitch and banged a two-out double to left in the bottom of the first, but birthday boy Juan Soto grounded out for the side.

* Asdrubal Cabrera and Zimmerman opened the bottom of the second with back-to-back singles . . . but Suzuki looked at an eighth-pitch third strike after three fouls on 2-2, and Robles dialed Area Code 5-4-3.

* Turner and Adam Eaton with one out in the bottom of the third walked and nailed a base hit to left, respectively, and one out later Soto worked out a walk for ducks on the pond. Then Cabrera struck out on maybe the single filthiest breaking ball Greinke’s thrown all year long.

* Eaton led off the bottom of the fifth with a single and, two outs later, Cabrera lined a double toward the right field corner. That’s when Greinke’s night ended and Astro reliever Josh James’s would begin and end by putting Zimmerman into the 0-2 hole—not to mention spinning hard into a face plant when a fastball up and in got a little too far in, a pitch that wasn’t even close to intentional—letting Zimmerman escape to a full count, then striking him out swinging.

“Sometimes you just have to tip your cap,” Zimmerman said after the game. “3-2 changeup. That’s a pretty good pitch right there.” When Chirinos asked Zimmerman if he was all right after the unexpected spinout, Zimmerman still on the ground simply replied, “Man, that was a close one.”

* Parra pinch hit for Suzuki in the bottom of the sixth—to a rousing chorus of “Baby Shark” and the stands doing the shark clap ravenously—and struck out so furiously he walked back to the dugout fuming. But Astro reliever Brad Peacock walked Robles, and then Martinez sent Adams, a power hitter, up to hit . . . for Rodney. Adams walked, pushing Peacock out and Will Harris into the game. And Harris dispatched Turner—who fouled one off the family jewels and spent a few moments on the ground in less than a fine mood—with a swinging strikeout, before Eaton grounded out for the side.

* And Kendrick finally appeared in the bottom of the eighth to pinch hit . . . for Ross. He shot a one-out single into right center. But Astro reliever Joe Smith caught Robles looking at strike three and got Yan Gomes, who’d taken over for Suzuki in the seventh, to ground out to Bregman on the dead run.

That’s what the Astros call navigating Washington traffic jams. It’s what the Nats ought to call jaywalking. Not the way to see an eight-game postseason winning streak end. Not the most advisable way of transit when the Astros finally get something even mildly resembling their normal Astros on.

The only real Game Three nuisance other than the Nats’ inability to cash in their chips was plate umpire Gary Cederstrom. This was one issue on which both the Astros and the Nats could agree. Cederstrom called too many balls strikes and too many strikes balls against both sides, enough to make them wonder whether the strike zone would finally shrink to the size of a guitar pick before the game ended.

Astro manager A.J. Hinch looked like a genius for setting his table in order that the Nats’ best bats wouldn’t see much more than Greinke and the two best Astro relievers, Harris and closer Roberto Osuna. He’s going to have to look like Casey Stengel in Game Four.

Lacking the viable fourth starter the Nats happen to have in their Game Four starter Patrick Corbin, Hinch is going bullpen Saturday night with Jose Urquidy, a promising rookie, to open. And as solid as the pen was, the Nats did make most of them work a little harder even if they couldn’t get anyone home with a Secret Service escort Friday night.

But yes, folks, we have an honest-to-God World Series again. Anxious enough to prove falling short of the Series last year was a mere aberration, the Astros made sure of it.

They didn’t have to play like their regular-season juggernaut to do it. All they had to do was what anyone who’s ever lived in Washington for any length of time (I have) can tell you has all the simplicity of a spider web—navigate a traffic jam.

Toil and trouble

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2019-10-25 NationalsPark

Preparing Nationals Park for the World Series. The Richter scale may not stand a chance against the racket of fans whose city hasn’t seen World Series play in eons.

Believe it. Even if the Astros and Astroworld don’t, quite, yet. These Astros went from 107 regular season wins and the heaviest-favoured World Series team ever to looking as invulnerable as a sand castle. And if Jimi Hendrix was right—And so castles made of  sand/fall into the sea/eventually—then the Astros may be shark bait. May.

The Nationals Park public address system people must be sorely tempted to soundtrack Game Three’s preliminaries, and much of the game itself, with a top ten list including not just “Baby Shark” which became the Nats’ unofficial season theme but “Mack the Knife” (when that shark bites/with his teeth, babe/scarlet billows start to spread) and the theme from Jaws.

Maybe the Astros will look back upon Games One and Two and laugh, one of these days. They’d prefer that laugh to come when they’re hoisting their second World Series trophy in three seasons. But they just might have to wait until the sting of a Nationals World Series conquest wears off.

Because if Justin Verlander is to be believed, and he’s not exactly known as a man who tells it like it isn’t, the Astros are extremely vulnerable no matter what they believe otherwise.

“Lot of baseball left in this series,” said third baseman Alex Bregman, who’d love nothing more than to atone for his feeble Game One bat and his uncharacteristic Game Two fielding mishaps, after Game Two. “We’re going to go to Washington with our heads held high. Ready to go and get after it. We’ve lost two games before. I remember when we lost three in New York and next thing you know we’re in the World Series in ’17. We’ve been here before.”

Except that the Yankees weren’t exactly strangers to them then or last week and weekend. Listen to Verlander and the Astros sound as though they were handed a few very rude surprises.

“I guess I hadn’t really paid that much attention because they’re in the National League, but you start looking at their lineup and kind of prepping for them and I think they’re way better than what people give them credit for,” said the future Hall of Famer. “Obviously those guys in the middle get a lot of headlines, but the rest of that lineup, they can hit. And they work you. They have good approaches, they change their approach. They adjust throughout the middle of the game, at-bat to at-bat. It’s a grind.”

