When the home team is the third-worst in Major League Baseball, given to sloppy play, extended losing streaks and is in an organization-wide limbo, well, that sounds like about as good a time as any to take in a game at Nationals Park. 

Like representative democracy, it’s important to show up for more than just the good times. 

It’s easy to root for a winning team. (Done that. Attended every home playoff game, including the three World Series losses in 2019.) It’s hard to root for a losing team. (Done that. From the early games at RFK Stadium in 2005 to holding onto season tickets from 2020 to the present day.) 

It’s also interesting. Why? Because failure is more common than success. Lately, there’s been a lot of it for the Washington Nationals. 

This season has been especially trying. It teased the possibility of a turning point of the last few subpar seasons, with a Nats squad that was just a few games under .500 at the end of May. Two full months in, and I watched the Nats knock the Arizona Diamondbacks silly in Phoenix, with James Wood, CJ Abrams and company hitting a groove. 

Then the bottom fell out. Pitchers couldn’t get outs. Routine defensive plays turned into errors. Hitters went cold. The wretched Colorado Rockies, the worst team in MLB, came to D.C. and took three of four. 

General Manager Mike Rizzo and Manager Davey Martinez got fired. 

I kept going to the games. 

Wood kept striking out. 

Abrams kept bobbling balls. 

ERAs climbed. 

Interim Manager Miguel Cairo came up with ingenious ways to say versions of the same thing: We lost again, but it was a good loss, the guys fought hard and we learned something. 

It made me think of Samuel Beckett, he of “Waiting for Godot” fame. 

Beckett’s plays, novels, stories and poetry are filled with characters who keep going, befuddled, failing and flailing in an indifferent universe. They’re very funny. Bleak, yes, but funny. 

The absurdities and humiliations his characters confront remind me also to keep on the look-out for when times are good, when there is joy. 

The public announcer says it before every game at Nationals Park: What a beautiful day for baseball. Sometimes that’s not quite accurate. 

Early April baseball at Nationals Park can be chilly, clammy. July baseball can be apocalyptically humid. But on Monday, the first day of September, he was right. 

“He ain’t always right, but he is today,” the beer guy said as he pulled out the $5 pre-game Buds. 

I had just got back from vacation. The Nats had lost eight straight. I wasn’t expecting much. But it was about 70 degrees, sunny, partly cloudy, low dew point, and our seats were in the shade. 

Wood kept striking out. 

That reminded me of one of the lines from “Godot,” which I revised to match the Nationals’ fan reality: “Mr. Wood told me to tell you he won’t homer today but surely tomorrow.”

The Nationals won anyway, 2-0, behind a starting pitcher, Andrew Alvarez, who was making his major league debut. 

The Nats broke their losing streak, and bonus points for them beating the Miami Marlins to do it. 

Not everyone shares my desire to see a lost team in the last month of a lost season. 

When the public announcer said attendance for the day was 13,835, people around us guffawed.
“No way are there 13,000 today,” a guy behind our seats said, gesturing to any number of empty seats in every part of the stadium. That’s likely correct, because attendance is counted as tickets sold, not butts in seats. 

Wood homered the next day. The Nats won that one, too. Attendance was less than the day before. 

Nasim Nunez, recently promoted from Class AAA Rochester, hit the first two home runs of his Major League tenure the day after that. The Nats won that one, too. Attendance fell again. 

I have no illusions about how bad a team the Nationals are. But they are my home town team. There is no guarantee of future success either. Just because they won once, and are losing now, doesn’t mean they’ll ever win another division crown or World Series.

But there are moments of grace and light and happiness, even as the bigger picture is uncertain.

Kind of like life itself.  

And that reminds me of another Beckett line, this one from “Worstward Ho.” 

 “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Recommend If You Like is not owned or funded by a billionaire or even a millionaire. We do have a Patreon. If you can’t afford to become a patron, please sign up to our mailing list. It’s free and we’re asking here instead of a pop-up. Pop-ups are annoying.