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The Best Scenes From the Nationals’ World Series Celebration

In Thursday’s Hot Clicks: The Nationals and their fans celebrate a World Series title, Karl-Anthony Towns and Joel Embiid throw down and more.

Dan Gartland

The Best Scenes From the Nationals’ World Series Celebration
The Best Scenes From the Nationals’ World Series Celebration /

Go crazy, Washington

The Nationals had never won a playoff series until this year. And then they won three, staving off elimination five times to lift their first World Series trophy in franchise history. 

It’s hard to describe Nationals fans as “long-suffering” when the team has only been in Washington for 15 years. (The Nats have more playoff appearances in that time than the Mariners do in more than 40 years in Seattle.) But D.C. threw all its support behind this improbable run and fans were ready to explode after the final out. 

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Washington Nationals fan celebrates World Series win
Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Nationals fan celebrates World Series win
Samuel Corum/Getty Images

The players were equally amped up. The only guy on the team who had won a World Series before was Hunter Strickland, who wasn’t even on the roster for this series. Guys like Anibal Sanchez, Fernando Rodney and Asdrubal Cabrera played more than 10 seasons in the majors before finally achieving the goal every player dreams of. Ryan Zimmerman, the only player left from the original Nationals team in 2005, was there to see it happen. 

Is it too much to ask for the Nats to spend the winter partying as hard as the Capitals did after winning the Stanley Cup?

What an incredible coincidence

I literally cannot believe what happened in this minor league tennis match yesterday. 

Michael Mmoh took on Darian King in ATP Challenger Tour action (the second-highest level of tennis in the U.S.) in Charlottesville, Va., and was disqualified after hitting a line judge with his racket.

Trailing in the second set, Mmoh lost a point and responded by throwing his racket at the wall behind him. It struck the line judge in the leg and the man stayed down on the ground for several minutes. 

This is where things get weird, though. You can hear in that video that one of the announcers says “It’s happened again in Charlottesville.” What he means is that King, Mmoh’s opponent, was disqualified from a match five years ago for doing the very same thing at the very same tournament. 

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If I’m a line judge, I’m refusing to work that tournament ever again. 

What happened at Deadspin is horrible

Deadspin as we know it is dead.

Much of the staff quit yesterday in protest of the site’s new owners’ “stick to sports” strategy and management’s decision to fire longtime editor Barry Patchesky for not adhering to that policy. 

The site will live on in some form but without the people who made it what it was it won’t be anything close to the same. The owners who took a profitable site and tried to strip it of its defining characteristics are in for a rude awakening. 

It’s not an exaggeration to say I wouldn’t be writing this column without Deadspin. They hired me as an intern when I was 19 and my only journalism experience was women’s volleyball coverage and a handful of columns for the college newspaper. Having that name on my résumé opened every subsequent door in my career and everything I learned there is responsible for whatever success I’ve had to this point. 

I’m glad they gave us one last laugh on the way out, though. One site that covered the news erroneously referred to Tom Ley as Nuggets guard Malik Beasley because of his Twitter display name. 

The best of SI

Emma Baccellieri was in the Nationals clubhouse after their improbable victory. ... How Stephon Gilmore became the best cornerback in the NFL. 

Around the sports world

Jim Harbaugh will honor the scholarship of a Michigan recruit forced to retire from football due to a heart issue. ... Baker Mayfield had a fiery exchange with a reporter with whom he has never really gotten along with. 

Are we still talking about robot umps?

The Warriors are really in trouble now

Joel Embiid and Karl-Anthony Towns got in a real fight and then got in an internet fight

I’m not OK with this

It’s uncanny

Not sports

A college student who got in a car crash had EMTs fearing the worst due to her bloody “Carrie” costume. ... An Australian man borrowed $1,000 from his girlfriend and then faked his own death. ... Multiple raccoons broke into the library at Arkansas State. ... A Nebraska man tried to open a bank account with a (fake) $1 million bill. ... A man in Australia discovered that the cause of his frequent headaches and sinus infections was a bag of weed he’d tried to smuggle into prison up his nose 18 years ago. 

This CGI is so laughably bad

For when you want an ugly, uncomfortable couch and also want to spend more money on it than your car

A good song

Email dan.gartland@simail.com with any feedback or follow me on Twitter for approximately one half-decent baseball joke per week. Bookmark this page to seeprevious editions of Hot Clicks and find the newest edition every day. By popular request I’ve made a Spotify playlist of the music featured here. Visit our Extra Mustard page throughout each day for more offbeat sports stories.

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Dan Gartland
DAN GARTLAND

Dan Gartland is the writer and editor of Sports Illustrated’s flagship daily newsletter, SI:AM, covering everything an educated sports fan needs to know. He joined the SI staff in 2014, having previously been published on Deadspin and Slate. Gartland, a graduate of Fordham University, is a former Sports Jeopardy! champion (Season 1, Episode 5).

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