Listen to shortstop Carlos Correa, though, and at first the Astros seem to think it’s just a matter of time before the Nats go under the thunder of the great Houston juggernaut. “We’ve already talked as a team,” he said. “We’ve got to go out there, keep our heads up and play good baseball. Take care of business. We’re such a great team that we’re not going to let a 2-0 deficit get to us.”

Maybe not, but great teams have let 2-0 deficits get to them in the short- or long-run alike.

The 1914 Philadelphia Athletics were a steamroller. But they went from a 2-0 deficit to steamrolled out of that World Series in the Miracle Braves’s sweep. The 1954 Indians destroyed most of the American League (the Yankees won a measly 103) but went from a 2-0 Series-opening deficit to getting destroyed by the Giants. The 1963 Yankees flattened their league and out-won their Series opponent but got flattened in four straight by the Koufax-Drysdale Dodgers. And the 1990 Athletics were supposed to bury that year’s unlikely Reds—until they didn’t, and got buried in four straight.

Of course, the reverse is true, too. The 1986 Mets overthrew a 2-0 Series-opening deficit to win in seven; the 1996 Yankees overthrew one to beat the Braves in six. The Astros aren’t yet dreaming the impossible dream. But the way the Series has gone so far the Nats may be not just dreaming the impossible dream but living it.

And Correa is one Astro who knows it. Because one minute he’ll tell you the Astros are such a great team but the next minute he’ll admit, “I feel like we haven’t been good at all, throughout the whole playoffs. That’s got to change. We’re running out of time. That’s got to change now and we’ve got to go out there and score a lot of runs.”

Which won’t be simple now. Not against these Nats. Not with Patrick Corbin lurking for Game Four in Nationals Park and, if necessary, Max (the Knife) Scherzer for Game Five.

Not with the Nationals bullpen having gone from arsonists to fire department. Not with the Nats having penetrated the reputedly impenetrable Verlander and Gerrit Cole. On the season, as exhumed by ESPN’s David Schoenfield, Verlander fanned 55 percent and Cole 60 percent of batters they took to two strikes. In the Series: the two combined have done it to only 36 percent.

Not with the Nats’ not-so-secret weapon, Game Three starter Anibal Sanchez. The Astros don’t quite have a fourth starter, and their Game Three starter Zack Greinke has been only too vulnerable this postseason. The Nats don’t have to burn some of their bullpen in Game Four when they can send Corbin—who threw one relief inning in Game One and warmed but wasn’t needed in Game Two—against an Astro bullpen game in Game Four on reasonable rest.

And, not with what Astros catcher Martin Maldonado admits, like Verlander, is one of the Nats’ secret weapons: “I would say everything that they’ve hit is a hit.”

Smash hit, so far as Washington’s concerned. And with the Nats playing since late May on the philosophy of going 1-0 day by day, having a ball doing it, and not worrying about tomorrow until tomorrow comes, they went from life support to halfway to the Promised Land.

And Nationals Park, in a city that hasn’t seen a major league World Series since 1933, or a major league World Series-winning team since 1924, or any World Series since the final Negro Leagues World Series (the Washington-based Homestead Grays won it) in 1948, is liable to be making the loudest and most vibrating racket in Washington history.

“Forget the decibel meter,” then-ABC broadcaster Tim McCarver said during a 1988 Series game in the late, unlamented Metrodome in Minneapolis. “Get the Richter scale.” In Nats Park on Friday night the Richter scale may not have a chance.

Baseball fans love to ponder the postseason magic factor and the superstitious natures of a lot of ballplayers. Whatever the mojo is now, the Nats happen to have it working. Just don’t ask relief pitcher Sean Doolittle, as Yahoo! Sports‘s Tim Brown did. “We’re not making live sacrifices or doing anything like that,” Doolittle deadpanned. Not even involving sharks, baby or otherwise.

And even though they’ve made a very public show of wearing their navy alternate jerseys most of the postseason—and are 9-0 doing so—they won’t admit there’s any voodoo, black magic, wizardry, or Grandpa Munster in the dungeon working in the background.

“I’ve been saying for a long time it’s my favorite uniform,” shortstop Trea Turner tells Brown, “but it doesn’t mean we’re going to win or lose in it.” Oho, but you’ve won nine straight in it this postseason and haven’t lost in it yet. Lucy, you got some splainin’ to do. No, she don’t. And the Nats won’t.

Any more than the Astros explained any extraterrestrial mojo they’ve had working from 2017 through now. Like the Nats, the Astros sometimes have a hard enough time explaining that all it takes is a collection of very good baseball players with brains to match their bats and gloves to get to a World Series. They think they don’t have to remind you of Branch Rickey’s Law: Luck is the residue of design.

The Astros might have gone along with the team-of-destiny bit in 2017 but it’s not like it was a spiritual mantra. The Nats have fun with their Baby Sharking and dugout dancing and clubhouse partying, but it’s not as though they’re doing anything deeper with it aside from doing the shark bite gestures with their hands when reaching on extra base hits or—as Juan Soto did after his mammoth Game One homer—crossing the plate.

If you won’t see the Nats performing clubhouse sacrifices, you’re not liable to see the Astros huddled over a cauldron in the clubhouse chanting, “Double, double, toil and trouble/Astros rise and Nats bubble,” either. Even if a 2-0 Series deficit might tempt them to trying to slip a witches’ brew into the Nats’ Gatorade cooler.

