A witness to gut-wrenching sports history — 10.12.12, Nationals Park

I will never forget last night. 

Just like I will never forget the afternoon of Saturday, Sept. 1, 2007. Yes, Michigan fans, that was the afternoon when a small college from the North Carolina mountains whose pronunciation couldn't be agreed upon — you say "Appal-A-chian," I say "Appal-atch-ian" — came into the "Big House" and, in front of 100,000-plus decked out in Maize and Blue, stunned the mighty Michigan Wolverines.

The deathly silence that overtook Michigan Stadium — save for that tiny swath of screaming, incredulous fans of the small school — is forever entrenched in my sports memory bank.

And until last night, the 12th of October, 2012, it was the most salient memory, the most vivid — and heartbreaking — game I'd ever sat, or stood, in a sporting arena or stadium for.

The 2012 St. Louis Cardinals, winners of 11 World Series — the most by any team if you're excluding the Damn Yankees — are a little more well known than the '07 App State Mountaineers, although I'd argue that the average casual baseball fan probably had no clue who Pete Kozma was before these playoffs.

Last night, these Cardinals tore the hearts out of most of the Nationals Park attendance record of 45,966 patrons, almost all clad in red, waving red Nats towels, cheering their hearts out, standing up for every single two-strike pitch, for every Nationals batter with a runner on base. 

By now, I'm sure, you know the numbers, you know the historical significance of the night, such as that:

— Down 6-0 in the fourth inning, the Cardinals' comeback for a 9-7 win was the largest EVER in a winner-take-all playoff game. Baseball has been around a LONG time.

— The Cardinals had two batters down to their final strike of the season. They saw five pitches. They both, somehow, were able to hold off from swinging. They both drew walks.

I sat in Section 136, row DD, seat 20. For more than three hours, the hometown Nationals had held the lead, had been in position to win their first playoff series since moving to the District from Montreal in 2005, had been poised for another champagne celebration — this time just four wins from the World freakin' series. 

In the third inning, after Michael Morse, "Beat Mode," crushed the Nats' third home run of the game, the home team led 6-0, the Cardinals' playoff maestro Adam Wainwright was heading for the showers, and I took the opportunity to escape my seat and skip up the aisle, taking two stairs at a time, headed for the bathroom. On the concourse, everyone was delirious. Forget that it was the third inning, that the Cardinals still had 18 outs to spare — there was, simply, no way this wasn't going to be the greatest night of baseball in the nation's capital since, what, 1933? I ran into my friend Stefan and we, instinctively, bear-hugged. This was awesome! Incredible! Amazing! We ran out of superlatives and parted ways.

From that moment on, the Park calmed down, but only a little. Sure, Nationals Cy Young candidate Gio Gonzalez struggled with his control, the Cardinals chipped away, and the Nationals failed to create any more offense. But I couldn't lose the feeling that this game's conclusion was inevitable, that before the clock struck midnight I would be hugging and high-fiving the group of fans around me in a euphoric moment. I pictured the last pitch, the last out, the crowd's reaction. Even as the Cardinals inched closer, gaining a run on Edwin Jackson in the seventh and Tyler Clippard in the eighth, I pictured that final out and the celebration to follow. 

Not once did I believe the Cardinals would actually come all the way back. Was it possible? Of course. Crazier things had happened. Shoot, just a year ago many of these same Birds had pulled off the most improbable of World Series comebacks. David Freese, the unforgettable hero of that night in  St. Louis, was in the lineup. Even as all the fans around me, myself included, asked why, oh why, wouldn't Davey Johnson pinch hit for the struggling Danny Espinosa with the sure-contact hitter Steve Lombardozzi in the bottom of the eighth with runners on first and third and one out and Espinosa, sure enough, proceeded to pop out ... even as that happened, I was looking ahead, anticipating three more outs. 

When Kurt Suzuki poked a two-out RBI single to give the Nationals that proverbial insurance run, the ballpark erupted for what seemed like the millionth time of the night. Hands were slapped. Fists were pounded. Everybody was on their feet. The woman to the left of my friend Jeremy and me showed us her phone. It read "47 degrees." But nobody was cold. Too much excitement, too much anticipation, warmed the late-night air. This was the night the Nationals had played 162 regular-season games, 98 of them wins, for. At least until the pending NLCS, of course.

Minutes later, Drew Storen jogged to the mound from the right-field bullpen, right in front of us, his eyes bearing a steely focus, staring straight ahead. Not a soul in any section around us was sitting. Storen had been rock-solid of late, as fresh as anyone on the Nationals roster because his season hadn't begun until July 19 following elbow surgery. Down the stretch of the regular season, he had reclaimed his role as closer from Clippard. In the Nats' Game 1 win, he shut down the Cardinals 1-2-3. In the win-or-go-home Game 4, he pitched the scoreless ninth that preceded Jayson Werth's memorable, 13-pitch-at-bat walkoff bomb. 

There was no reason to believe Storen wouldn't put the finishing touches on this magical night in DC, wouldn't send the defending world champions home and book the flight to the District for the Giants, the NLCS opponent in waiting. 

Carlos Beltran led off with a double to center field. Anxiety showed on the faces of everyone around me. Still, there was no lack of belief, there was no doomsday talk — especially after Matt Holliday weakly grounded Storen's next pitch to the Nationals' longest tenured player, sure-handed third baseman Ryan Zimmerman.

The crowd roared. Two fingers shot up in the cool, crisp air all around me. Two outs to go. 

