Old-school Nationals, at last, are first

The Nationals are a pile of joy after wrapping up the World Series with a Game 7 comeback win Wednesday night.matt slocum/Associated Press

HOUSTON — They were born as the Montreal Expos in 1969 and made the playoffs only once in 36 seasons. Montreal’s best team, the 1994 Expos, might have won a World Series, but there was no World Series that year because of a work stoppage.

When the Expos became the Washington Nationals in 2005, they were wards of the state, literally owned by Major League Baseball. MLB hired their manager and general manager. Until this year, the Nats never won a playoff series. They were legitimate heirs to the old Washington Senators.

And now they are Faustian champions of the baseball world, with a team that started the season 19-31.

Party like it's 1924. #CHAMPS pic.twitter.com/FCPQxhTfws

— MLB (@MLB) October 31, 2019

Capping the only World Series in which the road team won every game, the Nationals beat the heavily favored Houston Astros, 6-2, in Game 7 of the Fall Classic Wednesday at Minute Maid Park.

Trailing, 2-0, with only one hit entering the seventh inning, the Nats chased Zack Greinke and scored three runs. Playing the role of Joe Hardy, 36-year-old Howie Kendrick delivered the go-ahead runs against Will Harris with a two-run shot off the right field foul pole.

Patrick Corbin and Daniel Hudson, in relief of Max Scherzer, shut down the cocky ’Stros over the final four frames. It ended when Hudson whiffed Michael Brantley 10 minutes before midnight EDT.

And so the Nats are champs. It is as if they made a deal with the devil. Washington’s only other World Series win was in 1924, when Walter Johnson beat the New York Giants in Game 7 for the Senators.

The Nationals won 93 games in their wild-card season. The Astros won a major league-best 107.

The Nationals are an homage to old-school baseball. They rely on scouts more than analytics. They still have guys in the front office who chomp on cigars and go with their instincts. General manager Mike Rizzo has a staff that includes six former scouting directors, four former managers, and two former GMs. All of Washington’s scouts played pro baseball. The operation is about people more than numbers. They’ll take a lunch over a launch angle.

This was a dull World Series for the first week. The Nats stunned the Astros, winning Games 1 and 2 in Houston, then came home and delivered a three-day stink bomb, getting outscored, 19-3,in their home park. They were left for dead when the Series returned to Houston. The Astros, we all agreed, were simply too good.

But behind 8⅓ innings of stud pitching by World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg, the Nats won a thrilling Game 6, then turned the hardball world upside-down with their Game 7 comeback.

The finale looked like it was going to be Astros all the way. Truly.

Scherzer, two days out of a neck brace, staggered through his five innings, giving up two runs on seven hits and four walks. But like the Hall of Famer that he perhaps will be, Scherzer battled, kept it close, and did not give in. Houston left a whopping nine men on base in Scherzer’s five innings, and scored only two.

Meanwhile, Greinke was dazzling. He allowed only two baserunners and faced only 19 batters — one over the minimum — in the first six innings. Astros manager A.J. Hinch had Gerrit Cole ready on short rest if needed.

With one out and nobody aboard in the seventh, Anthony Rendon, the Nationals’ best player and soon to be very rich in free agency, smacked a homer to left. Rendon hit something like .900 in clutch situations this month.

When Greinke walked Juan Soto, Hinch came out with the quick hook; Greinke had thrown only 80 pitches. But instead of Cole, Hinch summoned Harris.

Hinch might get Grady-ed for this one. Astros fans were expecting Cole in relief.

Kendrick, the old Angel who had big homers in every round of 2019, swung at a low-and-away 0-and-1 pitch from Harris and popped it off the foul pole in right to make it 3-2. That squeezed all the juice out of Minute Maid.

The Nats never stopped. Dominican prodigy Soto punched home a fourth run with an RBI single in the eighth, and the Nats added two in the ninth.

Score one for the good guys.

The Astros had the better team, but nobody outside of Texas wanted them to win this thing. They are arrogant, shifty, tone-deaf, and overconfident. They badly bungled the pre-Series dustup when their assistant GM yelled at female reporters after the ALCS win over the Yankees. They made no apologies when they got caught cheating against the Red Sox in last year’s playoffs — and they were accused of more stuff by the Yankees this year. They pimp their home runs and carried themselves as if they expected to win again.

But they did not have the hearts of Scherzer and Strasburg and Rendon and young Soto.

This Nationals team trailed by two runs in the eighth inning of their wild card win vs. Milwaukee. They trailed by two in the eighth against Clayton Kershaw in Game 5 of the NLDS. They trailed by two in the seventh against Greinke.

They won ’em all. Five elimination games in these playoffs, and they came from behind in all of them.

“I want bourbon,’’ Rendon exclaimed on the infield with teammates after Game 7.

He got champagne.

Washington: First in war, first in peace, first in the 115th World Series.