The Nats don’t have to be told the Astros have hit into enough moments of just plain horrible luck, like finding a Nat with a glove ready to meet any ball hit by any Astro. The Astros don’t have to be told anymore that the Nats are babies in shark terms only, even if they looked more like Jaws in Game Two.

But God help them if they run into Animal Sanchez Friday night—the junkyard dog who throws slop at any speed and gets away with it, not the old man who actually pondered retirement until he didn’t and the Nats adopted him from the Braves’ shelter.

And, if Greinke doesn’t go deep in Game Three or keep the Nats’ frisky bats out of whack with a good enough brew of off-speed ingredients. And, if key bats like Bregman, Correa, George Springer, and Yuli Gurriel don’t return and stay at the chef’s table. And, if Jose Urquidy—liable to start their bullpen Game Four and showing promise enough so far—falters early enough.

It’ll take a lot more than a baboon’s blood and shark repellent to cool the Nats off, then.

Baby sharks? Try Jaws.

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BruceTheShark02Well, World Series Game Two was a pitching duel after each side hung up a two-spot in their halves of the first inning. Justin Verlander and Stephen Strasburg ground and gritted and got their Houdinis on.

And then came the top of the seventh. A six-run Nationals inning that will live in Astro infamy and Nats legend. Deal with the Astros’ home field advantage? The Nats obliterated it with a little help from their spring training complex friends.

Baby Sharks? On Wednesday night the Astros got swallowed by Jaws. And in the top of the seventh they helped feed the beast that ran them out of their home aquarium, 12-3. And lost back-to-back games at home for only the second time since July.

“Reset, then come into an environment that we know is going to be pretty crazy,” said Verlander about the coming Game Three in Nationals Park, “and be ready to play baseball like we know we can.”

But there’s suddenly the nagging fear that the Astros may be the only ones who still know they can play that kind of baseball. They didn’t play it Game Two, against a team who shares with them both baseball’s best play since 24 May and a taste for making the other guys pay for their mistakes with usurious interest.

“Where would you like me to start?” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said as a reporter at the postgame presser asked about the top of the seventh. The one that only began with Nats catcher Kurt Suzuki’s leadoff home run.

Things actually began near the end of the bottom of the sixth, when the Astros had Yuli Gurriel on second with a double, rookie Yordan Alvarez aboard on an intentional walk, a game still tied at two, and two out.

That’s when Hinch elected to pinch hit for Verlander’s season-long personal catcher Robinson Chirinos, who’d shepherded Verlander through five shutout innings just the way Suzuki shepherded Strasburg through five and two thirds, with escape acts being the order of the hour as often as not no matter how much stronger the pair got after their two-run firsts.

Hinch sent up Kyle Tucker, figuring that his being lefthanded might have a better shot against the righthanded Strasburg. But Tucker helped Strasburg squirm out of the first-and-second chains by fighting his way into a called third strike. Then, Hinch sent Martin Maldonado out to catch Verlander for the seventh and for the first time all year long. And after Verlander served Suzuki an opening ball one a little upstairs, Suzuki served the next pitch richocheting off the edge of a large Lexus sign behind the Crawford Boxes.

“We’ve had our battles,” said Suzuki in a post-game on-field interview, and he took a lifetime 14-for-42 jacket with a pair of doubles against Verlander into Game Two. “He’s gotten me sometimes, sometimes I get him. He’s a great pitcher, and you’ve got to really zone in on one spot. He doesn’t make many mistakes, and when you get a pitch to hit you can’t miss it.”

“First-pitch curveball for a ball, and then fastball that was right there for him,” said Verlander, who more or less denied that being switched to Maldonado threw him off since he’d thrown to Maldonado “a lot” in 2018. “In the regular season, you’re like, ‘OK, here it is, hit it, right down the middle.’ In the World Series, it’s a different story. You can’t really ever do that. You still got to hit your spots.”

And if you don’t, you get hit. For distance, even. By a catcher whose body lately threatens to demand donation to forensic anthropology.

Then Verlander lost Victor Robles to a full count walk and his night was over. Becoming the first in Show to nail 200 career postseason strikeouts, breaking John Smoltz’s record of 199 when he fanned Robles in the top of the second, would have meant a lot more if the Astro bullpen didn’t perform an almost-from-nowhere, note-perfect impersonation of . . . the Nats’ bullpen as it looked for most of the regular season.

Hinch reached for Ryan Pressly and Trea Turner reached on another full count walk. And then the merry-go-round started going round enough that maybe, just maybe, the Astros were caught a little off guard and a lot more off balance.

Adam Eaton dropped a near-perfect bunt in front of the mound to push the runners to second and third, but Anthony Rendon—knowing the Nats wouldn’t pitch around him to get to Juan Soto—flied out to shallow center. Up came Soto. With the Astros having issued not a single intentional walk all year long to that point.

This may or may not qualify as calling the repairman when it isn’t broken, but Hinch ordered Soto walked on the house in favour of pitching to Howie Kendrick, who’s not exactly a simple out but isn’t exactly Juan Soto, his division series-conquering grand slam notwithstanding. The Astros saw more than enough of Soto’s mayhem in Game One. Not a second time.

It turned out to be the most powerful free pass of all time. For the Nats, that is.

Kendrick bounced one toward the hole at shortstop. Astros third baseman Alex Bregman scrambled left. He knocked the ball down to stop it from shooting through, then picked it up. Then, he dropped it. All hands safe and Robles home with a fourth Nats run. Then Asdrubal Cabrera, playing second for the Nats with Kendrick the DH in Houston, lined a two-run single up the pipe.