Storen worked the count on cleanup hitter Allen Craig to 2-2. Craig wasn't in the Cardinals' lineup a year ago. His spot was occupied by the great Albert Pujols. Now that guy's presence might have frightened me, might have made fans cross their fingers. But not Craig's. He whiffed at a nasty, signature Storen slider in the dirt. Strike three.

The crowd around me erupted, waving those red towels almost violently, sensing the kill, ready for that moment they'd come to the park more than three hours ago hoping for. Single fingers were pointed toward the sky. No, there wasn't a shooting star. No, there wasn't a full moon. Just as good, this team, this franchise mired in losing for so long, was on the brink. 

The bandbox only got louder after a foul ball made the count 2-2 on Yadier Molina. One. More. Strike. The Cardinals' big-hitting catcher almost — almost — committed to the next pitch low and away. How he held up, in that situation, is an incredible feat in itself. It's why he's one of the best hitters in the game today. And then he watched another pitch just miss — this time a tad high. 

"Not Freese," I said to the loquacious man decked out in red a row below me. Before the inning, we had discussed the possibility of the situation. Freese, the man as clutch as they come, in the batter's box with the game on the line. My voice had expressed nervousness, but I still inwardly couldn't comprehend anything other than the end result I had expected ever since that three-run barrage on Wainwright's first seven pitches of the game, and especially following Bryce Harper's crush job to the right field seats in the third followed by Morse's bomb to left. 

Storen worked two Freese foul balls sandwiched around a ball, and, again, we were one strike away. One freakin' strike. Again, towels were waved ferociously. The cheerleader guy who was working his 84th home game of the season ran back and forth yelling and waving 30 rows below us, exhorting the fans to, somehow, reach a new decibel level.

Ball three.

Ball four.

The stadium gasped, but quickly caught its breath. The Nationals were still ahead.

But before I could even process the situation and assure myself that this ending would just make the Nationals' playoff run that more memorable — who remembers a 6-0 game? — David Descalso laced Storen's first offering up the middle. Ian Desmond, Washington's best player in these playoffs and arguably the top shortstop in the National League after a stellar season, got a glove on the searing ball but couldn't stop it from rolling into center field. Cardinals pinch runner Adron Chambers easily followed Beltran home. 

The unthinkable had happened. The game was tied. And 45,966 were stunned, but not silent. After all, we had the bottom of the ninth. And we had that Werth guy coming up, followed by that Harper guy, then that Zimmerman guy. They'd each hit a home run over the previous nine innings. Yeah, this is crazy, but how un-freakin'-forgettable would back-to-back walk-off wins be for this team new to the playoffs, new to the big stage, be?

And that's when the dagger was inserted into us, when the stadium went deathly, disturbingly silent. Kozma, the no-name, fill-in shortstop for the injured Rafael Furcal had punched a shallow line drive to right field in front of the charging Werth. Two runs had scored. The 'board in center field read 9-7. There was no looking away.

For seemingly forever, I had never doubted the game's result. Sure, these were the never-die-easily Cardinals — now winners of six consecutive elimination games — but they were facing a team that had overcome plenty of odds itself, a team that had dealt with so many injuries, a team that had taken the ball from its ace — the right move, by the way — in September and taken heat from all corners of the universe for it. And still won a Major League-best 98 games. 

Shock was the only feeling that could be felt. Not anger, no. Not sadness, no. Shock. Utter shock. 

What had just happened? And why? Why were sports so cruel?

The game wasn't over, but it was. The balloon had been mercilessly popped. Werth flied out to right field on the third pitch of his at bat. Harper looked like a 19-year-old for the first time of the night, striking out on three pitches. Zimmerman provided a little more resistance against flame-throwing Cardinals closer Jason Motte, but on the sixth pitch of the at bat hit a morbid popout to the shallow right-field grass not far from our seats. 

And that, just like that, was it. The three middle-aged guys to my right who had walked in front of us at least nine times to make beer runs couldn't have been more sober. It was the ultimate sobering moment, the moment when you, as a baseball fan — as someone who has closely followed a team since February, since pitchers and catchers reported — realize that it's all over. That there will be no more games, no next round. 

The sports world moves so fast these days. It's always onto the next game, the next season. One day, a championship is won; the next, preseason rankings for the following year are out. Moments are quickly forgotten. Questions are asked prematurely. Blame is placed too soon. 

As 1 a.m. approached, it didn't feel right to leave the stadium, to make a quick exit among the hordes of angry, sad, shellshocked patrons. It didn't feel right to move onto an activity other than watching a baseball game. Much the same way as I had sat on the bench in Michigan Stadium a little over five years prior, I found a seat — this one in Section 138 — and stared at the empty seats. The only noise came from across the field, where maybe 50 Cardinals fans behind the visitor's dugout were serenading their heroes with raucous applause.

Full disclosure: I am not a "die-hard" Nationals fan. This isn't my team. I'm from Michigan and will always be a Detroit Tigers fan. So I had a game to look forward to in 19 hours. The Tigers would be taking on those Damn Yanks in Game 1 of the ALCS. But at that moment, and still a day later, I didn't want to move on, I couldn't. Living in DC, I had closely followed the Nationals for the better part of two seasons. With the Washington Post's and Associated Press' excellent sports coverage combined with attending more than a dozen regular-season games, I knew this team as well as I know the Tigers. So I would closely watch every pitch — until, of course, they played Detroit in the World Series. That was the hope, and I thought it would be just eight wins from fruition.

For that, I — and everyone else who followed and was enamored by this resilient bunch — will have to wait until 2013. And while there will be a new focus come the spring, a refreshed excitement about a baseball season anew, this night will never be forgotten by those of us who witnessed it.

For better. And then, ultimately, for worse.