A Different Season, the Same Sad Ending

“They say we're young and we don't know

We won't find out until we grow…”

-- Phillip “Sonny” Bono

Sure, you recognize that lyric.  It’s in that song that gets played over and over in the film, “Groundhog Day.”  Over and over and over, relentlessly.  Like the disappointment Washington sports fans endure with the blossoms of the cherry trees or the falling leaves of autumn.  Every year.

The song played again late last night as the Washington Nationals lost Game 5 of their National League Divisional Series to the Chicago Cubs.  It was an outcome familiar to Washington Capitals fans over the years and now all too familiar to fans of the Nationals.  The game-ending scene had an eerie feeling of sameness to it.  For this Caps fan, watching Bryce Harper – the tying run at the plate – strike out to end the season looked all too much like Alex Ovechkin foiled on a breakaway early in Game 7 of the 2009 Eastern Conference semi-final that would have given the Caps an early lead, or T.J. Oshie having the puck bounce over his stick with a yawning net in front of him in Game 7 of last spring’s conference semi-final that would have given the Caps momentum, or Ovechkin in that same game firing a shot at what looked like an empty net, only to have the puck click of the shaft of the goalie’s stick and out of harm’s way.

Wins and losses in team sports are, by definition, a team effort, but there are moments of opportunity for an individual that occur with some regularity that can define a team as a winner or a disappointment.  It reminds me of a moment almost 35 years ago that enabled a team that had failed to win a championship since World War II to end a 39-year drought.  It was the sort of moment that lifted a single player from memorable to beloved.  Any Washington Redskins fan claiming to be one knows it.

Nursing a three-point lead in the fourth quarter of the 1982 Super Bowl, the Redskins were confronted with fourth down at the Miami Dolphins’ 43 yard line with one yard to earn a first down and a choice.  All three of the options they had were risky.  They could attempt a field goal, but 60 yards was outside the reliable range of kicker Mark Moseley.  They could punt, but a touchback would not only give the Dolphins the ball with ten minutes left on the clock, but would only net 23 yards of field position.  Or, they could go for it, although failing to gain the yard would give the Dolphins superb field position and lots of time left.

The Redskins went all in, choosing to go for the first down.  There was nothing fancy about the play they chose.  In team parlance, it was called “70-chip,” but it was basically a straight-forward, smash-mouth play set up to isolate the ball carrier on a single tackler to beat.  The ball carrier was John Riggins, and the poor soul the Redskins targeted with their blocking scheme was defensive back Don McNea.  The object was to gain one yard, Riggins size advantage and brutish running style creating enough momentum to gain that before engaging McNea.  But here was that moment, that instant of engagement that turned a well-designed and executed play into legend.  McNea met Riggins and desperately tried to wrap him up or grab onto something, anything on his uniform to bring him to the turf.  Riggins, having none of it, exploded through the tackle, casting off McNea as if he were a bit of lint picked off his sleeve and sprinted the 43 yards to the touchdown that clinched a Super Bowl win and ended decades of frustration for Washington Redskin fans.  The Redskins became winners, the reputation for which echoes to this day, despite their descent back into mediocrity over the last two decades.

Other players in this town since have had that moment presented to them.  Alex Ovechkin has had such a moment.  Bryce Harper had his.  And their not taking those moments by the throat conjures up a depressing and infuriating thought as Washington heads into its 20th straight year without any team among its four major pro sports so much as reaching a conference final.  Year after year, the Caps and Nats are like Sisyphus, pushing that boulder up the hill over the course of a regular season, only to find that at the top – where championships are won – that boulder comes crashing back down the hill.  We are told that all those efforts do not matter, that those teams were different, that this time will be different.  Caps fans, you know the drill… 

“Which history? I don’t know anything about the past. I’m looking forward here to the next game on Sunday.” – Nicklas Backstrom

“I don’t think this team has any playoff history. This is our first playoffs together, so, in my opinion, no. Sorry to be cheeky, but that’s the truth I think.” – Karl Alzner

