Some Thoughts on Baseball

Baseball is something which, like public transportation and lesbianism, I only learned to love as an adult. I grew up in the American South, where football is king, and baseball was simply not a presence in my life growing up. I was never an athletic child, so I never played it; I was homeschooled or sent to small evangelical schools that lacked the budgets for sports teams, so I didn’t even know anyone who played it. My knowledge was limited to the parts of it I caught on Sportscenter as my father dozed off in his recliner. We never lived anywhere with a team, or a particularly strong adherence to one, so I never had much reason or chance to become a baseball fan until I eventually moved to DC a few years ago.

So I ended up falling in love with baseball, and it’s surprising to me just how well-suited it is to my personality and tastes. It is a game with a long history, deeply connected to American culture in a way that no other sport is. It is a game for the patient, which allows the situation to develop and the tension to build. It is a game with a rhythm, where every pitch is a battle between the pitcher and the batter. That same battle has gone on for centuries between so many men in so many times and so many places, every at-bat different yet every time their goals have been the same. When you add in the fact that Nationals Park is easily Metro-accessible, it is, in my mind, a pretty much perfect sport.

The only problem is that the Nationals are not a good baseball team. Becoming a fan of the Nationals in the mid-2020s, as I did, is like showing up to a great party that’s already winded down. There was once joy and celebration, but now everyone is slinking away to nurse their hangovers. The Nationals broke through in 2019, one of the most memorable World Series in living memory, a fairy-tale season where they went from writing off the season to defeating the lying, cheating, villainous team from a series of freeways masquerading as a city, after years of perennial disappointment despite an incredibly talented roster with multiple future Hall of Famers. And now they’re all gone, and that magic is all gone. The confetti needs to be swept up, all the booze has been drunk, and people need to stumble home. And I didn’t even get to enjoy the party! Since that World Series win, the Nationals have had the worst record in MLB other than the Colorado Rockies. Much like the United States, the best days are behind the Nationals, and there isn’t much to look forward to at the moment.

So what’s the point of being a fan of a bad team? After all, it’s quite unpleasant to watch your team lose, so why would you devote any of your precious time on this earth to doing so? I sometimes enjoy joking that being a fan of a bad baseball team is morally purifying, a sort of mortification of the flesh. But as much as this appeals to the rigid Calvinism of my upbringing, this is not why I still follow the Nationals despite the fact that they have not been good at any point I’ve cared about them. I care about them because I care about baseball, and I enjoy baseball even when my team loses. As my grandfather used to say when he took me fishing: “A bad day fishing is better than a good day at the office.” I was about five when he told me this, so I didn’t yet know the horror of meetings which could have been emails, but that always has stuck with me. Even watching the Nationals bullpen, footage of which has been used by a variety of authoritarian governments to violate the Geneva Conventions, is better than working or, God forbid, scrolling Twitter.

I’ll admit that my fervor wanes a bit towards the end of the season. Football is back, and the Commanders actually have the hope that the Nationals lack, and college football is infinitely wonderful in its own way as well. Hockey is coming soon, where I have the fun of rooting for a team that has been nothing but very good (but not good enough to get to the mountain-top yet) as long as I’ve been a fan of them. But I know that as soon as the playoffs are over I will miss being able to come home after work and watching the Nationals face the Marlins in a nearly empty stadium while I cook dinner. I especially wanted to go to the very last game of the season, since I had been to Opening Day at Nationals Park and wanted to bring things full circle, so to speak. I knew that I would watch the last out of the World Series and wish that April would come soon so I could do it all over again. So I decided to go to the last few games of their season as the White Sox came to DC to play the Nationals.

The baseball world, of course, was abuzz with the several tight playoff races that have made the last few weeks of the regular season so interesting. Who would win the AL East? Who would manage to snag the last wildcard slot in the NL? (The Mets lost it mentally, if not literally, the second they let Daylen Lile hit an inside-the-park home run in extra innings). And, most importantly, would the White Sox be able to pull within ten games of 4th place in the AL Central as they play the Nationals? As I looked at the Nationals schedule, I realized that I had chosen a real treat of a series, a true contest between a stoppable force and a movable object. The fifth-place Chicago White Sox, only barely removed from the worst season since something called the “Louisville Colonels” existed, would face my beloved Washington Nationals, also in fifth-place. In the midst of perhaps the most exciting playoff races in recent memory, I would be watching two teams which had been eliminated from contention sometime around Memorial Day play completely meaningless baseball. I oscillated between thinking that these games would be, in a way, the purest baseball I’d ever seen, at least at a professional level - truly, they would be playing for the love of the game - and expecting to see something like a Beckett play - men aimlessly stumbling around, murmuring strange phrases, seemingly devoid of purpose or meaning.

