Memorable Baseball and the Not-So-Memorable 2018 Washington Nationals
The baseball season’s a mélange of games, some memorable, and some wonderfully forgettable. And then there are rainouts.
There’s something magical about listening to baseballers during a rain delay. The long wait to resume. Maybe it’s the old agrarian pace of the game. Slow and slower. Rain drenching the field. Tight shots of raindrops waltzing on the tarpaulin. And, if the fans are lucky, as was the case for so many years in the ’60s and ’70s, the station remains with the game allowing the baseballers to tell their stories. Paint word pictures. And the colors of the game burst asunder, like tulips in spring.
That’s why rain delays can be the most enjoyable pauses.
Or we have games like the Yankee rainout the other night. A few minutes after the tarp was spread over the infield, the local New York station switched to programming already in progress. I immediately changed channels and only switched back a few times to see if the game would resume. It never did; it was called, and the Yankees won in seven innings.
The channel could have allowed the Yankee announcers that night, Michael Kay, David Cone and Paul O’Neill to chat rather than rush to the boring tripe it chose and lose their audience. We’re only talking about 20 minutes before their amateur-hour news show went on at 10 p.m.
Advertising revenues are that important.
The fans, not so.
Listening to O’Neill talk about hitting and Cone on pitching is an education, especially when they have a chance to talk uninterrupted by the rhythms of the game. And Kay encourages their delicious banter, sprinkling in humor to make the conversation entertaining. But not that night.
The thing is that games are memorable for different reasons. Sometimes it’s a near no-hitter, or an injury to a player, or maybe a long winning streak, or a great season, like Seattle’s 116-46 romp across 2001. Or Boston’s hellacious assault on the competitive balance of the 2018 American League, embarrassing teams on a regular basis.
But, there are still rainouts, and teams that disappoint because they fail to live up to expectations.
Consider the 2018 Washington Nationals.
Chagrin personified.
The Washington Nationals, the presumptive favorites for the World Series the past four or five seasons, because there are so many talented craftsmen on what should have been a World Series-winning team, have disillusioned their fans consistently, unforgettable season after unforgettable season. All Washington can point to this season is persistent inconsistency, and the emergence of 19-year-old Juan Soto, an unexpected rookie who may make Washington fans forget Bryce Harper, if Harper bolts the team in free agency around the time Soto turns 20 in November.
Thomas Boswell recently wrote a wonderful baseball essay on the Nationals for the Washington Post. Boswell opined about the death of Washington’s season. “In the universe of arithmetic, the Nats are still alive, but there is no baseball played there.”
“In the universe of arithmetic,” I love that phrase.
In the universe of arithmetic, Washington was supposed to be one of those superb baseball teams, again. At least on paper. Great pitching. Great hitting. An aggressive general manager who believed in his players. And Sabermetric statistics that predicted peak future performances from key players.
Of course, Max Scherzer, probably the best pitcher in baseball, continues to excel. But Bryce Harper and Steven Strasburg, not so much. Gio Gonzalez, don’t ask. Their bullpen, don’t even think about it. Daniel Murphy, an incomplete, he was injured so much.
Baseball’s like this. Memorable moments that come at great expense (both in effort and dollars) and the ineluctable refrains of artistry and skill for a few of the chosen teams. But such excellence is usually unexpected, even when it’s expected. Nothing in the numbers can truly predict when great players will have great seasons. Not even Sabermetric stats like wRC+ or adjusted OPS+.
Because a bad bounce can ruin a weekend; or an inopportune slip on the outfield grass; or a curve ball breaking over the outside corner that ghosts the bat; or poor execution of the “unassumed” double play as the winning run scores; or an umpire’s bellow of strike three, and a leer of exasperation.
And then it’s over. A game. A season. Hope.
The Nationals season has come to an end now, September fast approaching. So, what is a memorable season?
Should Washington begin whispering the old Brooklyn Dodgers’ mantra of the ’50s: Wait Till Next Year?
Maybe Washington’s season was memorable because they were so good and so much was expected and then they took the field and delivered immoderate futility and, in some cases, sheer incompetence. Did that make their season memorable?
I can remember the 1968 season when Mickey Mantle hobbled to retirement at season’s end because he couldn’t move, his knees buckled so much that he could only waddle around the bases those last few mammoth home runs. The Yankees suffered through one terrible season after another those years with mediocre performers like Horace Clarke and Fritz Peterson on the roster, as well as Bobby Cox (who showed why he would make a great manager a decade later), and the light-hitting Gene Michael (who was never a great player, no matter how well he fielded, but who became the general manager and architect of the great 1990s Yankees’ teams).
But those seasons, when the Yankees populated the bottom of the American League, their play was so deficient that it was striking, almost as memorable as the magnificence of their championship years.
Decades from now, many of us will think back to the rhythms of the 2018 season and, perhaps over a coffee or a beer, we’ll reminisce about the players who executed at bat, on the mound, and in the field, creating a collage of excellence and images that will last for decades. Some of it about winning. Some of it about futility. Some of it about the wonderful crop of rookies and their sensational seasons. Because it’s the players, their ups and downs, that make baseball memorable, forever.
Win or lose.