Up stepped Ryan Zimmerman, the Nats’ first base elder. Ball one hit the dirt and shot past Maldonado behind the plate allowing the runners to move back to second and third. Then Zimmerman on 2-2 bounced one weakly up the third base side and Bregman hustled in, barehanded the ball, but threw wildly down the line allowing Kendrick and Cabrera to come home and Zimmerman to take second.

Minute Maid Park turned into a graveside service. These were the Astros who entered the World Series as the heaviest favourites in history? The 107-game winners who took no prisoners and laid all in front of them to waste? And if the crowd couldn’t believe what they’d just seen, the Astros couldn’t believe it even more.

“They came into our building and played two really good games,” said Hinch at the presser. “We’re going to have to sleep off the latter one-third of the game. I don’t want to lump this into a horrible game. It was a horrible three innings. It wasn’t a horrible game.”

Well, it didn’t start that way, even if Rendon slashed a two-run double off Verlander and the left field wall with one out in the top of the first and Bregman hit a two-run homer off the back wall of the Crawfords in the bottom of the first.

If the Nats couldn’t cash in their few chances against Verlander over the following five innings, the Astros weren’t exactly doing much more to Strasburg other than periodically pinning him to the wall those same five innings only to discover he had more than a few escape routes to travel.

“You know it’s going to be a storm out there,” said Strasburg during one post-game interview, the man whose younger self might have fumed the rest of the game over Bregman’s first-inning bomb but whose mature self just shakes it off. “You’re going to weather it.”

And to think that the whole seventh-inning disaster was launched by a catcher who’d been 2-for-25 this postseason and 5-for-his-last-39 overall. The Nats generally don’t care who gets it started as long as it gets started, but Los Viejos, as Max Scherzer calls their veterans, have as much fun as the young’uns at it.

“Just trying to go out there and play for the guy next to you,” Strasburg eventually told MLB Network’s MLB Tonight after the game. “It was a hard-fought battle there. And they made me work every single inning.”

Maybe so, but the Astros are hitting .176 (3-for-17) with men on second or better so far in the Series, while the Nats are hitting .333 (7-for-21) with them. The Nats have out-scored the Astros 16-7 and hit a collective .307/.366/.547 slash line to the Astros’ .257/.321/.432 slash.

Both sides’ pitching is missing bats—eighteen strikeouts for the Nats, twenty for the Astros so far—but the Astros’ biggest two starters, Verlander and Gerrit Cole, pack a 6.22 Series ERA so far to the Nats’ big two’s (Scherzer, Strasburg) 3.30 Series ERA. It was June when the Astros last lost back-to-back Verlander and Cole starts, and those two pitchers hadn’t been saddled with losses on their ledgers back-to-back since August . . . 2018.

And thanks to STATS, LLC, we know that Verlander and Cole have done something no pair of same-season, same-team 20-game winners has done in 55 years: lost the first two games in a World Series. The last to do that: Hall of Famers Don Drysdale (Game One) and Sandy Koufax (Game Two) in 1965.

Since those Dodgers went on to win in seven, with Koufax throwing a pair of shutouts, you don’t need me to tell you the Astros would like to do likewise and the Nats would prefer they not. Right now, the odds of the Astros doing it have fallen to the basement and the Nats’ odds of stopping them have hit the observation deck.

Some might have thought the Nats blew the Astros the loudest raspberry in the southwest, when they sent Fernando Rodney out to pitch the bottom of the seventh Wednesday night, and he navigated a leadoff walk into a force at second, a pop out behind the infield, and a ground out to first. Rodney, after all, is the only active player in the Show who may have been an eyewitness to the Red Sea crossing.

Nah. Even with their by-now-too-famous dugout dancings after home runs big and small, the Nats aren’t that crass. But you could forgive Astroworld if it believes the Dancing Nats—whose theme song by now ought to be the Archie Bell & the Drells soul classic, “I Can’t Stop Dancing”—have a merciless streak of their own when their sharks smell blood in or on the Astro waters.

With reliever Josh James held over to open the top of the eighth, Maldonado couldn’t hold onto strike three to Robles leading off. A strikeout to Turner later, Eaton couldn’t hold off sending James’s first-pitch fastball right down the middle right onto a high line ending in the right field seats.

And after making his way through the Nats’ now-customary dugout dance, he plopped onto the bench next to Kendrick, where the pair of them began thrusting their arms out and barking like seals beating their flippers after being thrown particularly succulent fish.

Then Michael A. Taylor, inserted into center field in the bottom of the eighth, stood in to hit against Astros reliever Chris Devenski with one out in the top of the ninth. One pitch. One Game Two at-bat. One launch into the Crawford Boxes. One 12-2 Nats lead that became 12-3 when Maldonado sent spare Nats reliever Javy Guerra’s one-out, 1-0 fastball into a balcony past the Crawfords. It’s ok if you want to believe Guerra wanted to show just a little mercy.

But only a little. Rendon fielded but threw George Springer’s grounder to third just off enough that Zimmerman couldn’t dig it out. Then Jose Altuve lined a base hit up the pipe, ninth-inning center field insertion Jake Marisnick grounded one to third that Rendon threw cleanly to first, and the game finally ended.

And the Astros were clean where they didn’t expect to be. Home field advantage swallowed alive. Facing a trip to Washington where they’d prefer to nuke the Nats in kind, or at least get past them for once. Their theme song after Game Two could be Alice Cooper’s chestnut, “Welcome to My Nightmare.”