Instead, I was reminded of why I fell in love with baseball. I went to one game alone, on Friday, and another on Sunday with a group of friends. While I don’t normally go alone, I quite enjoyed the solitude of listening to the broadcast on my headphones while keeping my scorebook. (The scorebook is another thing I love about baseball - no other sport lets you keep such a nice, orderly spreadsheet accounting for all the events of the game). The Nationals immediately began the Friday game by committing several defensive errors which allowed the White Sox to put four runs on the board. The pain only continued, as more defensive miscues allowed the score to reach 8-1 by the middle of the fifth inning. I shook my head knowingly as I marked every error (four in total in this game). The Nationals are doing what they do best - losing.

But then, there were signs of life. The Nationals scored a few runs, presumably to protect their reputations from a more stinging loss. They got back to five runs, while the bullpen suddenly remembered they were in fact major leaguers and prevented the Sox from scoring more. And then, in the bottom of the 8th, a miracle: Daylen Lile hit a three-run dinger, which would tie the game at 8. And then, Luis Garcia Jr - who was already having quite a night - would hit his third home run of the game, and the Nats took the lead with only three outs standing between them and a remarkable comeback. The ballpark was going wild, I was going wild, I was remembering why I loved this sport and why I always stuck around to the end even in the midst of the worst losses.

And then the bullpen blew it in the ninth, as they always have, and Jose A. Ferrer gave up a two-run homer after committing an error to let a runner get to first. 10-9, Nats lose. I had come into the game without expectations, then totally suckered into believing in this team, and they left me in the lurch yet again. It was an exciting game, at least, with several home-runs from both teams and genuine tension through the latter half of the game as I watched, rapt with attention, to see who would come out on top. Even though the loss was devastating, I went home thinking that I had at least seen a good ballgame, and there was something to that even if we had lost. And, as I reminded myself, it didn’t matter anyways since the season was already over. I could just enjoy the good game I had just seen without much of the sting of defeat.

I came back on Sunday with a few friends, this time using Bob Carpenter’s scorebook instead of my own, as this would be his last game. I was hoping we could send off the season on a good note despite the utter lack of success this year, but I was treated to an even worse game. The Nationals had one hit all game and were shut-out, while the White Sox scored eight runs and generally made the Nationals look like they should be relegated to the minors. The Sox took that lead early and there was nothing to do but watch as National after National came to the plate only to be sent back to the dugout, tail between their legs. There was not a home-run for Bob Carpenter to celebrate with his classic “See. You. Later!” call or, really, anything to celebrate.

But I still enjoyed the day that I had, because a bad day of baseball is better than a good day at the office. I got to sit and enjoy a nice day and spend time with my friends, and as I sat with my friends we began talking about the games we had seen and the moments we had experienced. I had been to over a dozen games with my friend Vivian, who was there with me on Sunday, and as we reminisced we realized that even the worst seasons - and the 2025 Nationals are certainly in that list - have their moments of joy. When the Dodgers visited in April, I got to see Shohei Ohtani hit a home run in person - and then I got to see James Wood hit a go-ahead home run in the seventh to clinch a win, proving that even my pathetic little franchise can occasionally win against the baseball Death Star. When the Rockies visited in June, I watched James Wood hit another home run, this time a walk-off in extra innings to break an 11-game losing streak (I would prefer to avoid mentioning that this win was the only thing preventing us from a four-game sweep by the Rockies). Most of all, I spent a lot of time just hanging out with my friends and enjoying the summer.

I think a key part of why I go to so many Nationals games despite them being terrible at baseball is that I still enjoy bad baseball to an extent I don’t with other bad sports. I have been to bad games in other sports - hockey, football, basketball - where one team simply beats up on another, and it’s simply not enjoyable. Going to the ballpark is still fun for the obvious reasons that spending time with friends on a summer’s day is a good time, but even when I just listen to or watch a game on TV, baseball remains fascinating to me. Perhaps because I find the core of the game so interesting. Even if you’re down 8-0, there’s still something magical about the pitcher facing the batter, the contest between them that’s been going on for centuries. It’s a lovely way to spend a summer afternoon, or to just put on in the background while you do something else. There are still the playoffs to happen and the special magic of October baseball, but I already can’t wait for the 2026 season. I have Opening Day marked on my calendar, and I have the Nationals home opener circled. There’s always next year, and hope springs eternal - but even if it goes the same way as it did this year, or even worse, I’ll be there. Because I love baseball, and I love my team.