Some sports towns measure time and place by championships. Where were you during Game 7? Or during the championship parade? Or when the banner was raised to the rafters?
Washington sports fans do not measure time and place by championships. They use MRI results.
I remember exactly where I was when Robert Griffin III fell to the ground, his legs flopping around like bowling pins, his Washington career already on life support. I remember just as clearly a few weeks earlier, when Griffin first hurt his knee and fans first started grabbing at their guts. I’ll never forget watching Gilbert Arenas rolling around on the ground in pain after colliding with Gerald Wallace: You had no idea yet what was wrong, but already you sniffed catastrophe. (And you were right!)
I remember where I was when Bryce Harper collided late at night with the outfield wall in L.A., and walked off bloody and dazed. That one wound up relatively benign, but in real time the feeling was the same: like the air was leaking out of you, like you were trapped inside a haze of disappointment. I actually don’t remember Stephen Strasburg leaving that 2010 Phillies game with elbow pain, but I remember where I was when the Tommy John diagnosis came back: inside a parking garage in Silver Spring, staring at my phone.
Maybe this week’s Strasburg scare will turn out to be something trivial, and two years from now, we won’t give it a second thought. Or maybe it will be the latest memory on the list. Where were you when Strasburg winced, shook his arm, and walked off the field to that gloomy ovation? Me, I had just finished doing a podcast with some Nats fans about the nature of D.C. fandom. (Sad! mostly.) I was getting ready to watch the “America’s Got Talent” semifinals with my daughter. (How come The Clairvoyants didn’t predict this???) And then Strasburg grimaced, and fans doubled over, and that familiar feeling came back.
“It’s just such a gut punch,” said 106.7 The Fan’s Danny Rouhier, who put his son to bed with Strasburg apparently fine and came back to find Sean Burnett on the mound and panic in the air. “It’s tough to find the words: depressing, sad, frustrated. There was a ‘Why me?’ Honestly, I felt selfish for a second. Obviously this guy is going through something way more difficult than me — as a dumb chubby fan watching the game — but this was a me moment as much as it was feeling for him. The look on his face was gut-wrenching to watch, and it just felt so finite, like such a heavy moment as opposed to, ‘Hey, he twisted an ankle, or his oblique is a little bit strained.’ This felt so serious. And that cloud is still hanging over me.”
[What happens to the Nationals’ rotation now?]
Washington sports fans probably have a dramatic, self-pitying bent after years of letdowns. Injuries happen everywhere. And Strasburg might be fine. History, though, has taught us to assume that his right arm is currently dangling by just a few tendons, if it isn’t being shipped to a medical lab or the Smithsonian. We’re used to worst-case scenarios coming true — remember when the Wizards seemed set to go to the Eastern Conference finals, and then John Wall broke his hand? That’s why so many people assumed Redskins rookie Josh Doctson’s “day-to-day” prognosis actually meant he would miss the entire season. It’s why every time Bradley Beal crumbles to the floor, we assume he won’t be back until the next year’s training camp. It’s why there was so much talk of retching Wednesday night.
“I’m about to puke,” one Nats fan wrote on Twitter.
“Sick to my stomach,” wrote another.
“Physically sick seeing Strasburg have to leave another game after looking at his elbow,” wrote a third.
“Terrible pit in my stomach,” wrote a fourth.
“Watching Strasburg is breaking my heart,” wrote a fifth.
The fear is probably worse as the teams get better, which is why this one was a triple-antacid attack. The Nationals are going to make the playoffs. Some have suggested this is their best-ever team, largely because of the potential Scherzer-Strasburg-Roark playoff rotation. The next month was largely about passing time until the postseason. And now?
“It’s that whole D.C. sports jinx that just drives me crazy,” said Dan Hellie, the NFL Network host who remains a Washington sports fan. “Every time you have that hope — every time you kind of dare to believe and dare to dream that there’s a D.C. sports team that can bring home a championship — it’s like here we go again. We’re conditioned to assume the worst. Look at our history over the last 25 years. How can we not?”
This could appear comically alarmist a week from now. But this is the way many Washingtonians now experience sports: constantly peering for the next giant anvil to fall from the sky. One fan I asked to interview Thursday morning said she was too depressed to talk. CSN Mid-Atlantic’s Jill Sorenson woke up early Thursday morning to chatter of whether the fates are against this town.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she said. “It makes you wonder if we’re cursed or not. It’s a little absurd.”
[Stephen Strasburg exits early — into a future of swirling uncertainty]
Even Gary Williams — one of the last men to bring a title to this town — understands fans who feel this way.
“I can see why,” he said. “I root for the D.C. teams just like everybody else. You take it more personally. You think you’re the only team that gets injuries. I know I did that when I was coaching: We’d lose a guy and I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got no luck; why me?’ And you can’t go there. You hope it averages out over a period of time.”
As Williams pointed out, maybe the Nats wouldn’t have this huge lead if the Mets hadn’t been besieged by injuries. Maybe this isn’t about D.C. being cursed, but Chicago having its own curse lifted. Maybe the Nats will win without Strasburg. Or maybe Strasburg is totally fine!
Anyhow, back to Wednesday night. After he finished interviewing me about D.C. sports, 29-year old Washington native Joe Seib started editing our podcast. Then he started getting texts that he needed to flip on the Nats game, which he did in disbelief. He went back through Twitter to relive the injury; “a bit of a gut-wrenching feeling,” he said, echoing everyone else.
“We’re kind of conditioned to maybe not anticipate negative things, but not to be shocked by them,” he said. “This would be a new way for a Nats season to be undone. We’ve had a couple meltdowns on the field, but to have a season like this one kind of be derailed because of an injury would put the Nats right back in there with other D.C. teams who have had that happen.”
The Nats took every precaution with Strasburg. He rewarded them by signing a nine-figure deal to stay here. Before that deal, the team checked his arm, and everything looked fine. When he went on the DL, everything still looked fine. Things are always fine, right until that anvil appears.
“It’s like a Final Destination kind of thing where it feels fated: a force larger than us is working and conspiring against us to keep D.C. fans from being happy,” Rouhier said. “Every time you think about it you just kind of shake your head.”