“It doesn’t really matter. … Everybody talks about all the past, the past, the past. The only pressure that we’ll have is on ourselves. We’ve got to go into Philadelphia and we’ve got to play really well and get a win there. If we don’t accomplish that, then it will go to Game Seven. I thought tonight we played excellent.” – Head Coach Barry Trotz

Nats fans got a taste of that attitude in time for this series… 

“I've kind of said this all year: I don't believe [the team history of disappointment matters] in that because it's a different team every year.  You play different teams, different players, trades, free agents, whatever it may be. We didn't play the Cubs last year.  So who knows what would have happened if we did or didn't. Doesn't really matter. For me, I don't believe in it. Whoever plays better, whoever executes more, you're going to move on.” – Trea Turner

“Once you get out there, that stuff doesn't really matter, what we did last year; doesn't help or hurt us once we're in between the lines.” – Michael A. Taylor

This is nonsense.  With each passing year and disappointment, the Caps are that same team.  The Nats are that same team.  The new players merely add a chapter to the sad tale.  And perhaps not until someone finds his “Inner Riggo” will the last line of that book finally be written and a new one – ‘Winning” – be opened.

The Nats are Who?

So, Kornheiser says the Nats are the Caps. The Washington Nationals baseball team is the collection of “choking dogs (his term)” that are the Washington Capitals Really?  Washington is a low bar for the postseason, to be sure, but in that pond, the hockey team is the big fish…by miles (with apologies to the fans of the local soccer team).  Imagine if the Caps had reached the postseason five times in their last 23 seasons.  Oh, that’s the Redskins.  The Burgundy and Gold have one playoff win in their last 16 seasons (and really, how many Redskin fans are bragging about that win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers being a classic?).

Or how about a team that has reached the postseason seven times in the last 28 seasons, a team that cleared .500 only seven times in that span?  There are your Washington Bullets/Wizards.  And not once in those 28 seasons does that franchise have so much as a division championship.  The last one of those the franchise had was when the Bullets won the Atlantic Division crown in 1978-1979 on their way to their only NBA championship (kudos to them…at least they have one; the Caps are waiting on their first one).

Then there are the Nats.  There are those three trips to the postseason of which Kornheiser speaks.  The franchise has reached the playoffs only four times in 48 seasons (it would have been five, but the 1994 season was cut short due to a labor-management dispute with the Montreal Expos having the best record in the National League).  The franchise went 30 straight years without reaching the postseason until the Nats did it in 2012.

Meanwhile, the Capitals have reached the postseason 26 times in the last 33 seasons, including eight of the last nine.  The other three teams – Redskins, Wizards, and Nats have reached the playoffs a combined nine times over the last nine seasons (three apiece).  The Caps’ playoff troubles have been discussed far and wide, but they have won five playoff rounds over the last nine seasons.  The other three teams have won a combined two series (both by the Wizards; the Redskins have not won a postseason game).  And, the Caps are the only team in Washington among the four major pro sports to have played for a championship in the last 24 years.

Kornheiser remarked about the Nationals, “Look, they’re the Caps now.  Okay, the Washington Nationals are the Washington Capitals. They choke. They just cannot win any of these series.”  Let’s leave aside the fact that against a very good Los Angeles Dodger team, the Nats were missing arguably their second best starting pitcher and starting catcher, both of them all-stars.  Repeat the old clichés about guys stepping up, or that there are no excuses in the playoffs, but lose two players in the two most important positions on the field, and your chances of a deep playoff run start to approach zero. 

But the larger point has to do with this claim that “the Nats are the Caps.”  Hardly.  In a championship-starved community, success has been hard to come by for its pro-sports teams (again, apologies to the fans of the United soccer team…theirs is a history to take some pride in).  But the Nats are not the Caps.  The Nats – not to mention the Redskins and the Wizards – aspire to be the Caps in these parts.  We think we speak for most Caps fans when we tell Kornheiser in a manner a New Yorker would appreciate…. #@$% you, pal. 

