BOISE, Idaho — This Day In Sports…October 15, 2019, five years ago today:
The Washington Nationals earn a trip to the World Series for the first time in franchise history, finishing a sweep of St. Louis in the National League Championship series with a 7-4 victory. The Nationals really had to earn it after they started the season 19-31. But they went 74-38 the rest of the way and peaked in the postseason, defeating Milwaukee in the Wild Card game and the top-seeded L.A. Dodgers in the Divisional Series. Then Washington got a hold of the Cardinals and never trailed in the NLCS.
The Nationals had the pitching, with Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg anchoring the rotation (the Cards hit a record-low .130 during the series). Washington’s star hitters that season were Juan Soto and Anthony Rendon, who each hit 34 home runs during the regular season. But it was veteran infielder Howie Kendrick who won the NLCS Most Valuable Player award after going 5-for-15 with four doubles and four RBI in the four wins. Washington would go on to win the World Series for the first time in seven games over the Houston Astros.
The Nationals were born as the Montreal Expos in 1969 before moving to D.C. in 2005 and hadn’t ever made the Fall Classic, regardless of the location. The only time they came close was an appearance in the 1981 NLCS as the Expos. There hadn’t been a World Series in Washington since the old Senators lost to the New York Giants in 1933. And there hadn’t been a championship in D.C. since 1924 when the Senators defeated the Giants in seven games. The original Senators moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul in 1961, and an expansion Senators franchise replaced them. The “new” Senators became the Texas Rangers in 1972.
Aficionados of Idaho sports will remember that the Senators signed a 17-year-old Harmon Killebrew out of Payette in 1954. They gave Killebrew a $30,000 signing bonus, a huge payday for that time ($350,000 in today’s dollars). That made him a “Bonus Baby” and required him to spend the entire 1954 season with the Senators. After splitting time between the majors and minors the following four seasons, Killebrew stuck as the Senators’ starting third baseman in 1959, leading the AL with 42 home runs and starting in the All-Star Game. He moved to Minnesota with the team two years later and cemented his stardom with the Twins.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
