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Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse, a survey of fans across MLB. Each week, we send 30 polls to plugged in fans from each team. Nationals fans, sign up HERE to join FanPulse.
Ryan Zimmerman talked at length about the fans in the nation’s capital after the Washington Nationals clinched their first NL East Pennant, explaining to reporters that it felt to him like it was the Nats and their fans winning it together.
“Me, the fans, the community, we’ve kind of grown up together,” Zimmerman said.
“I was 20 years old when I got here. We were not very good. And the fans -- you know, I still talk to season ticket holders now that have been here since RFK. We went through those things together.
“Right around 2012, when we made that first push, things started to change a little bit, and the expectations were raised. We’ve had some chances and couldn’t come through, and I think a lot of those failures kind of taught us and pushed us to get to where we are now.
“I feel like me, the fans, the community are kind of one, and they deserve this just as much as we do.”
Anthony Rendon too said the team felt the support in Nationals Park as they fought their way through the NL Wild Card, Division Series, and Championship Series to bring MLB’s World Series back to the nation’s capital for the first time since 1933.
“The fans definitely showed up today,” Rendon said after Game 3. “They’ve been nothing short of amazing during this playoff experience. Hopefully, we can continue to have them show up more and more. So maybe there’s standing room only. Just let them in. The more, the merrier.”
Clearly the Nationals like their fanbase, but what does the rest of the baseball world, or at least the rest of the baseball world that votes in the SB Nation’s FanPulse polls, think of us after watching Washington’s baseball fans on the national stage over the last few weeks?
If the Nats win it all, will the baseball world turn on Nationals fans a minute later and instead of making comments about how Washington’s never won a postseason series before (sorry, angry internet fans, you can’t use that one any more), will they suddenly decide that D.C.’s faithful are a bunch of bandwagon-hopping, late-to-the-party, entitled, fans-by-proximity, and former Expos and O’s fans who have only started cheering for the home team now that they’re playing for it all in the World Series?
Well, Nationals fans are still not as universally loathed as New York Yankees or St. Louis Cardinals fans. Not yet at least...
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And the same voting members of SB Nation’s FanPulse community were asked which teams they would like to see in this year’s World Series. Super funny that they put the Yankees and Astros as one option below, amirite? That’s funny, right, because clearly the two AL teams is betters than the silly NL clubs. They don’t even have a super cool DH in the National League.
Nationals vs Astros, The Battle of West Palm Beach? Nationals vs Yankees...D.C. vs NYC? We don’t really have a preference, other than the Nats in the World Series, and we already have that.
Quick, someone make a joke and call them the “Gnats!” Or say something about the “Natinals”. That’s never not funny...
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Where are you on these questions? If you didn’t participate in the FanPulse survey the first three weeks, you can still sign up above or HERE.