Yesterday was opening day for MLB and the Washington Nationals. You know, that glorious day when all the baseball poets tell you that anything is possible, hope springs eternal, and the professional fortunes of 25 men could lift an entire city. Except yesterday didn't happen for the Washington Nationals. Rain postponed their game against the Cincinnati Reds. That delay puts off for one more day the start of what could be the most important season ever for the Nationals.
If you believe in omens, the postponement could be harbinger of doom: a foreshadowing of a season that never gets started for a multitude of little reasons that adds up to catastrophe.
Or you could be positive. Getting out of the starting gate a day after everyone else could be the perfect metaphor for the Nationals: the slumbering giant that has finally awoken and will wreak havoc on the rest of the National League.
Or you could be rational and level headed about it. A storm system covered much of Ohio and Pennsylvania yesterday afternoon. The Pirates-Tigers game was also rained out. Maybe fans of those teams are trying to figure out what the significance of their season starting a day late is, but I doubt it. Things happen, especially in baseball.
The truth of the matter lies somewhere in the middle of those three narratives. It's hard to figure out the narrative of a season as it happens, and we won't know if the 2018 Washington Nationals have a special season or not until sometime in October. Many of us hope we get that answer in late October.
But does Washington's season really hinge on success in the playoffs? Sadly, it does. The Nationals could set the world on fire during the regular season and, to some, it would not matter. There is this awkward situation where the success or failure of Washington's season, and some would say the fate and future of the franchise, will be decided by the results of 13 to 19 games that will be played in October.
Those are the circumstances and the pressure the Nationals face. Some of this is by their own doing. They are the franchise that has had postseason disappointment in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017. This is the franchise that imploded under the pressure of expectations in 2015 when Bryce Harper jokingly asked "Where's my ring?" after the team signed Max Scherzer. And, of course, there is the notion that the championship window is closing because of the team's many free agents-to-be whose contracts expire at the end of this season.
But some of this urgency is beyond the control of the Nationals. Would this team and its fanbase be facing the same existential crisis this season holds if the franchise was located in Miami, Philadelphia, or any other city? Washington, D.C. is a unique city, a city that has endured some unholy combination of ineptitude and heartbreak from its sports franchises since 1992. The fans here have been beaten, and many just want a title of some sort. Only a title will do.
And there is a logic to that way of thinking. No one looks back fondly on the Seattle Mariners team that won 116 games or any of the other teams that had the most regular season wins (*cough*Washington Capitals*cough*) but came up short of the ultimate goal.
But that way of thinking misses the forest for the trees. Maybe I say this because I was six years old the last time one of my favorite teams won a championship. And maybe I am trying to dodge the memories of past playoffs. I did purposefully chose the Mariners a paragraph ago and threw the Capitals in as a joking parenthetical aside. And maybe I am still trying to figure out what happened to the Virginia Cavaliers two weeks ago. But I say this and I say it confidently, "The regular season matters." It has to matter, even if it just a little bit.
Special seasons happen. Sometimes they become very special and end with a championship. Most times, they don't. A team can be dominant and lose in the playoffs. It doesn't mean failure. It just means on that particular day, in that particular instance, things did not work out. So I'm going to enjoy this season for what it is: a chance to see a Nationals team that could potentially be great. I'll enjoy the seven month ride that is about to start, and at the end of that ride, I'm not going to be thinking about how it started a day later than everyone else's ride.
Well, maybe I will, when I'm sitting there trying to figure out what it all means.
No comments:
Post a Comment