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BuckBuckTN
Heisman
Strasburg and Rendon and Soto are all up for free agency/contact renewal.
That salary cap gonna look like Abe Lincoln's lid if the Nat's sign all 3......
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ScriptOhio
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
'I Want Bourbon!': Nationals Let Loose After Improbable World Series Run
Everything that happened for the 2019 Washington Nationals to win the World Series was improbable, from their slow start to the final homer that took down the juggernaut Astros. All of that, on top of the franchise's first title, is cause for celebration.
The ball would be a seventh-inning, game-winning, championship-clinching, franchise-defining home run. It would bring Washington, D.C. its first World Series in nearly a century; it would cap one of the most unlikely postseason runs in baseball history; it would suddenly and irrevocably shift the energy in a stadium of more than 40,000. It would be not just a home run. It would be the home run. The one that gave the Nationals the lead in Game 7 of their eventual 6-2 win over the Astros Wednesday night in Houston.
But Howie Kendrick didn’t know any of that when he hit it. This was hardly a no-doubter. This was opposite field, way opposite field, toward the foul pole, perhaps all the way into foul territory. This may not have been any good at all. When Kendrick connected with the cutter from Astros reliever Will Harris—91 mph, expertly placed on the corner of the strike zone, with one out and one on in the seventh, Nationals down by one run—he did not think that he had just won the game. Kendrick thought only one thing: “Stay fair.”
As he burst out of the box toward first base, he couldn’t tell if it would or wouldn’t. Kendrick didn’t stop to look, and he didn’t wave it over, but he let the words echo inside his head with the fervor of a prayer and the rhythm of a chant: Stay fair. Stay fair. Stay fair.
It did.
“We caught a lot of breaks this year,” Ryan Zimmerman said afterward. “We caught a break. It stayed fair.”
Just by the narrowest of margins. The ball clanked off the base of the foul pole—branded by Chick-fil-A with the tagline “Burgerz R Foul.”
Kendrick’s reaction when he realized that it was fair? “I love Chick-fil-A.”
It was special, he said. “Truly special,” even. Yet it was not the greatest moment of his career. It was the 36-year-old’s first World Series, sure, in a miracle season a year after he’d been derailed by injury. But the greatest moment of his career? That would be a different home run from this October, he decided—his extra-inning grand slam from Game 5 of the National League Division Series.
“We wouldn’t be here without that,” he grinned, standing in the plastic-covered clubhouse, his teammates’ empty beer bottles and champagne corks at his feet.
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That is the phrase that comes up often when discussing Rendon: slow pulse. He’s stoic, cool, dispassionate. He was clearly so throughout October, throughout the World Series, throughout Game 7, even as he continued to make crucial plays the whole time. And then it was all over, and Rendon let loose.
“I want bourbon!” he yelled as he was enveloped in a hug on the field. “I’m coming in!” as he dived into a group photo with teammates. In his hometown of Houston, where he’d grown up and played college ball, Rendon embraced friends and family, laughing and whooping and grinning. And when asked how he did it—how they did it, how this team did any of this—he had only thing to say:
“Baseball’s crazy.”
Improbable, even.
Entire article: https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/10/31/nationals-world-series-win-improbable
Everything that happened for the 2019 Washington Nationals to win the World Series was improbable, from their slow start to the final homer that took down the juggernaut Astros. All of that, on top of the franchise's first title, is cause for celebration.
The ball would be a seventh-inning, game-winning, championship-clinching, franchise-defining home run. It would bring Washington, D.C. its first World Series in nearly a century; it would cap one of the most unlikely postseason runs in baseball history; it would suddenly and irrevocably shift the energy in a stadium of more than 40,000. It would be not just a home run. It would be the home run. The one that gave the Nationals the lead in Game 7 of their eventual 6-2 win over the Astros Wednesday night in Houston.
But Howie Kendrick didn’t know any of that when he hit it. This was hardly a no-doubter. This was opposite field, way opposite field, toward the foul pole, perhaps all the way into foul territory. This may not have been any good at all. When Kendrick connected with the cutter from Astros reliever Will Harris—91 mph, expertly placed on the corner of the strike zone, with one out and one on in the seventh, Nationals down by one run—he did not think that he had just won the game. Kendrick thought only one thing: “Stay fair.”
As he burst out of the box toward first base, he couldn’t tell if it would or wouldn’t. Kendrick didn’t stop to look, and he didn’t wave it over, but he let the words echo inside his head with the fervor of a prayer and the rhythm of a chant: Stay fair. Stay fair. Stay fair.
It did.
“We caught a lot of breaks this year,” Ryan Zimmerman said afterward. “We caught a break. It stayed fair.”
Just by the narrowest of margins. The ball clanked off the base of the foul pole—branded by Chick-fil-A with the tagline “Burgerz R Foul.”
Kendrick’s reaction when he realized that it was fair? “I love Chick-fil-A.”
It was special, he said. “Truly special,” even. Yet it was not the greatest moment of his career. It was the 36-year-old’s first World Series, sure, in a miracle season a year after he’d been derailed by injury. But the greatest moment of his career? That would be a different home run from this October, he decided—his extra-inning grand slam from Game 5 of the National League Division Series.
“We wouldn’t be here without that,” he grinned, standing in the plastic-covered clubhouse, his teammates’ empty beer bottles and champagne corks at his feet.
.
.
continued
.
.
That is the phrase that comes up often when discussing Rendon: slow pulse. He’s stoic, cool, dispassionate. He was clearly so throughout October, throughout the World Series, throughout Game 7, even as he continued to make crucial plays the whole time. And then it was all over, and Rendon let loose.
“I want bourbon!” he yelled as he was enveloped in a hug on the field. “I’m coming in!” as he dived into a group photo with teammates. In his hometown of Houston, where he’d grown up and played college ball, Rendon embraced friends and family, laughing and whooping and grinning. And when asked how he did it—how they did it, how this team did any of this—he had only thing to say:
“Baseball’s crazy.”
Improbable, even.
Entire article: https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/10/31/nationals-world-series-win-improbable
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