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For us it’s easy: The best part of the Washington Nationals’ Zoom get-together to rewatch Game 7 of the World Series last week has to be when Brian Dozier (who is with San Diego’s Padres now, as Ryan Zimmerman was sure to note) brought out a garbage can he banged with a wooden spoon to “help” Juan Soto know what pitch was coming in his late-game at bat against Roberto Osuna.
We had to go back and watch it 13 times just to enjoy each individual player on the screen reacting with either shock or horror at what Dozier was doing, alluding ever-so-subtly to that super high-tech method Houston’s Astros devised to alert their hitters as to what pitch was coming, or in other word(s): cheat.
Strasburg, Soto, Zimmerman, Scherzer and ten other 2019 Nationals goofing on the Astros
— 2020 Astros Shame Tour (@AsteriskTour) April 15, 2020
(Via @pattyiceSZN) pic.twitter.com/UCocDY2hDR
What was Zimmerman’s favorite part of the Zoom call? Zimmerman, who co-hosted the call along with MASN’s Dan Kolko, told reporters on Monday morning, in yet another Zoom call that was organized to highlight the work he’s been doing with his Pros for Heroes initiative, that it was hard to pick just one favorite moment.
“I almost split it up into different sections of the call,” Zimmerman said. “I think having the coaches on it was pretty cool for everyone to see kind of the relationship between players, coaches, what maybe Davey [Martinez] and Chip [Hale] were thinking about on the bench during these innings, and then to have Max [Scherzer] join kind of early, we wanted to do that because obviously he started that game, and I wanted people to see or kind of get a look into his head of what he’s thinking about while he pitches.
“It was so funny for me to watch him. He was like locked on the TV, watching every single pitch, not even paying attention to the Zoom call, almost like assessing his performance, which is such a Max thing to do.
“Just sitting there quietly crushing beers watching himself pitch Game 7 of the World Series.
“So that was fun to hear kind of what he was thinking about a little bit, and then having just the cast of characters come on. I think it was cool for the fans to get an insight of like, that’s literally what it was like for us every day, minus the 6-7 bourbons that I had.”
There was a lot of bourbon (and beer) consumed over the course of the four-hour-plus Zoom call last week, and it did give everyone watching a good idea of it was like to hang out with the club that eventually won the first World Series championship by a D.C.-based team since 1924.
“I think that group of guys, that’s how we acted and that’s how we treated each other in the clubhouse every single day,” Zimmerman said.
“Every plane trip, every dinner that we went out to, every game. I think people realize how genuine it was as it got going, but all that stuff was kind of organic.
“The dancing, the [Gerardo] Parra and the [Aníbal] Sánchez sunglass stuff, them kind of always messing with Stephen [Strasburg].
“Stephen is a funny guy, he just finally let people see that he was a funny guy. It took those kind of guys to get into it. So I think, I guess my favorite part of the call was the fans really getting to see that’s what it was like every day.”
“That’s why we won the World Series,” Sánchez told SiriusXM MLB Network Radio hosts Steve Phillips and Eduardo Perez in a separate interview which aired on Monday.
Strasburg, Soto, Zimmerman, Scherzer and ten other 2019 Nationals goofing on the Astros
— 2020 Astros Shame Tour (@AsteriskTour) April 15, 2020
(Via @pattyiceSZN) pic.twitter.com/UCocDY2hDR
“That kind of team, that kind of teammate, that kind of you know, people support at least one person, they want to make something to help people and everybody is there.
“That’s a team, that’s a winning team, that’s like a really good chemistry inside, and that’s why we won the World Series.”
“Obviously we’re a very talented group,” Zimmerman continued, “and that’s the main reason that we won the World Series, but I think there’s really no other team, or no other group of guys that could have [done] what we did last year, and come back from how we started and win all those games in the playoffs when we’re trailing after the seventh inning.
“I honestly believe that that’s the only group of guys that could have done that. So I think it was cool for the fans to get to see us kind of together, organically, like what we were like every day, and I hope they enjoyed it as much as we did.”
The World Series Game 7 Reunion was much like the Nats 2019 season...
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) April 16, 2020
...the later it got, the better they performed.@masnKolko // #NATITUDE pic.twitter.com/i0AHuNRxPP