Photo: clydeorama 

Tools of the Trade

Be good to your equipment, and your equipment will be good to you...

...maybe it's a DC thing.


Photo: Eliot J. Schechter/NHLI via Getty Images
Photo: Ryan Kelly

First Time and The Charm

Now that the Washington Nationals have won their first post-season game – the first time a baseball team in Washington won a playoff game since October 5, 1933 (their only win in a five-game World Series loss to the New York Giants), it might be instructive to take a look at the experience of other teams in these parts in their first experience in the post-season.

Washington Capitals

First, there are our Capitals.  In their first eight years in the league, starting with the 1974-1975 season, the Caps averaged 54 standings points a season (in an 80-game schedule) and never climbed abve 70 points.  They hit that mark in the 1981-1982 season.  But in the 1982-1983 season they made it to the promised land for the first time.

Caps fans will remember that year as the one in which the Caps and their brand new General Manager David Poile pulled the trigger on a trade that probably saved the franchise in D.C., picking up defenseman Rod Langway, along with forwards Doug Jarvis and Craig Laughlin, and defenseman Brian Engblom from the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for forward Ryan Walter and defenseman Rick Green.

The quartet solidified a developing lineup, and the Caps finished the season 39-35-16, third in the Patrick Division.  It earned them a shot at the defending Stanley Cup champions, the New York Islanders.  It was an odd series, and not only for the Caps making an appearance.  It was one of only three of eight first round series featuring an “All-American” matchup (it was the last time to date that all active Canadian teams made the playoffs). 

The Islanders dispatched the Caps in Game 1, 5-2, perhaps leaving the impression that the upstart Caps would be no more than a speed bump in the Islanders’ road to their fourth straight Stanley Cup.  But the Caps returned the favor in Game 2, besting the Islanders by a 4-2 margin on Long Island.  The win might have fueled a sense of hope among Caps fans that an upset was possible as the clubs took the series to Landover, MD.  What it did, though, was get the Islanders’ attention.  New York outscored the Caps 12-5 in Games 3 and 4 to take the best-of-five series, three games to one.  Bobby Gould scored five goals in the four-game series, almost matching the combined output of his teammates (six).  No other Cap had more than one goal in the four-game series.

If one could find solace in the series loss it was that while the Caps were but a speed bump on the Islanders’ road to that fourth straight Stanley Cup, that was more than could be said for the Islanders’ finals opponent; the Islanders swept the Edmonton Oilers in four games by a combined 17-6 margin in goals.  We will leave out the fact that Edmonton would win five of the next seven Stanley Cups.

Washington Bullets

The “Baltimore Bullets” had already been a well-traveled team, the franchise having originated as the Chicago Packers in 1962, a team that won only 18 games in one 80-game season in that incarnation.  They became the Chicago Zephyrs in 1963 and won 25 games.  The Midwest not agreeing with the club, it became the “Baltimore Bullets” in 1964, and Baltimore would be home for the next ten seasons.  The club would make it as far as the NBA finals once – in 1971 – but would be no match for the Lew Alcindor-led Milwaukee Bucks, who crushed the Bullets in a four-game sweep, winning three of the four games by double-digit margins.

After a 1972-1973 season in which the team won 52 games and made it to the Eastern Conference semifinals, the Bullets moved to College Park, MD, while their new home – the Capital Centre – was being finished in Landover.  Still being in Maryland, the team apparently could not bring itself to adopting the city of Washington in its name, becoming the “Capital Bullets” for one season.  That being the case, we think it appropriate to consider the following season – the 1974-1975 season played out of Capital Centre – as the club’s first in ‘Washington” (although the “Washington Bullets” played in Landover, which was outside the Capital Beltway, not inside it as it was when playing in College Park as the “Capital Bullets”).

