Washington Baseball: All Grown Up Now
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By DERON SNYDER
The Washington Nationals and their newly-minted fans grew up this week. Over the course of three days in southeast D.C., they hung out with the defending World Series champions. The Cardinals showed them the ropes of autumn baseball, gave them glimpse of life in the postseason’s pressure cooker.
St. Louis even let the Nats & Co. take a quick sip from the victors’ cup, like older cousins overseeing a youngster’s first drink. But the Cardinals didn’t allow the Washingtonians to gulp it down. The champs snatched it away in mid-swallow, before anyone could became acclimated to the taste.
Now Washington knows how Texas felt last season, when the Rangers twice were one strike away from vanquishing the Cardinals. Now everyone knows what it’s like to be so close to a raucous playoff celebration that you see it in your mind as if it were unfolding in front of your face. Which should occur any second.
But then everything goes terribly wrong. The opponents score the go-ahead runs before the third out and there’s no miraculous comeback and the season is over in stunning fashion. That’s what St. Louis did to the Nats with a 9-7 victory Friday night in Game 5 of the National League Division Series.
It’s as if the Cardinals put the Nats and this suddenly-feverish-about-baseball city through a cruel initiation process, a painful rite of passage for newbies looking to cross over. With a four-run rally in the ninth — completing the comeback from 6-0 hole — St. Louis both confrimed its standing and acknowledged the Nats’ arrival:
“Welcome to adulthood, kiddies. You made it. Go get ‘em next year.”