The last thing the Astros want to know is that only three teams in baseball history have gone on to win the World Series after losing the first two games at home: the 1985 Royals, the 1986 Mets, and the 1996 Yankees. Or, that among the last eighteen teams who won the first two Series games only one didn’t go on to win the rings—the 1996 Braves.

Don’t tell the Nats, either. They haven’t surrendered their May-forward mentality of hoping to go 1-0 each day. “The truth is, winning these games here does nothing for us on Friday,” Zimmerman said thoughtfully after Game Two. “Zack Greinke’s pitching. And Zack Greinke is pretty good, too. So believe me, we know there’s no let-up with that team over there. So we’ve just got to keep going and keep playing like we’ve been playing.”

“I think the message is, don’t hang your head,” Verlander said just as thoughtfully. “We didn’t play our best baseball, things didn’t go our way, we have an off day tomorrow but we don’t have time to feel bad about ourselves.”

The Nats probably have no interest in giving them that time, either. The Baby Sharks are halfway to swimming in the Promised Land. The second half won’t necessarily be easy. But they’ve beaten the best Astro arms, gotten the Astros to help beat themselves, and discovered the Astros aren’t exactly Moby Dick.

WS Game One: Why dream it? Drive it.

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2019-10-23 WashingtonNationalsWSGM01

Juan Soto (22) stole the World Series-opening show Monday night; Ryan Zimmerman (11) opened it by hitting the Nats’ first Series homer ever and the first by any Washington team since . . . 1933.

This was supposed to be a duel of the lancers on the mound to open the World Series. Right? It was going to be ace vs.ace, right? Gerrit Cole, baseball’s almost-Invincible Man, vs. Max Scherzer, going tooth, fang, claw, and anything else they could think of against each other, right?

That’ll teach me to forget the modified Lennon’s Law: Baseball is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. Especially when an initially jittery Juan Soto learns a lesson from Cole in the first inning but takes the A train his next time up.

And, when enough other Nationals prove even this year’s model Cole is only human, after all, at least on a single night. And, when Scherzer for five grinding innings out-pitches Cole for seven despite not having his best night. And, when the Nats bullpen bends but doesn’t break.

And, when the Astros’ vaunted enough home field advantage proves no less intimidating to the Nats than it proved to the Yankees in the opener of their American League Championship Series. We know how that worked out for the Yankees in the end. The Nats know bloody well they still have a none-too-simple road to follow even winning World Series Game One, 5-4, Monday night.

“Why dream it? Drive it,” said a 1941 advertisement for the DeSoto car. “This baby can flick its tail at anything on the road,” said a 1957 DeSoto ad. The Soto in a Nats uniform and still two days from the legal drinking age must have dreamed it entering. Then, he drove it twice.

A mammoth solo home run in the fourth, a long two-run double in the fifth. This baby can flick his tail at anything coming down from the mound. So it sure seemed to the Astros after Game One. “I feel like, in the last twenty-four hours, I’ve seen Soto more than my wife,” cracked Astros catcher Martin Maldonado after the game. “You have to prepared, you have to do scouting reports on it. That guy’s good. He’s very good.”

On Monday night that was like saying the Washington Monument was very tall.

The sharks bit and the Astros bit back. Even if Scherzer vs. Cole transpired the way pitching’s closest observers might have expected things to go until the bullpens were opened, nobody—not the Astros and certainly not the Nats—thought either team would win the easy way.

The Astros came into Game One on a 26-0 winning streak in games during which they scored two or more runs in the first inning, and 2-0 in such postseason games. And Cole came into Game One not having been hung with a loss since 22 May or thrown even one pitch when his team was trailing in a game since 2 September.

According to STATS, LLC., he’d also struck out 258 batters between 22 May and Game One. Not to mention pitching 175 innings from his previous three-run inning until the top of the fifth Monday night. STATS also notes that during the previous 22 starts of his winning string Cole threw 150.2 innings and was behind in only four.

There went those streaks. And, for Game One at least, the mystique of invincibility Cole constructed since the White Sox pried six runs out of him that 22 May in Minute Maid Park. Not to mention the second straight start in which he didn’t roll double-digit strikeouts after an eleven-game such streak to end the season and carry into his first two postseason starts.

But the Nats don’t kid themselves. They know Cole’s liable to get another crack at them before this Series is done. They also know Justin Verlander awaits in Game Two and, while he, too, has shown his vulnerability of late, he’s still Justin Verlander, he’s still a future Hall of Famer, and he still has miles to go yet before his limousine, not to mention his right arm, sleeps.

Just ask Patrick Corbin, who got pressed into relief service in the Game One sixth and dealt with nothing more severe than Astro rookie Yordan Alvarez’s one-out single. “It’s a huge win for us no matter who we were facing,” Corbin said after the game. “But [Cole] has been one of their guys all year and they have a great pitcher going tomorrow. All these games seem like they are going to be like this. It’s two good teams fighting.”

Scherzer fought his way through five innings with seven strikeouts, a first-inning two-run double from Yuli Gurriel, and stranding second and third in the top of the third. He got onto the winning side of the pitching ledger thanks to Adam Eaton singling Kurt Suzuki home with a broken bat and Soto swatting his deep two-run double in the top of the fifth. And, thanks to the Nats’ pen shaking away some testy moments until the ninth.

“Tonight,” Max the Knife admitted after the game, “was a grind. Take my hat off to the Astros offense. I was never able to get in the rhythm tonight. I was having to make all my pitches out of the stretch tonight, it felt like.”

