We should have known from the first week-ish of the season. On April 3, the Nationals had a 6-4 lead heading into the 8th inning against the Phillies. What happened from there was a microcosm not only of the struggles that would define the early part of Washington’s season, but the ultimate resilient glory that would become the story of the end.

The Phillies scored four runs to take an 8-6 lead. Spirits were low. People got up from their seats and made their way home. The three pitchers charged with those runs would not finish the season as members of the Nationals. In the bottom of the inning, the Nats scored two runs to tie the game, then were the beneficiaries of a bases-loaded walk to end it with a 9-8 victory.

The peak of the team’s struggles still lay ahead with the lows of the now infamous 19-31 record in late May. But so too were the final manifestations of manager Dave Martinez’s “go 1-0 today” philosophy to turns things around.

I was lucky enough to be in the stands for the Wild Card game, something I wasn’t sure my nerves would be able to survive from watching other teams endure the one-and-done playoff round on TV.

The Nats won that elimination game by overcoming a late deficit. The same was true in Game 4 and Game 5 of the Division Series against the Dodgers. The NLCS was a smoother path. But then again after going up 2-0 in the World Series against the Astros, they had to overcome late Houston leads in both Games 6 and 7 to win the first championship in franchise history.

Overall this season, the Nats were 13-8 when I was in attendance. That included a 6-0 streak that began in August and winning eight of their final 10 games with me at Nats Park.

World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg was by far the best performing pitcher we saw all season. He finished with a 3-0 record. The Nats won the only starts we saw by Jeremy Hellickson, Erick Fedde and Kyle McGowin. Max Scherzer squeaked out a 4-3 record, while Aníbal Sánchez went 2-2 and Patrick Corbin was 1-2 in his first season with the team.

My Ryan Zimmerman jersey was the lucky one this season with a 5-2 record. The Rendon jersey struggled at 5-6.

It still feels so very strange to not be writing some sort of “it was fun, and we’ll hope for a better result next year” piece at the end here. There were so many times that despite being generally hopeful and optimistic that it just seemed so logically clear to accept this wasn’t going to be the season for the Nats. I think that’s the lesson we’ll all take away from this team. If you keep going, no matter what other people are saying, no matter what your own brain says when you examine the situation over and over, if you just stay in the fight you never know what might happen.