The ball went soaring off Stone Garrett’s bat and made a beeline for the left field bleachers, one of those no-doubters that leaves the crowd oohing and aahing before anyone officially knows where it’s going to land.
Garrett, of course, knew it too. And his reaction – fist pumps, verbal exclamation – revealed everything you needed to know about the significance of this moment for the 28-year-old slugger.
"I don't even know the word to describe it," he said. "Rounding the bases, I blacked out."
In his first major league plate appearance in 13 months, his first since he broke his left leg and tore his ankle ligament in a gruesome injury at Yankee Stadium, Garrett had hit a 431-foot home run, the signature moment of the Nationals’ 9-1 thumping of the playoff-bound Phillies in the opener of the final series of the season.
He finished 3-for-4 with three RBIs and a walk, a triple shy of what might’ve been the most remarkable cycle in baseball history.
"I missed everything about it," he said. "The bright lights. The grass. The fans. Especially D.C., the humid air. The airplanes flying by the stadium. The helicopters. I missed it all. The smell of the grass. I go out there every day and take it all in. I miss everything about it."
The last time we saw Garrett on a big league field, he was in tears, carted off the field after suffering his career-altering injury trying to make a leaping catch at the right field wall. He returned to action in April for Triple-A Rochester and spent the season there, unable to play back-to-back days for a while, still showing signs of a limp when he ran the bases.
But when the Nationals had a sudden roster opening this week, with Andrés Chaparro going on paternity leave, they summoned Garrett to D.C. and rewarded him for his efforts with a chance to return to the majors, if only for a few days.
And with left-hander Ranger Suárez on the mound tonight for the Phillies, it made perfect sense for Davey Martinez to pencil in Garrett as his designated hitter, then hope he could help produce for a lineup that needed all the help it could get after scoring a grand total of four runs over its previous 40 innings.
Garrett most definitely helped. His blast off Suárez’s 3-2 curveball accounted for two of the four runs the Nats scored in the bottom of the first. (The rally began with a much-needed hustle double from slumping Dylan Crews, was continued with Juan Yepez’s RBI single and was completed with Jacob Young’s RBI single.)
"Obviously, a lot of emotions were flying high," Martinez said. "I'm so happy for him. Like I said earlier, he worked so hard to get back. For him to go out there and do what he did today was amazing."
And Garrett wasn’t done producing after the home run. He lined a two-out single to center in the fourth, giving him three RBIs on the night. And he led off the seventh with a 107.8 mph double off the left field wall, racing into second base like nothing had ever happened to his leg.
"That felt good," he said. "That felt great. That was probably No. 2, behind the home run, being able to make that cut and make that turn around first base. That felt really good."
All the while, the Nationals dugout roared with approval and showered Garrett with love whenever he returned to the dugout. They knew what he had been through. They knew what this game meant to him.
"He's a good player, even a better person," said Yepez, who spent the first half of the season at Triple-A. "I'm just glad that he was able to do this. He deserved this moment."
It was a glorious night for the entire home team, a most unexpected one from a team that had lost nine of its last 10 and now had to face a Phillies team fighting for home field advantage in the postseason during this final weekend.
Turns out the team that earned win No. 70 looked far more interested than the team seeking win No. 95. The Nationals stormed out to a 6-0 lead to knock Suárez from the game after only two innings. They got one last electric start from Trevor Williams and four good innings from their bullpen. They even caught the Phillies running into two outs on the bases in the first two innings alone.
Williams wrapped up a highly successful – if injury-shortened – season in style with five more scoreless innings to his tally. The right-hander, who missed 3 1/2 months with a flexor strain in his elbow, returned from the injured list in time to make two late September starts and looked no different than the guy who cruised through his 11 starts in April and May to bounce back from a wretched 2023.
Williams finished with a 2.03 ERA and 1.035 WHIP in those 13 starts. It’s the lowest single-season ERA in club history by a pitcher who made at least 10 starts, an unlikely trivia answer perhaps for years to come.
"When the league punches back at you, you have to figure out a way to either dodge or punch back, figure out what makes you good," said the pending free agent. "We had a successful 11 starts prior to getting hurt. And then deep-dived into why that was successful. ... I'm excited to see what the league will throw me next season. It's that constant back-and-forth game. And hopefully I'll get another opportunity to pitch at this level and go from there."