But oh did it feel sweet for the Nats when Ryan Zimmerman, Mr. Nat, the true Original Nat, their first draft in 2005, the year they landed in Washington in the first place, got to hit the first World Series home run in Nationals history.

World Series Nationals Astros Baseball

Soto catching the train in the fourth . . .

Zimmerman caught hold of every inch of a Cole fastball traveling 97 miles and hour and arriving right down the chute and drove it high over the center field fence to cut the early 2-0 Astro lead in half in the top of the second. “I’ll be honest with you,” said Nats manager Dave Martinez to former Nats beat writer Chelsea Janes. “I got a little teary eyed for him. “He waited a long time to be in this position.”

“You’re kind of almost floating around the bases,” said Zimmerman, who’s bent on enjoying every last World Series moment now that he and his Nats are here, after a season rudely interrupted by plantar fasciitis in his right foot, and with the knowledge his current deal expires after the Series and his future isn’t exactly written.

And as sweet and sentimental as Zimmerman’s blast was for the Nats even that was nothing compared to Soto leading off the top of the fourth.

Disciplined beyond his years at the plate, as announcers have purred all postseason long and almost to a fare-thee-well, Soto looked at first at a Cole slider that hung up over the top of the zone and inside. Then Soto remembered what he’d learned when Cole struck him out swinging in the first: “He likes the fastball, so I go to the next at-bat ready to hit it.”

Sure enough, here came the fastball considered Cole’s favourite, climbing to the top of the zone. And there went the fastball, the lefthanded Soto driving it high and far enough to land in front of the Minute Maid Park train’s locomotive and bounce between the track rails, tying the game at two. “[He] again used the whole field and he stayed back and stayed within himself,” Cole told reporters after the game. “So you know, good hitters do that.”

Cole knew only two things Monday night. He knew on contact that Soto lit a rocket charge in that 1-0 fastball, and he knew he wasn’t having the sharpest night of a year in which his regular season left him the American League’s Cy Young Award favourite.

“I thought the fastball was leaking a little off the corner a couple times,” he said. “I struggled with the curveball command, kind of buried us in some bad counts and then just a poor pitch to Soto and not being able to finish that inning off without a crooked number.”

For the deep history minded, Zimmerman’s was the first World Series home run by any Washington player since Senators center fielder Fred Schulte smashed a sixth-inning three-run homer in Game Five of the 1933 Series. Providing the only three runs the Ancien Nats got that 5 October. Hall of Famers Heinie Manush and Joe Cronin were on board when he launched.

“Just to get us on the board,” Zimmerman told Sports Illustrated writer/Fox Sports reporter Tom Verducci. “For them to come out and Max grinding it out tonight. He had a lot of guys on base, he made pitches when he needed to, they did a good job not swinging at balls and got his pitch count up. Against a guy like Gerrit it’s not an easy task. So I was just trying to get the ball in the strike zone and, luckily, he made a mistake.

It’s not that any Astros were allergic to making any history themselves. George Springer became first in Show to hit one out in five straight World Series games. Until he sent a 2-1 service from Nats reliever Tanner Rainey over the center field fence to lead off the bottom of the seventh, he’d been tied at four with Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson and Lou Gehrig.

Springer appreciated the feat only to a small extent. “I’d rather win,” he said earnestly after the game. “I mean, cool. Great. It’s an honor . . . But no doubt about it. I’d rather win.”

He did his part to try to make that happen, too, when he doubled in the eighth with Kyle Tucker on second and Daniel Hudson—who’d managed to strand the bases loaded ending the seventh—on the mound for the Nats. And if it hadn’t been for Nats center fielder Victor Robles misreading Tucker at first following his pinch single leading off, and throwing in to first off Aledmys Diaz’s fly out when he might have had a play on Tucker at second, Springer might not have driven in the fourth Astro run of the night.

Springer lingered at first thinking his drive had a shot at going out. Tucker waited to tag thinking the ball might be caught. Then, postgame, Springer fielded questions about why he didn’t end up on third with Tucker scoring. “I can’t go to third right there,” he told reporters. “Because the guy on second had gone back to tag. If I had gone to third, I’m out.”

If not for that, Jose Altuve’s followup high liner to right might have tied the game. But it gave the Nats just enough of a re-awakening for Martinez to reach for Sean Doolittle and ask him for a four-out save. Ask and you shall receive. First, Doolittle ended the eighth by getting Michael Brantley to fly out. Then, he struck Alex Bregman out, got Gurriel to fly out to not-too-deep center, and got Carlos Correa to line the first pitch out to left where Soto snapped it into his glove to end it.

“Welcome to the World Series, baby,” Doolittle replied when asked what he thought about coming in with a man on second. “One-run game, facing Brantley, such a good hitter, such a professional hitter. In the World Series? You know, that’s what you live for, coming into those big moments, in these big games. I’ve tried to change the way that I think about them and embrace them and try to enjoy it.”

Soto surely won’t complain about making a little history of his own. As in, the youngest player to homer and steal a base in the same postseason series, nudging Derek Jeter (Game one, 1996 ALCS) to one side. And, the third youngest to hit cleanup in a World Series game, behind Ty Cobb (1907) and Miguel Cabrera (2003).

Never mind that he’s made an impressions the Astros won’t be able to forget too readily.

“He was the key guy we couldn’t control tonight,” acknowledged Astros manager A.J. Hinch. “His bat-speed is electric . . . He’s calm in the moment. Clearly, this is not too big a stage for him. He was the difference in the game. He’s got that ‘it’ factor. He’s got fast hands. He’s got no fear.”

