A man spent his 42nd birthday pitching at Nationals Park on Monday night. And then everyone clapped for him. And then Max Scherzer waved.
And then … OK, wait. Look. There’s a lot going on with the Nationals this week, important baseball things that, practically speaking, matter way more than looking back. When the present’s good, when life suddenly goes from bleh to exciting again, you don’t have to grip so tight to the past any longer, which is maybe just a winding description of happiness. And after losing, 3-2, to open a series against the struggling Blue Jays, the Nats keep hanging at 54-53, explosive on offense but still too imbalanced to pull much further from .500. With six days until the trade deadline, they’re right on the edge of the wild-card race, meaning the reasons to buy or sell — or to do some combination of the two — feel like one of those DIY detective boards, the colored strings connecting a bunch of little clues.
Depending, of course, on the player and the offers, could a couple of wins or losses really make a difference? Could, in theory, a single series determine whether the team trades Foster Griffin? Luis García Jr.? What about, gulp, CJ Abrams?
That’s how Blake Butera, the team’s first-year manager, is talking. That’s how Paul Toboni, the team’s first-year president of baseball operations, has talked in recent interviews, too. The Nats are still exploring all options, which wouldn’t be news around here if not for the last five Julys, when there was no strategic gray area, just different forms of dread.
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“The last thing we want to do here is play games where it doesn’t really matter, right?” Butera said before Monday’s game. “We want to avoid that as long as possible. I know I haven’t been at this level, but in the minor leagues I never coached a game in August or September that was like: ‘Oh we’re out of it and we’re just trying to get to the end of the season and we have to get into the offseason.’ I don’t want to know what that feels like. What’s going on right now …”
And that’s when Butera started tapping the table in front of him.
Quick taps, like he was testing a microphone.
“How these games feel and how important each one seems to be, is what I want to feel and I think what we all want to feel for as long as possible.”
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Which sounds a lot like when Max Scherzer was on the team. Which is why, no matter how much is happening right now, trade deadline or otherwise, Monday might have made you feel something else, something raw, something about how it once was and how fast it all goes. Was it the way he kept throwing his arms out, just like he used to, as if they’ll fall off if he stops moving them? The solo walk — no, stalk — from the bullpen before the top of the first? Those waves before he exited to a standing ovation, quite possibly for the last time in this stadium, right as he stepped on the P in an on-field advertisement for AARP?
I bet it was the waves.
“The great moments that we had with my time here in D.C., those are just things you never forget,” Scherzer said after the game. “So coming back here is a good trip down memory lane.”
Scherzer, more than any active player, is a reminder of very good days in Washington, of moments and seasons that will stretch into forever. There used to be his blue and brown eyes above right field and now it’s a Toyota ad. But if you, like me, are into connecting narrative dots, he’s also a reminder of how long it’s been since this city could feel what it’s feeling this month. That each game can mean something. That it’s not pointless to care.
Five years ago this week, the dread began. That was when, after a team with Scherzer, Trea Turner, Juan Soto and a hobbled Kyle Schwarber wasn’t good enough, the Nats completed a full teardown by trading Scherzer and Turner to the Dodgers. For Nationals fans, the half decade since had brought little joy until this season. And for Scherzer, it’s included stops in L.A., New York, Texas and Toronto, which has all aged him a good bit, which is what happens in baseball when you’re 42 and not ready to quit the only adult job you’ve ever had.
Forearm and back issues have limited him to 24 ⅔ innings this year. On Monday, in his first start back from the injured list, he needed 75 pitches to record eight outs, which meant his night ended before the third inning did. He labored right away, loading the bases in the first before stranding the three runners. In the second, García, the only current Nat who played with Scherzer, tagged him for an RBI double. Then to finish his outing, Scherzer struck out Daylen Lile, who was 4 when the Diamondbacks drafted Scherzer in the first round in 2006.
“We’re all getting old,” Scherzer said of himself and Justin Verlander (and also everyone, in theory). “All of our bodies are not quite the same.”But the stadium wasn’t dotted with Scherzer jerseys because anyone expected him to dominate. No, it was dotted with his name, with his No. 31 in white and red, because of what he meant to you, you and yes, you, too, because your heart wasn’t always so cold. Because for six and a half years, Scherzer did what so few athletes can, which was make almost everything he did must-watch, all the way down to how he vibrated in the dugout. Because he once pitched a day after breaking his nose, when his right eye — the blue one — looked as if it had been jabbed by Mike Tyson. Because when he did dominate, it looked like two Cy Young Awards, two no-hitters and a World Series ring.
Twice in his postgame interview Monday, he threw out buzz phrases from the 2019 title run, which are apparently burned into his vocabulary. He said the Blue Jays just have to go 1-0 every day. He said, when asked about striking out Lyle, that it’s just a matter of staying in the fight, especially with how hard it’s been for him to stick on the mound.
Five years is long enough to change a lot of things. But it’s also, in this small corner of the universe, long enough for things to start changing back.
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