I needed a little distance to be able to talk rationally about the World Champion Washington Nationals. Or maybe I just needed to recover from the shock of the miracle they pulled off. Ten games out of first with a 19-31 record on the morning of May 23rd after their arson squad bullpen surrendered six runs to the Mets in the bottom of the 8th the night before, they went 86-43 the rest of the way, including the postseason, for a .667 winning percentage.

No one admits they saw this coming—except me.

The weekend of August 23-25, I watched their entire three-game series at Wrigley Field against the Cubs—who were also a good team embedded in a pennant race. The Nats won all three games, on hostile turf, and made Chicago look like amateurs. Fresh from crushing the Pirates in Pittsburgh by scores of 11-1 and 7-1, they took the first two Wrigley games fairly easily by 9-3 and 7-2 scores, then in the Sunday game, to quote a line Bill James once used about the 1985 champion Royals, they played “like they had pepper in their jockstraps”. They took a 1-0 lead and the Cubs tied the game. They took a 2-1 lead and the Cubs tied the game again. They took a 5-2 lead and the Cubs tied the game again, before they finally scored two in the 11th to win the game in extras. Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto went a combined 7-for-11.

I took to Twitter immediately afterward and predicted that if the Nationals faced the Dodgers in the playoffs, they could beat them. A number of first responders said I was insane, but I had seen what this team could do—on the road against a contender—and more than anything sensed a relentless winning chemistry I had yet to feel from the Dodgers in any of their recent postseasons.

Two Labor Day weekends ago, I sat through a rain-drenched doubleheader at Nats Park with my brother. It was also against the Cubs and they won both games, but it was obvious at the time that much of the crowd and the media were fixated on What Bryce Was Doing, meaning “best player on the team” Bryce Harper, who went off to Philadelphia and a gigunda contract in the off-season. Bryce had amazing talent but also spells of lazy selfishness, and seemed to me to be a distraction in the clubhouse. With him finally leaving, it’s easy to see how the team could come come together in a new atmosphere guided by laid-back new skipper Dave Martinez. And because national baseball broadcasts are obsessed with Red Sox/Yankee, Dodgers/Giants and Cubs/Cards matchups to the detriment of most other teams, it’s easy to see why “nobody knew” how good Rendon and Soto were, keeping the club under the radar and helping them focus on the ultimate prize.

I have also been drawn to the team for personal Expos reasons. The Nats franchise, as most of you know, was born in 1969 north of the border, where I watched them play numerous times in their late ‘70s and early ‘80s heydays. Screwed out of a postseason appearance by the 1994 strike, when baseball play ended on August 11th with the Expos holding a 74-40 record, it was a nice touch of the Nationals to flip the stylish Montreal “M” on their hats upside down to create the Nationals’ “curly W” once the team moved.

But while the Nats’ “upset” of the Dodgers in the National League Division Series wasn’t exactly a shock, their sweep of the Cardinals to win the pennant certainly was, and their all-road defeat of the really good Houston Astros was beyond belief. Don’t be surprised if we never a witness a World Series won entirely by the away teams ever again.

The Nats hit timely home runs and got great pitching, for sure, but especially in the concluding game, they also made contact and stroked opposite field hits to beat shifts—something precious few players know how to do in these days of launch velocity. It was certainly unfortunate that the delirious Washington D.C. fan base, who went completely out of their minds when the Nats got three runs in the 8th to beat Milwaukee in the Wild Card game, didn’t get to enjoy a home victory in the World Series, but I think they more than made up for it on their weekend of parading and partying.

So did their ace hurler Max Scherzer, shown below dancing with fans in a local bar. If nothing else, the 2019 Nationals may be the most likeable, curse-defeating bunch of guys to ever walk our green fields.