Springer couldn’t get over Soto’s homer. “I’ve never seen a left-handed hitter hit a ball there against [Cole],” he said of the track job. “Just an incredible swing.”

“He’s a special player,” Zimmerman said. “Really since the day he came up. You can tell the special ones when they come up because they can slow the game down.”

About the only thing the Nats don’t like regarding Soto slowing them down is that, as of Wednesday morning, they’re still two days away from being able to celebrate with Soto in the adult fashion. Come Friday, Soto can have a stiff drink legally.

“That’s why we need to win this,’’ said Nats second baseman Brian Dozier to USA Today‘s Bob Nightengale. “We’ve done all of this celebrating with him, and it sucks, because he’s not old enough to drink. We need to win this so we can do this thing right. This guy is 20 winning a World Series game for us.”

Why dream it? Drive it.

Ready for a none-too-short Serious?

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Washington hopes the sharks bite. They have a better chance even against the Astros than you might think.

The 1906 White Sox. The 1914 Braves. The 1954 Giants. The 1960 Pirates. The 1969 Mets. The 1987 Twins. The 1988 Dodgers. The 1990 Reds. The 2003 Marlins. The 2006 Cardinals.

The 2019 Nationals?

They’d love nothing more than to join the roll of history’s greatest World Series upsets. And it’ll be about as simple as slicing filet mignon with a paper knife.

Not just because the Astros are their opponents. That much difficulty is a given going in. But difficulty doesn’t quite mean impossibility. And the Nats have already done a couple of impossibles entering the first Washington-team World Series since the year Albert Einstein moved to the United States as a refugee from the Third Reich.

Just picking themselves up from that lousy day in May when they ended their day 19-31, with their manager’s execution orders presumably signed and notarised, may have been impossible enough.

Starting from the following day through today, the Nats have gone 82-40 and scored 700 runs. Only one team in baseball knocked on their door from the same point through today, going 81-41 and scoring 690 runs. Who’s that team? Hint: they have this Series’s home field advantage.

In the postseason? The Baby Sharks faced three elimination games and won. The Astros faced one, and won. Even with the Nats having almost a full week off before going to Houston to start the World Series, they may have a slight momentum advantage.

Especially since they’re probably not even close to feeling the pressure. They’ve already been through the worst of it. Entering this postseason the world said the Nats caved under postseason pressure early. Right? Never even got to the National League Championship Series. Right?

Then the Nats faced an elimination game against the Brewers and won. Then they faced two against the Dodgers—the best-in-the-NL-Dodgers—and won. Then they swept the Cardinals, who had to go down to the wire to win the NL Central by only two fewer than the Nats, in the National League Championship Series. They’re getting pretty damn good at odds defiance.

Division series play began in 1969. The Miracle Mets beat a team that was supposed to smother them in the World Series. Would you like to know how much more often the better regular season team has won the World Series since division play began?

Once.

Thomas Boswell exhumes that starting in 1969 the teams whose regular season showed the better records are 23-24 in the World Series. Fifteen of those Series, he adds, began by looking lopsided with one combatant having a 10+ advantage in regular season wins . . . and those “better” teams are 7-8 in those Series.

The Nats won fourteen fewer games on the regular season than the Astros did. A look at the Astros making their third straight postseason and second World Series in three years might tell you the Nats are David against Goliath. But a look at their 2019 postseasons to date might tell you David has a fair chance of evening Goliath out:

The Nats’ division series slash line: .230/.321/.373. (OPS: .694.) The Astros’: .242/.294/.406. (OPS: .700.) The Nats’ NLCS slash line: .274/.327/.415. (OPS: .741.) The Astros’ ALCS: .179/.281/.318. (OPS: .600.)

The Nats’ division series pitching: 4.20 ERA; 1.27 walks/hits per inning pitched. The Astros’: 3.56/1.23. Then the Nats removed the major culprits from the roster. Presumably with orders that Hunter Strickland and Wander Suero are to be shot on sight if they even think about poking their noses out of their holes.

Now, the Nats’ NLCS pitching: 1.25 ERA; 0.64 WHIP. The Astros’ ALCS? Let’s be fair to them, too, and remove their main culprit, Bryan Abreu. (Two earned in two-thirds of a Game One inning and wasn’t seen again in the set.) And, take Ryan Pressly out of the equation for a moment, since his two earned in two-thirds of a Game One inning belie how well he pitched in Games Four and Six. Now look: 2.51/1.12.

Anthony Rendon (Nats) and Alex Bregman (Astros) are as close to a third base match as you can find, with a slight edge to Bregman for a slightly higher regular-season OBP and an OPS a measly .005 points higher. Advantage: Astros by a sliver.

Ryan Zimmerman is the Nats’ grand old man at first base who doesn’t look as good as Yuli Gurriel on paper, but Gurriel’s bat went mostly to sleep until his first-inning ALCS Game Six three-run homer. Still, the late-blooming Gurriel—who’s a year older than Zimmerman and doesn’t look it—had a better regular season. Slight advantage: Astros.

Howie Kendrick (Nats) has just about the same flair for the jaw-dropping drama as Jose Altuve (Astros), but he’s no Altuve at second base and Altuve is still in his prime while Kendrick has produced magnificently as an elder spare part. Advantage: Astros.

Michael Brantley made one decibel-busting play in left in ALCS Game Six but as a left fielder and at the plate he’s no Juan Soto. Advantage: Nats.

Victor Robles has a very promising future in center field if he can stay healthy, but he’s no George Springer. Springer’s only beginning to shake off his early postseason funk and Robles is still on the comeback trail from a division series hamstring tweak. Advantage: Astros.