That 1974-1975 season was the first and, to date, only season in which the Bullets/Wizards franchise won 60 games, posting a 60-22 record.  It was a team that was loaded – Elvin Hayes and Phil Chenier each averaged more than 20 points a game; Hayes and Wes Unseld averaged more than ten rebounds a game.  Kevin Porter averaged eight assists a game.  In the post season the Bullets were taken to seven games by the Buffalo Braves before blowing out the Braves in a 115-96 Game 7.  They were taken to six games by the Boston Celtics before winning that Game 6 by a 98-92 margin.  But that’s when the music stopped for the Bullets.  The Golden State Warriors swept Washington in four games in the finals, and even though the Bullets would win their only title in 1978, this performance was perhaps the first instance of what would later become the “Curse O’ Les Boulez.”

Washington Redskins

Once upon a time there was a team called the Orange Athletic Club, a team that began as an independent football team in  Orange, New Jersey, in 1887.  And that they were for 32 years, until they decided to call themselves the Orange A.C. Golden Tornadoes (which sounds like a smoothie drink you might find in a mall food court or at a cheap bar at happy hour). The Golden Tornadoes played another ten seasons as an independent before dropping the “A.C. Golden” from their name and joining the National Football League as the Orange Tornadoes.

“Orange” became “Newark” in 1930 when the team changed cities.  Bad move.  The Tornadoes won one game in that 1930 season, went through three coaches, and had their rights sold back to the NFL.  Even though the league offered the defunct franchise to the highest bidder, no one wanted it (to be fair there was a depression going on).  In 1932, however, Boston was awarded an NFL franchise, and the core of the old Tornadoes became members of the Boston Braves.

From 1932 through the 1935 season, the Braves were the epitome of mediocrity, posing a combined record of 17-23-5.  What could be done to kick-start the club?  Why, a name change, of course.  The Boston Braves became the Boston Redskins in 1936, posted their only above-.500 season (7-5-0), and reached the NFL championship, losing to the Green Bay Packers, 21-6.

The Redskins celebrated by moving the whole enterprise to Washington.  Actually, the team’s inability to draw flies to Fenway Park probably had something to do with the move.  And it worked out pretty well, especially when the club was about to break in arguably its best player ever – quarterback Sammy Baugh, who they drafted out of Texas Christian University.  The club improved on its last season in Boston, going 8-3-0 in its inaugural season in Washington.  This was long before wild-cards and conference championships and that sort of month-long nonsense that is the NFL playoffs today.  Back then it was an Eastern Division, a Western Division, and the teams that won their divisions met in the NFL Championship Game (without Roman numerals).

The Redskins and Chicago Bears traded leads in the title game, the Skins drawing first blood in the first quarter, but relinquishing the lead on a pair of touchdowns by the host team.  Washington tied the game at 14-all in the third quarter, but Chicago got it back to carry a seven-point lead into the fourth quarter.  Then it was Sammy Time.  Baugh completed two touchdown passed in the fourth quarter to give the Redskins a 28-21 win it their first year carrying the banner for Washington.

So there you go.  The Nats are 1-0 in their first playoff appearance, leaving Washington teams 2-2 in opening games as a playoff participant (Redskins and Nationals wins, Bullets and Capitals losses).  The Nationals are not as late to the party in making their first playoff appearance (eighth season) as were the Capitals (their ninth season), but not nearly as quick as the Bullets or Redskins, both of whom appeared in the post-season in their first years in Washington and both reaching the title round of their respective leagues.

And that leaves open the question, will the Nationals merely be somebody’s “speed bump” on the way to a World Series title, as the Caps were for the Islanders on their trip to a Stanley Cup, or will they make their own mark by reaching the title round, as the Bullets and Redskins did in their first seasons here?

Here’s hoping we have another couple of weeks to get an answer to that question.

Captivation and the Burden of Expectation

“Capitals fans would argue Alex Ovechkin is second to none in production and style. The Wizards believe they have a rising superstar in John Wall and the Redskins have popular Pro Bowler Brian Orakpo. None of them, though, are capable of captivating D.C. sports fans as much as [Stephen] Strasburg. Ovechkin, Wall and Orakpo don’t possess the potential to do as much as Strasburg could for the Nationals 30-plus times a season."

