Sports & Entertainment

The Nats’ heart-stopping ride to the 2019 World Series

March 29, 2020 | Book review by Chuck Todd, The Washington Post
Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post

Politics in the age of Trump can wear down the best of folks, so there’s nothing like having an escape, six months out of the year, that allows us Washingtonians to channel our stress elsewhere. Before the coronavirus pandemic, I would have described 2019 as the most challenging year of my career (anybody remember the longest government shutdown in history, the Sharpie-altered hurricane map, impeachment?). And before that came 2018, 2017 and 2016. The point is, having something other than politics to stress us out is a very good thing.

Thank heavens for the 2019 Washington Nationals.

No baseball team in my lifetime — not the 1986 Mets, the 1988 Dodgers, the 2001 Diamondbacks or the 2004 Red Sox — had more near-death experiences than last year’s Nationals. But we know that the team survived to become champs, so it’s safe to read “Buzz Saw: The Improbable Story of How the Washington Nationals Won the World Series” by The Washington Post’s Nationals beat writer, Jesse Dougherty.

I had forgotten all the ways the Nats found to lose games in the first half of the season. Reading about the many bullpen blowups brought back the old stress until I remembered, Oh, yeah, they pulled it out, and they beat a team of alleged cheaters to do it! (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)

Dougherty’s book does exactly what a Nats fan — or any baseball fan who appreciates the Nats’ accomplishment — would want: It chronicles the championship season with all its drama. In hindsight, the good feels great, and the bad and the ugly are simply necessary beauty blemishes.

While it’s easy to say this now, it was excruciating to follow on a daily basis. Had the Nationals blown it, as they had repeatedly in the past, the last thing I’d recommend is reliving the trauma under any circumstance. But what we need now more than ever is to soak in the memories of that 2019 team. That’s because this year there’s a very real possibility we will have the shortest baseball season in our lifetimes. Spring training has been halted and Opening Day postponed as the nation grapples with the coronavirus. This season could be shorter than those in 1994 and 1981, both abbreviated by player strikes.

All this has wreaked havoc on baseball lovers’ innate understanding of the progression of time. Fans don’t need a calendar to tell them what time of year it is. We know when winter is starting to end: Pitchers and catchers report. We know when spring has begun: Opening Day. We know when summer starts: The leagues’ best line up for the midsummer classic, the All-Star Game. And we know when fall starts: It’s time for the playoffs.

This year things are off. And that is extremely disconcerting if you are a lifelong baseball fan like me. Whether following the team of my youth (the Los Angeles Dodgers) or the team of my son’s youth (the Nationals) I’ve always used the baseball calendar to track the season side by side with life’s ups and downs. This year, baseball and its postponement will be remembered next to the coronavirus.

Back in 1988, baseball was there for me when my father was dying. He and I, both Dodger fans, watched much of the World Series from his hospital room. He died about three weeks after the Dodgers won. They haven’t won since.

Dougherty traces what Washingtonians might call the team’s “diplo-speak” to unravel perceptions that Bryce Harper’s free agency spectacle harmed the 2018 Nats. Debate will always rage over whether Harper’s exit gave birth to the Nats championship in 2019, but it’s pretty clear the team was better without him because it was able to coalesce. One can’t underscore that theme enough — it’s clearly what Martinez and Rizzo believe. These Nats won because of an intangible that has lost favor in this age of analytics: team chemistry.

Dougherty doesn’t miss a single high or low, and in between, he mixes in enough fascinating background on various players to satisfy the die-hard Nats fan. It’s fun to learn that it was Bob Welch (a former Dodger and Cy Young Award winner) who told Sean Doolittle early in his career that he had a “special fastball.” And that it was Martinez who wanted Gerardo “Baby Shark” Parra signed simply to loosen up the clubhouse.

I was pleased to learn this endearing tidbit: Mississippi native Brian Dozier became near-fluent in Spanish using Rosetta Stone so he could engage more with Spanish-speaking players and coaches. Dougherty gives us a number of anecdotes illustrating how much the entire team embraced the infusion of Latin culture brought by folks like Parra and Aníbal Sánchez. A standout aspect of this team’s chemistry was that the players easily crossed racial and ethnic lines to form a rapport that doesn’t always take shape in clubhouses.

I took no pleasure in reliving the scary moments that sent Martinez to the hospital in the sixth inning of a Braves game in September. But after the Nats bullpen had blown so many leads in April, May and June, it’s a wonder Martinez’s chest pains didn’t strike sooner.

Max Scherzer’s legendary work ethic is a recurrent theme throughout the book. Perhaps my favorite anecdote shows how reluctant Scherzer is to reveal any of his pitching secrets. “He’s leery of anyone studying as hard as he does,” Dougherty writes. “He imagines Freddie Freeman, the Braves’ best hitter, opening the newspaper to find a grain of intel that could tilt their next matchup. Call it insane paranoia. Scherzer still won’t deviate.”

The 2019 Nationals were an extraordinary team that overcame season-killing challenges. Sadly, they’re getting overshadowed by the Astros cheating scandal, by the delayed 2020 season and by the terrors of the pandemic.

Sometime soon, the baseball world will give these Nats the due they deserve. Their championship banners will go up at Nats Park, and World Series rings will be handed out to the players. For now, fellow Washingtonians, we’ll always have 2019.

 

Buzz Saw: The Improbable Story of How the Washington Nationals Won the World Series

By Jesse Dougherty

Simon & Schuster. 308 pp. $27

 

The Washington Post