Adam Eaton is harmless in right field but the Nats actually would have been better off this year with the $330 million guy he replaced. Even with that, he hits slightly better than Josh Reddick where Reddick is slightly more adept with the leather. Advantage: neither.

Both Trea Turner and Carlos Correa are good defensive shortstops. Correa had two bombs in the ALCS but didn’t hit much of anything else; Turner hit more consistently in the NLCS and is a lot more dangerous on the bases when he gets there. Correa had a slightly better regular season OBP but he tried and stole only one base to Turner stealing 35. (Lifetime stolen base percentages: Turner, .841; Correa, .804.) Advantage: Nats.

To the Astros’ Big Three starters—Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander, and Zack Greinke, to take the likely World Series-opening order—the Nats have a Big Three Plus the Unexpected One: Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin, plus Anibal Sanchez—you know, the guy who opened the NLCS by damn near no-hitting the Cardinals the day before Max the Knife damn near did.

Cole and Verlander are powerful Cy Young Award candidates and Verlander, of course, is a future Hall of Famer with a formidable postseason jacket since he became an Astro in the first place. But while Cole went from possible Cy Young winner on the season to off the charts early in the postseason, Verlander’s been vulnerable ever since his unlikely short-rest division series start against the Rays.

And Greinke got spanked in his only division series start before graduating back to touchable-but-survivable (three earned in Game One; one earned in a short Game Four outing) in the ALCS.

Scherzer and Strasburg look at least the equal of Cole and slightly better off than Verlander this postseason, and Strasburg carries maybe the most quiet postseason pitching mystique of all time into the World Series. The Nats’ previous postseason implosions obscured that Strasburg lifetime in the postseason has a 1.10 ERA.

Scherzer’s going to be pitching for his legacy, too: Max the Knife has a 3.35 lifetime postseason ERA and a 1.03 WHIP. And you can be sure he’d prefer not to let his old Tigers buddy Justin Time have seconds when he hasn’t had his firsts yet.

Corbin and Greinke, those old Diamondbacks buds, haven’t had their firsts yet, either. Maybe the stars, plus managers A.J. Hinch and Dave Martinez, might find a way to tangle them before it’s over?

The Nats may have the option of bumping Sanchez up to Game Three and sending Corbin out to pitch against an Astros bullpen game. Not as scary for Nats fans as it might have been at first.

Corbin ended (temporarily, we think) the Nats’ starters-as-reliever division series technique when the Dodgers beat six earned runs out of him in a third-game relief outing. But he started NLCS Game Four and struck out twelve Cardinals in five innings despite surrendering four earned runs—which the Nats could well afford since tearing seven out of them in the first inning.

The Nats’ bullpen was mostly a regular season disaster. Then, after a couple of division series disasters, they pruned the pen down to Sean Doolittle, Daniel Hudson, rookie Tanner Rainey (who pitched his way into a setup role), and Grandpa Fernando Rodney. Doolittle and Hudson are veterans who can extend when need be; Rainey’s good for the quick shutdown; and Rodney might be in for matchup play but he can still give you an extra inning here and there.

That’s good for the Nats’ mostly effective and long-running starters, since it’s not enough to even think about matching an Astro bullpen game with one of their own. And while the Astros have a mostly shutdown closer in Roberto Osuna, Osuna’s armour did get blown open in the top of the ninth of ALCS Game Six. He needed every foot of Altuve’s ALCS-winning two-run homer to put it back together again.

And both teams were built in pretty much the same way: a rock-solid homegrown core married to mostly imported pitching.

All of which is to say that this isn’t likely to be a short World Series. Six games minimum, seven games more than probable, barring unforeseen circumstances. (And, nothing personal, Astros and your fans, but you look like you’re in leg casts when you dance for celebration. The Dancing Nats you ain’t.) And baseball is nothing if not the thinking person’s game of unforeseen circumstances.

Great misfortune often leads to unforeseen reward, Don Vito Corleone mused in The Godfather. (The novel, not the film.) In baseball, great fortune often leads to unforeseen disaster. Just ask the 1906 Cubs, the 1914 Athletics, the 1954 Indians, the 1960 Yankees (who actually out-scored the Pirates in that World Series, 55-27), the 1969 Orioles, the 1987 Cardinals, the 1988 and 1990 A’s, the 2003 Yankees, and the 2006 Tigers.

It could work both ways this time around. The Astros’ regular season was great fortune. So is their postseason until now. The Nats’ obeyed Corleone’s Law about unforeseen reward after 23 May and in the postseason to date. Both the Nats and the Astros would like to remind each other of another rule by which Don Corleone lived: Every man has but one destiny.

It’s a shame we can’t really know the Nats’ or the Astros’ destinies just yet. But the Astros are only two years removed from a World Series triumph and still hold the title deed to the American League West, which they’re not likely to surrender for another few seasons yet. The Nats haven’t reached the World Series until now in their franchise history, which isn’t as old as the Astros’ but is as old as Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon.

And a Washington team has won but one Series—in the same year as the founding of MGM, the introduction of the tommy gun by bootlegging gangsters, the birth of Miracle Mets manager Gil Hodges (who first managed a second Senators team), and the death of Frank (Tinker-to-Evers-to-) Chance.

As much as I love to watch both these teams play baseball, I’ll say it again: we need something better out of Washington than the nation’s largest organised crime family. And we’ve got it with the Baby Sharks. If I had my way, the Astros can just hurry up and wait one more year. It won’t kill them. Pinkie swear.