-- Jason Reid, The Washington Post

So let’s see if we have this right. A pitcher who has a grand total of 12 games of major league baseball experience – only seven of which were played in front of local fans – has more potential to do more for his team in playing in less than 20 percent of his team’s games (and, if he is outstanding, maybe 15 percent of their innings) than does a player who might take 90 percent or more of his team’s defensive snaps in the NFL, play more than 40 minutes a night for his NBA team, or who might play more than a third of his team’s total minutes in the NHL.

What would it take to “captivate” sports fans in Washington to a degree that eclipses that to which Ovechkin, Arakpo, or Wall have done so far? Well, probably not much. Let’s leave alone the contention that D.C. isn’t Montreal or Edmonton, which puts Ovechkin at a disadvantage. Or that Orakpo doesn’t play quarterback for the Redskins, or that Wall is a nice player with little around him with the Wizards.

If anything, Ovechkin is the standard against which Strasburg would have to be measured in the D.C. orbit of major professional sports players. Both number one overall picks in their respective drafts, both viewed as generational talents combining skills rarely seen in players that young – Strasburg’s overpowering speed and assortment of knee-buckling breaking pitches, Ovechkin’s ability to marry a scorer’s touch with physical intimidation. Both gave evidence of a flair for the dramatic in their first appearances in Washington, Ovechkin planting an opponent through the glass on his first NHL shift and scoring two goals in his first game, Strasburg striking out 14 and walking none (the first player in major league baseball history to strike out that many without walking a batter in his major league debut) in only seven innings of work.

The difference is that Ovechkin has a fuller body of work. Incomplete it might be, but there are 475 games of regular season and 37 games of post-season experience to look back upon. And the disappointment that attaches to that experience as a result of the Caps’ persistent playoff disappointment has perhaps caused his potential to seem unrealized. Strasburg, meanwhile, has only those 12 games, merely a fleeting glimpse of what could come. Fans can still imagine a fireballing Strasburg leading the Nats to the post-season and pitching in a World Series (never mind that it has been almost 80 years since a Washington major league baseball team appeared in one).

And that brings us to an unfortunate truth. The ability to captivate fans, whether in D.C. or in just about any other major league sports town – is as much a product of winning as it is talent. And it has been a long time since any of the teams representing Washington in the four major professional team sports claimed a championship. January 26, 1992, to be exact, the Redskins winning Super Bowl XXVI. In the 19-plus years since, D.C. teams in the four major professional team sports – the Redskins, Wizards, Nationals, and Capitals – have a combined record of 1,902 wins; 2,329 losses; and 202 overtime losses and ties. Less than 43 percent wins in that time. And the post-season hasn’t been any better – 62 wins and 86 losses, a .419 winning percentage. Only seven playoff series wins (six of them by the Caps), and only one team – the 1998 Capitals – so much as competed in a championship final (it is also the only team to advance as far as a conference final in that time).

And losing, or at least failing to fulfill expectations, can have a draining effect on those abilities to captivate. Even the accomplished Ovechkin, he of the four 50-goal seasons, three Ted Lindsay Awards, two Hart Trophies, two Maurice Richard Trophies, an Art Ross Trophy, and the Calder Trophy as top rookie, had some cracks appear in his support this past season – maybe he isn’t in top shape, maybe he shouldn’t be captain. That sounds more like fan frustration than an indictment of Ovechkin’s talent, but it is testament to the finite shelf life even a gifted athlete might have in terms of his ability to captivate and grab the imagination of sports fans in these parts if his team doesn’t win.

So maybe Stephen Strasburg does have the potential to captivate D.C. sports fans to a degree that Ovechkin, Orakpo, or Wall cannot. Maybe he can do more in 30 starts for his team than the others can do playing in all their respective teams' games.  But to realize that potential, he is going to have to win, and not just in terms of 20-win seasons, the rough equivalent to a 50-goal season. He, like his contemporaries in Washington sports, is going to have to win on the big stage. And he, like his contemporaries, is looking up a steep hill of frustrating history to get there.