In normal times, we would have baseball right now. It would be fun, a nice relaxing way to spend an afternoon or evening and not worry about the rest of the world for a while. For now, the best we have is the Washington Nationals replaying broadcasts of their playoff games and posting clips from big moments on their social media accounts.

Reading Jesse Dougherty’s “Buzz Saw” at the same time has been a real lift for me personally. Dougherty, the Nationals beat writer at the Washington Post, tells the story of the 2019 season, from pre-season roster decisions to disastrous early results and bullpen meltdowns, to what it was like for players as they turned the season around and eventually won the World Series.

When I first saw this book, I didn’t have that much enthusiasm. I wrongly assumed it was going to be glorified rehashing of Post coverage and that I would feel like I was reading things I already read. Instead, it’s a much more illustrative narrative of the journey with a lot of background and behind the scenes things I didn’t know before.

Plus, when taken all together, the drumbeat of the season takes on a different tone, especially when you know the outcome. It was incredibly fun to have Dougherty introduce a game or situation and immediately be thrown back to that moment, either sitting in the stands at Nationals Park or listening to that game on the radio.

Take for instance a June 9 game at San Diego, which Dougherty used to show how dangerous the offense was when a bunch of key hitters returned from early season injuries:

“They were at risk of wasting a dominant day from Strasburg. But Kendrick ripped a 2-2 curveball off a digital scoreboard in left field. Tie Game. Then Trea Turner skied a sinker out to center, and Adam Eaton pulled a sinker over the fence, and Rendon lifted one into the first row of seats in right-center.”

I finishing up a shower when this happened, four home runs in a row as I got ready for work. I have a vivid memory after the second homer of stopping what I was doing to really pay attention as Eaton came to the plate, and almost not hearing the Rendon homer as I quickly opened Twitter to see my fellow Nats fans freaking out about one of the only awesome moments of the season so far.

And then there was this, recounting Game 2 of the World Series and catcher Kurt Suzuki hitting a home run in the 7th inning. I watched the first two games at my wife’s family’s house in Mexico, and this happened while she and I were getting ready for bed.

“The Nationals were ahead, and their lead was about to stretch, and by the end of the seventh, an inning that started with Suzuki’s homer, they had scored 6 runs to bury the Astros.”

I remember her going to brush her teeth, coming back and being in disbelief they had scored so many runs in that short time she was gone. That inning, and the two that followed with the Nats scoring four more runs, took so long that she fell asleep while I stayed up despite the lopsided score. The result was me, at whatever time in the morning, spending what I estimate was half an hour in the dark trying to find either the remote or where on the TV itself I could push a button to turn it off (I failed at both!)

Of course, there were many, many frustrations during the regular season, most of them about the bullpen, which prompted me to post multiple tweets offering to pitch.

“What immediately became routine was Dave Martinez making a bullpen move, and that move not working, and Martinez later walking into his postgame press conference, bordering on anger, sometimes shaking to fend it off, to explain a problem he could not fix.”

I felt a mix of rage and anxiety reading Dougherty’s description. Watching the bullpen door swing open, hoping for the best, then seeing three hits in a row, or a first pitch home run, was just so demoralizing from a fan’s point of view I can’t imagine what it must have felt like for the manager who had few reliable options. On more than one occasion, we watched the dejected faces of fans leaving our section in the 8th inning, embodying the attitude of, “What’s the point of watching the rest?”

Fast-forward to the Dougherty’s description of the World Series, the seventh game, and Howie Kendrick hitting a home run off the foul pole to put the Nats ahead:

“In the hurried moment between the result and reaction that sound — donggg — echoed through thousands of ears. It echoed through a silent stadium, through the streets of Houston, and, in Washington, the pixelated big screen at Nationals Park. Some thirteen thousand fans stood in there, soaked beneath a driving rain, and learned right then, right at the edge of their patience, why they kept showing up.”

You never know what you’re going to see at the park. You never know when you’re going to experience a season like 2019. You never know when you’ll need a boost and get a smile just from seeing Juan Soto’s face of elation on a book cover.

This is a must-read for Nationals fans, and I think any baseball fan can get a lot of enjoyment from the story of this team. May baseball (safely) come back into our lives soon.

If you want to dip into the archives, I wrote about the Nats season here.