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Nationals/MLB

Drew Storen pained by Washington Nationals loss to St. Louis Cardinals

By Mike Wise,October 13, 2012

(Page 2 of 2)

After a while, as teammates, coaches, clubhouse personnel and media members came by to console or commiserate, it didn’t feel like the 25-year-old closer merely blew the biggest save opportunity of his career in Game 5 against the Cardinals; it felt like a memorial service, in which Storen had to act the part of the strong-willed survivor to comfort all the other mourners.

Ten more minutes went by. What could possibly be said to ease the pain of being within one strike of a league championship series? Nothing. Not now.

Storen had the scruff of a developing beard working, but it hardly concealed his youth. He still looked like a kid barely out of his teens back from an Alaskan backpacking trip he took in August.

He kept staring straight ahead, his left hand now cupping his mouth, deep in thought. He didn’t need another person in uniform to tell him life was going to be all right in that very moment; he needed a parent’s shoulder to sob on.

So many chances. If Yadier Molina and David Freese didn’t have such damn good eyes — if they hadn’t each taken five pitches to walk, the Nationals might be hosting the Giants on Sunday in Game 1 of the NLCS. If any one of 13 pitches became popouts or groundouts or strikeouts between his last two-strike count and Daniel Descals’s game-tying single, the Nats are golden, and Storen is mobbed on the mound amid a blast of sound.

Aw, hell with it, already.

At 1:14 he took his Copenhagen cans and put them away, finally making his way to the showers. About 10 minutes later, he put on his jeans, a gray T-shirt, a backward black baseball cap and zip-up black sweater. He slung his silver-tweed backpack over his shoulders and followed Clippard out for the final time in 2012.

Charlie Slowes, the team’s play-by-play radio announcer who the night before had enraptured Washington with his call of Jayson Werth’s series-tying, walk-off home run, shook Storen’s hand and wished him well.

“Thanks Charlie,” Storen said. “See you next year.”

It was 1:40 a.m. when he ducked under a sliding-metal partition, outside the ballpark, into a chilly October night, the last, cruelest night of the Nationals’ season.

For previous columns by Mike Wise, visit washingtonpost.com/wise.

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