This weekend in Washington, the real show has come to town.

Not the increasingly bizarre political theatre surrounding the impeachment proceedings engulfing President Trump and his associates – which is on permanent display and seemingly getting weirder by the day – but rather America’s other national pastime, with the just as dramatic razzmatazz of baseball’s World Series.

Last night’s Game Three of the best-of-seven playoff was the first time a World Series game had been held in the nation’s capital since 1933, when the Washington Senators would eventually lose the championship to the New York Giants.

(Technically, the last DC team to win a baseball title was the Homestead Grays, who won the 1948 Negro Leagues World Series, the year after the sport’s “color barrier” had been broken by Jackie Robinson. It would be the last playoff of its kind. The Grays’ opponents in 1948, the Birmingham Barons, included a 17-year-old future star, Willie Mays.)

Later, the Senators left town twice as part of the game’s expansion – first in 1960, to become the Minnesota Twins, then again in 1972 to become the Texas Rangers. The city’s current major league incumbent, the Washington Nationals, brought baseball back to DC in 2005. This is the first time they have been in a World Series.

And they are in a stronger position than their ancestors were in 1933 – they lead by two games to one, despite the Houston Astros spoiling the homecoming party last night and pulling a game back after the Nats had won the first two in Texas.

Since baseball – like politics – is a game that is often preoccupied with completely meaningless statistics, according to ESPN the Nationals are the fifth team in the last 40 years to win the first two games of a World Series on the road. Of the previous four, the one who won Game 3 went on to sweep. The three who didn’t all went on to lose the series.

Not that any of that will matter in Saturday night’s crucial Game Four, though. Not that every game isn’t crucial, but the difference between being 3-1 up and needing one of three, and being pulled back to 2-2 and needing two, is immense in terms of momentum, so there is certainly a little more riding on this one.

One similarity between the 1933 Senators and the 2019 Nationals is that their opponents are arguably, player for player, a better team. But while the Astros, who won the title in 2017, might have established all-stars like Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman (who in a strange twist has an intriguing family connection to why the Senators left town in 1972), the Nationals’ success has been powered by players like the remarkable Juan Soto, who just turned 21 yesterday, and Gerardo Parra, whose walk-up music has become a love-it-or-hate-it phenomenon at the ballpark.

The Astros have also been dealing with something of a self-inflicted management disaster over a locker-room incident involving female reporters. Coming at exactly the wrong time in terms of preparation for the season’s finale, the ramifications are set to resonate long after the title is decided, despite the club firing the executive at the center of the row.

In a scathing analysis, sportswriter Christine Brennan wrote that the Astros “still don’t get it” and had “shown an utter disregard for honesty, for fairness, for doing the right thing.”

Generally, that’s more of a criticism that applies to Washington DC’s other spectacle:  the political morass we increasingly find ourselves in. For those of us who look to baseball as an escapist respite from politics, well, it’s not exactly our lucky weekend, as the long arm and throwing hand of the President inevitably reached into baseball’s world.

Houston’s win last night means that there will now definitely be a Game Five on Sunday and it could prove decisive. The Nationals have invited noted local chef and humanitarian José Andrés, a high-profile critic of President Trump, to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

There had been some speculation that the President, who has said he will be at Sunday’s game – the first time he will have attended a Nationals game since moving into the White House  – might have performed the honorary ceremony. But Trump seemed to back off the idea, saying he would be forced to wear body armor. “I’ll look too heavy. I don’t like that,” he said.

Andrés, meanwhile, said simply that he was humbled by the honor but would have preferred the Nationals to have won the title in four games.

With Sunday likely to be the biggest crowd the President will have encountered since his election that isn’t comprised entirely of Trump fanatics, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball said that the President had opted out of any public appearance during the game “in order to make the fan experience as positive as possible.”

Nationals’ owner Mark Lerner said the President “has every right” to come to the game. “He’s the president of the United States whether you like him or not. It’s a special event. He should be at it.” But he said the first pitch honorees are the club’s call and “we felt there are many other candidates that should be considered before [Trump].” The President will apparently arrive after the game starts and sit with representatives from MLB rather than the home team.

Trump remains the only President not to throw out a first pitch either on opening day of the major league baseball season – a tradition that stretches back to 1910 – or a World Series game. George W Bush, who, as part-owner of the aforementioned Texas Rangers, had perhaps harbored ambitions to be baseball commissioner rather than President, memorably threw out the first pitch in a dramatic opening ceremony at Yankee Stadium in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.  Yes, he wore armor; and yes, he threw a strike.

Whichever team comes out on top over the next few days, the players know that whoever wins has to go to the White House, but whatever your politics, surely that’s a small price to pay for a World Series ring.

If the Nationals succeed in capturing their first World Series title, it will only serve to emphasize the current gulf between them and their Beltway neighbors the Baltimore Orioles.

The Os were only the second-worst team in baseball this year, but they had one thing other clubs didn’t – a voter registration booth set up in their beautiful Camden Yards ballpark. Unfortunately, the helpful signage that the team put up to direct potential voters to the booth appeared to point to the mens’ room; leading some to inevitably suggest that, no matter what we do, democracy may be in the toilet.

 

An Honorable Man

Finally, a congressional giant, civil rights leader and proud son of Baltimore, who dedicated his life of public service to its people, was laid to rest this week. Elijah Cummings, a frequent critic of President Trump and chairman of the House oversight committee, died aged 68.

He was the first African-American elected official to lie in state in the US Capitol and his funeral service in Baltimore on Friday was attended by former Presidents Clinton and Obama, as well as by Secretary Hillary Clinton and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, as well as Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell.

In a powerful eulogy, President Obama said:

“I was sitting here and I was just noticing the Honorable Elijah E. Cummings and, you know, this is a title that we confer on all kinds of people who get elected to public office. We’re supposed to introduce them as honorable.

“But Elijah Cummings was honorable before he was elected to office. There’s a difference. There is a difference if you are honorable and treated others honorably outside the limelight.”

 

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