MLB Showdown Obsession

 It seems that baseball can't escape the reality that a year ending in 19 is usually followed by a very troubling revelation the next season. 1919 had the Black Sox scandal that rocked the baseball world in 1920, and 2019 gave us the continuation of the Houston Astros cheating scandal that became public in 2020 (...and the headache that baseball had to endure for other reasons that season). While the 1919 scandal involved a team losing on purpose for underhanded reasons, 2019 involved a team using underhanded tactics to win, and the only group standing in the way in the World Series were the Nationals. Since their move from Montreal, the Nationals had struggled to finally climb to the top of baseball. They had accumulated a few division titles in the decade plus in DC, but still never even played in the NLCS, let alone make the fall classic. They had made a switch at Manager the year before from Dusty Baker to Dave Martinez, and a poor start to 2019 had calls for Martinez to be fir...