The Pathology of DC Sports

Last Thursday Night the Nationals found a new way to rip the heart out of all of DC Sports fans.  Once again we had to watch one of our favored teams lose at home in a deciding series game that continued the playoff misery of all DC Sports teams since 1998.  For those of you living in a hole over the past 18 months, that is the last time any professional DC Sports team (The Capitals) made it to a Conference Final.  That point has been particularly sensitive recently, as the Nationals loss marks the third time in less than four months that a DC sports team has dropped a deciding series game that would have put them into their respective Conference Final.  That is what makes this situation so hard to comprehend.  No American Sports City with three or more "Big 4" sports teams has ever seen futility like this before, and it should not be classified simply as just another sports "curse".  This goes far beyond what classic sports terminology can explain, and it should be dissected in order to come up with a title fitting for the uniqueness of the situation.  Lets start by addressing the scale of this phenomenon.

This "curse" (I'll use that term for now) is unique in that it has impacted all four teams that call Washington DC their home.  All other sports curses have been relegated to specific teams within a given city.  While Red Sox fans suffered under the Curse of the Bambino the Celtics won 16 NBA titles over three decades.  The Cubs wallowed in misery for over a century, but during that time the Blackhawks won six Stanley Cups, The Bears won a Super Bowl, and they were witness to Michael Jordan's greatness.  Even Dallas fans have had the 1999 Stars and the 2011 Mavericks to satiate their championship appetite as the Cowboys continue to disappoint them.  There has been no DC team to pick up the slack over the past 20 years, and it is the nature of that slack that makes this situation even more incomprehensible.

As all of DC fandom is aware, all of this lament is to see one of our teams PLAY in a Conference Final.  Not WIN a Conference Final, just PLAY in a Conference Final.  All of the above mentioned cities never had a 20 year drought where all of their teams failed to make a Conference Final.  Even Cleveland, the gold standard for sports sucking cities, never had all of their teams fail to make it to a Conference Final in a 20 year span during their famed championship drought.  Think about that.  DC has now eclipsed Cleveland in sports futility.  What makes it frustrating is that the DC franchises seem to be doing everything right.  The Nationals and Capitals have one of the best regular season records in their respective sports since 2010.  There have been three number one overall picks (John Wall, Alex Ovechkin, and Bryce Harper) who have lived up to the hype, and they are one of the best players in their respective sports.  The Redskins finally have hit on a number of draft picks and free agents, and they seem to have found their elusive franchise quarterback.  What makes it even more frustrating is that DC fans have seen post season magic.  Jayson Werth's walk off home run in Game 4 against the Cardinals in 2012 is one of the greatest radio broadcasts DC fans have ever heard, and no DC fan has ever been more pumped up than when Joel Ward scored the game winning overtime goal in Game 7 to defeat the defending Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins.  What makes it even MORE frustrating is how close these teams have been to making a Conference Final.  All DC teams have had a combined thirteen chances to make a Conference Final since 1998, including the 2015 Capitals who were 1:41 away from eliminating the Rangers in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semifinal.  We all know what happened from there.  So this "curse" is attributable to all DC teams, and it has brought misery and frustration to a fan base the likes of which have never been seen before even in the worst of cases in sports history.  This calls for a new term to be coined.  One that should only be used in the most dire of circumstances, and one that could last even longer here in Washington DC given the status of current events.

The new term based on this evidence should be "plague".  It is not a "DC Sports Curse".  It is the "DC Sports Plague".  Think about it. Curses happen to one or a few individuals and only show up intermittently allowing some joy in their lives until the curse comes back.  Also curses are usually broken instantaneously by acquiring and applying the necessary objects or actions to break the spell.  Plagues are different.   Plagues affect all in their path and anyone who comes in contact with it, they linger for quite some time (The Buboinc Plague still exists to this day) with no one shot panacea, and all they cause is misery.  Doesn't this sound like the DC Sports situation?  We have drafted the right players.  We have put together the right teams.  We have suffered incomprehensible playoff defeats.  And still we suffer from this playoff affliction.  Just as the term "Bubonic Plague" had to be coined because it was new to Medieval Europe, so too should the term "Sports Plague" be coined to describe the current state of Washington DC Sports.  No major sports city has had to endure such a futile times with such seemingly superior teams, and this DC Sports Plague could cause massive casualties in the near future.

With the firing of Dusty Baker, the likelihood that Bryce Harper will not be a National by this time next year looks better and better unless the Lerner's offer him north of $400 million dollars. Following him out of National Airport may be Kirk Cousins, whose contract situation is as enigmatic as I'm sure the first black splotches on the skin of peasants were to those in the Fourteenth Century.  This means that two of the four major figures in DC Sports could leave town within the next year, and if John Wall and Alex Ovechkin fail to end this "DC Sports Plague" this season it may mean that they will never end their Conference Championship drought in a DC uniform.  If that happens we will be well into the next decade still waiting to have the right to cheer for our teams in a championship setting, and seeing high profile free agents in all sports come to this city and get infected with the "DC Sports Plague".