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Game 162 // Seventh Inning // The Nationals Win the World Series

The Big InningBlog

Houston, Game 7.

Before the cheating scandal broke. Before the Astros were tarnished.

When the baseball gods said: “Enough with these guys.”

 

 

 

 

It’s a wonderful thing, when you’ve got a young franchise who’s never won.

Because when they do, you can say without a doubt that you just saw the best game in a team’s history.

 

 

 

And in a game of nine innings, one was the best. The turning point, the moment the win came into being.  

Tonight, the top of seventh.

When Anthony Rendon kept hope alive with an out-of-nowhere home run—to get the Nats on the board, Zack Greinke out of the game.

 

 

 

Then it was a walk. And then, Howie Kendrick.

Coming up for the at-bat of his life. And the very biggest hit of his life.

Smacking a ball the opposite way. Right into the foul pole.

 

 

 

A few hours before Halloween, that time when weird spirits are about, when strange things tiptoe around. When the baseball gods get creative, unconventional, and send unassuming line drives into home-run justbarelyenoughdom.

Clang! Off the pole it went.

And into the folklore of an entire fanbase.

 

As the Nats, from that very moment it seemed, became winners for the first time.

 

 

 

 

 

A foul pole that must have inspired a new love story, with someone somewhere.

Like that one in 1975.

 

 

 

Someone who had to go see about a girl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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