The party’s over.
Cold weather arrived just in time to accompany the bitter end of playoff hopes for the Nats. Worse, the team must limp into New York this weekend to play the Mets for its last three games of the season.
The rival, triumphant Mets!
Whatever that final weekend brings in New York City, the Mets are the very same team that pretty much sealed the deal for the Nationals this season with their three-game sweep here the week of Labor Day.
Our home team — preseason favorites for the World Series — had gone into that early September Mets series with a chance to jump back into the playoff race, only to take its lumps. Washington Post sportswriter James Wagner wrote on Sept. 9 that the “nightmare” sweep had been “utter torture,” with one game maybe “the worst” in the team’s history.
Well, it wasn’t the worst.
A night after a dramatic win from a 12th-inning double by star outfielder Bryce Harper, it was Sunday’s dugout altercation between Harper and pitcher Jonathan Papelbon that capped — and perhaps crystallized — the season. It’s hard to imagine anything worse happening as the team crawls to the finish line on Sunday. A tiff over critical words from Papelbon about not hustling flared into a fight when Papelbon suddenly grabbed Harper by the throat and slammed the star player into a wall.
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On Monday, the Nats suspended Papelbon for four games. The team said such behavior wouldn’t be tolerated. Along with a three-game suspension order by Major League Baseball for Papelbon throwing at a batter on purpose, the season is over for the pitcher who has been more trouble than help.
Fans interviewed by NBC4 on Monday overwhelmingly blamed Papelbon for the embarrassing incident that drew national attention.
New York Times sports columnist Tyler Kapner excoriated several aspects of the incident. First, he said the Nats had been the “biggest flop” of the baseball season. Kapner said the decision by manager Matt Williams to allow Papelbon to take the mound in the ninth inning after the scuffle was indefensible: “That decision should be the final one he makes as Washington’s manager.”
The Times writer concluded with a call for the Nationals’ owners to make some decisions of their own. “If the Nationals want to show real leadership — and support for Harper, their franchise player — they should suspend Papelbon for the rest of the season and fire Williams,” Kapner wrote.
Washington Post sportswriter Tom Boswell, who has tracked the good and bad of this disappointing season, didn’t hold back either. He called the violent explosion in the dugout “a public viewing” for a dead team this season, “one of the worst professional team failures in D.C. sports in a generation.”
Boz suggested you could “cut some slack for injuries, a shattered bullpen and novice managing,” but the dugout rumble “will be a symbol of an entire season when everything went wrong.” And he suggested that manager Williams “almost certainly will be fired.” Boswell’s only hope was that the Nationals’ owners learn something from this “spectacular flop” ignominy.
We’ll leave it to the experts to dissect what went wrong this season — extended periods of key injuries, coaching decisions, and a lousy bullpen that could not hold a lead.
One of the other low points for the Notebook was when brash Bryce called out fans leaving a tough-loss game in the seventh inning, as if they were all disloyal. The atmosphere in the ballpark mostly had been electric, some sports writers noted. But Harper — an unquestioned star at the age of 22 — saw it differently, “I mean, they left in the seventh. That’s pretty brutal. I don’t know, whatever.”
Others noted that most of the empty seats were in right field where the sun itself was pretty brutal, the rest of the ballpark hanging in there and cheering. Nats general manager Mike Rizzo a day later sought to soften Harper’s post-game comment.
“Bryce is a passionate player who wears his heart on his sleeve,” he said. “You’re talking about a player after a tough loss with some frustration. But he’s a guy who loves this city [and fans].”
No doubt all that is true. But in this particular game, where Wilson Ramos hit a fourth-inning grand slam, the pre-season hype of the pitching staff was a distant memory. And the loss, like many this year, was pretty much pinned on the bullpen. And that’s not the fans’ fault.
■ But don’t be bitter. Despite heartbreaking defeats in post-season play in two of the last four years, baseball has been good for the city. It has brought in money-spending fans and accelerated economic development in a part of the District that had been a fading industrial area. Many of the fans come from Virginia, spending money here that otherwise would have stayed in the commonwealth.
And, if things play out right, the new soccer stadium for D.C. United in Southwest near the Nats ballpark will only boost the growth of that area.
So, altogether now: Wait till next year! Go Nats.
■ A final word. Harper early in his career is famous not only for his style of play and success, but another famous utterance: “That’s a clown question, bro!” He was dismissing a dumb question about being underage and celebratory beer drinking.
But the quote master — often unintentionally — of all time was baseball great Yogi Berra. In the midst of the Pope Francis visit last week came the sad news that Berra had died at age 90. Here’s just a few of dozens of Yogisms that your Notebook likes:
“I never said most of the things I said.”
“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”
“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
And here from Yogi is the best advice you can give anyone:
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
Tom Sherwood, a Southwest resident, is a political reporter for News 4.
