Before Tuesday night’s shocking, 6-5 victory over the Seattle Mariners at Nationals Park, the Nationals had never overcome more than a two-run deficit in the ninth inning. They entered the ninth Tuesday trailing by four. Then they knocked out Seattle’s closer. Then Ramos’s three-run missile to the left-center bleachers, a thunderbolt out of the pitch-black sky, his first career walk-off hit, completed a sudden, stunning reversal.
The Nationals had spent the entire game down a fistful of runs — 5-0 in the sixth. They had been down to their last out for four batters. By the time Ramos swung, then took two slow steps out of the batter’s box, most of the 21,502 at Nationals Park had lost hope and left. Ramos thrust his right index finger into the air.
He said to himself: “The game is over.”
Washington had seemed poised to lose to its second straight following an eight-game winning streak. Instead, it conjured a win that sent them one victory from their first .500 record this late in the season since 2005, the kind of improbable win that could spark another streak.
“We never put our heads down,” Ramos said. “We thought we could win the game.”
The Nationals mounted the rally in the ninth, once Mariners starter Doug Fister exited after 99 pitches with a 5-1 lead and a win halfway in his back pocket. The Nationals managed three runs and a walk against him, and he had thrown three balls to only two batters. He dominated. But then he left.
“You kind of a take deep breath,” Jayson Werth said. “It’s like, ‘He’s gone. Let’s get this guy.’ When the inning started, we felt pretty good about it.”
Flame-throwing closer Brandon League replaced Fister, and somehow his 98-mph fastballs looked more hittable than Fister’s high-80s sinkers. Werth led off the ninth with a grounder that scooted through first baseman Justin Smoak’s legs and turned into a two-base error. Roger Bernadina followed with a seven-pitch walk.
“That showed you that we were zoning him up,” Michael Morse said.
Ryan Zimmerman grounded into his third double play of the night, a 6-4-3 that snuffed out most of the hope that might have been burgeoning for the few fans left in the park. But Jerry Hairston — in the game as a replacement for Laynce Nix, who left in the seventh with a sore Achilles’ tendon — singled up the middle, scoring Werth and bringing the tying run to the on-deck circle. That was a step.
Morse drilled a line drive off League’s right leg, and it dribbled far enough away for him to reach first. League limped into the dugout, forced from the game by a bruised right calf. Danny Espinosa came to the plate, incredibly, with a chance to tie the score.
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