In the last few weeks, I started binge-watching a show called “Bosch,” based on best-selling books by Michael Connelly. The show had seven seasons, and the first episode of that final season started at the scene of a New Year’s Eve party on Dec. 31, 2019.
“You guys have no idea the amount of stuff you’re going to have to go through the next couple of years,” I casually mentioned to my television as if the participants of this party could hear me. And indeed, between COVID and a bunch of other stuff I’m tired of thinking about, those next few years were pretty bad.
Sports-wise, it’s now as if we had gone to Hell and back. On that New Year’s Eve in real life, the Nationals had just won a World Series, the majority of Christmas presents received were related to the team, and they couldn’t be more popular here in Ashburn if you tried.
The Redskins – and in 2019 they still were the Redskins – couldn’t have been a more polar opposite. They just finished a 3-13 season. They were about to give up their name and just become Washington’s “Football Team” as if they were some orphan who didn’t have a last name. Their owner was as popular as food poisoning and what was once mandatory viewing on a Sunday afternoon was more background noise.
You watched because you always had, not because you currently wanted to.
Five years later, the script has been flipped. The Washington Commanders play their first exhibition game tonight, and I don’t believe I’ve looked forward to a meaningless game where starters will play less minutes than it takes to drink a cup of coffee (if they play at all) in my life.
In just one year, a team that had gone 4-13 the previous season was transformed by new ownership that hired a bunch of people who knew what they were doing and let them do their jobs. The found a great quarterback, hired great coaches to guide young players, and went 12-5 in what was easily one of the most satisfying seasons of following the team I’ve ever had.
And I’ve been following them for close to 60 years.
The Nationals, to my great surprise, followed up the World Series title as if pursuing a former Redskins owner’s path of destruction. They now have become background noise in the region’s sports watching atmosphere, and while the shirts, hats and relics of those wonderful weeks and months after winning the World Series still hang in the closet, they’re now merely souvenirs to long-ago memories.
When the Nats first came to town, there was some concern that people would lose interest in the team once football started, since the Redskins had such a powerful hold on the Nation’s Capital. 10 straight years of really good baseball combined with a football team going in the opposite direction made that worry unwarranted.
But now, as Yogi Berra once said, it’s déjà vu all over again. The Commanders have returned to their perch at the top of the Washington sports food chain, while the Nationals, after 5 years of wait until next year without showing any real improvement, have become something to watch until football starts.
It really didn’t have to be this way. In business, some companies when struggling will study a competitor who is having a lot of success, trying to figure out what they’re doing right that you’re not. The Nationals only had to look across the street if they wanted to do that.
That’s really what it all has come down to. A new owner in football “wanted” to restore the organization to is glory years. The current owners in baseball, well, I’m not sure what they want. I’m not even sure they know what they want.
In any event, tonight is the beginning of what should be months and months of fun watching the Commanders. The hats, jerseys, etc. have all made their way out of the closet and will be worn frequently. It’s football season.
Nationals, it’s been real. As to when I’ll be watching you again, I guess it’s now your turn to “wait until next year.”
