Like a bad haunting, I appear from out of the evanescence at the worst of times!
I think this goes beyond anything definable. Four playoffs, five years. Three game 5's. Four clinch losing games, all by one run. (Sorry, but 2012... welll... that was even worse than just a game lost by one, and more impossible) Four ultimately losing games, each marked down to just a *SINGLE* inning!!!
Each season's end like this, especially given those facts, sure, we can point to this or that, and call for them's guys' heads on a pike. But given the facts being what they are -those impossible, utterly inconceivable facts- proves (not just points towards, but both scientifically and definitively proves beyond all shadow of doubt) a far more endemic, pervasive causation.
I mean, an IBB, dropped K, CI, and HBP....?!? In an *INNING*, consecutively?!?! What are those odds (Oh, yeah, impossible - like 0-2,400,909... Scratch that, now 1-fer-2,400,000!)?
There is some good news to be found hereabouts: In MLB, the postseason is not some right, but a rare, rare gift. Teams go years on end without so much as a whiff of them. The Nats have now been blessed with four such gifts over six short seasons, spurning each and every last one of those in the worst ways conceivable. Them's gifts near their end, in all considerable likelihood- the MLB October well just about hath run dry. The pain might be almost over; as sudden and overwhelming fits of suicidal depression become replaced by something else we longer time fans also know all too well: Absolute and constant hopelessness springing forth from losses atop losses, at least in such a fashion as to ensure that October dreams remain just that: Dreams.
Which is better or worse? Who am I to say. One thing's for sure, though: Just once - just one single, lonesome little time - it would've been nice to have tasted some manner of victory in the crisp October chill air. I'm not trying to be greedy here, but, for such a cursed and downtrodden sports town, would a single NLCS really been asking for *that* much? Really...? At least not having these glimmer of World Series dreams get snatched from our noggin's in the closest, longest, cruelest means possible? One inning, one run, in one winner take all game?
Like I said, the only certainty here is that this is very much *not* a fluke. Further, the utter impossibility of absolutely unprecedented insanities never before considered feasible, even in the mundane slog of mind numbing excess which is 162 games a year for some 32 teams (I mean, IBB, Dropped K, CI, HPB!!!!!! ...?) There *IS* a problem, it is very real, and it is very much organizational, rather than calling for a player or coach's head here and there in the aftermath of this, only the latest such defeat in a string of stinging such defeats.
Either that, or blame Gio and/or Harper - this all nonsense started exactly with them in 2012 (*especially* Gio! The starter for this bookend of nightmares.) 'Elsewise, not much else one can look to over a span of six seasons where little remains unchanged save for the freakish impossibility of the losses, and yet their absolute consistency... Short of the Lerner family having some Voodoo curse/Nat's Park built on an Indian burial ground. And with this freakishness shared by all our sports teams + the Redskins name deal, may I suggest, in true South Park style, that we all go out tomorrow and make right with the nearest Native American descendants we can find (aka passionately swap genes with the very same...?)
*Sigh* - this story never seems to change, no matter how many eons pass between tellings of it, eh...? And now, much like those Native American spirits who spit upon our beloved sports teams, I too go off to rejoin them in the evanescent void. 'til next year, when I can prolly just copy+paste this whole entire post (minus the IBB+Dropped K+CI+HBP part... Probably.) anew. Now go out and make right with some Native American spirits!
