Says the longtime DC journo on TheAthletic.com:
Five times in October this year, they faced elimination with their next loss. Three times, they faced that on the road. All five times, they trailed in the game that would end their season.
But all five times, they came back, and they won, including Wednesday, which was Game 7 of the World Series, against a great, great Houston Astros team that was looking for a second title in three years that would go far toward cementing it among baseball’s all-time best franchises.
The last out in the Nationals’ 6-2 win was a strikeout by Daniel Hudson, who wasn’t in Washington at the start of the season, with the ball in the catching glove of Yan Gomes, who wasn’t supposed to start Game 7.
“We stay in the fight,” Max Scherzer said, looking for champagne to inhale in the visiting clubhouse after five miraculous innings when he took punches from the Astros’ potent lineup like Muhammad Ali against the ropes in Kinshasa, Zaire, with George Foreman clubbing his forearms and sides. And Scherzer’s words were yet another cliche, that Davey Martinez coined and used almost every day of a six-month season.
But, he … stayed in the fight.
Jeez, now I’m doing it!
Oh, hell, give in to it. Give in to it, Washington, D.C., sudden city of champions left and right.
“Minor league” sports town?
Try Titletown, pal. (He is my pal. I love Michael Wilbon.) But if you’re from D.C., you don’t have to, ever again, listen to people talk about “real” sports towns like Chicago and Boston and New York, in supposed superiority to yours:
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