For one night, Nats do something they'd never done before

It's easy, in hindsight, to claim you believed you could come back from nine runs down to win a major league baseball game. Deep down, there had to be plenty inside the Nationals dugout who figured they were headed for one of their most demoralizing losses of the year when the Marlins put up nine runs to their zero in the first 3 1/2 innings tonight on South Capitol Street.

And yet, the vibe inside the home bullpen suggested the sense of hope was real. Even when things looked their worst, Nationals relievers were busy trying to prepare for whatever the evening might still have in store for them.

"I mean, it got lopsided, but the phone was still ringing," Shawn Kelley said. "It kind of had a weird vibe. Even though we got down, I think everybody, in a weird way, had a feeling that we were going to make this a game."

They of course didn't just make this a game. They made it the greatest comeback in club history.

Down 9-0 in the fourth, a Nationals team on the brink of complete disaster somehow found a way to score 14 unanswered runs, then hang on to beat the Marlins 14-12 and leave everyone inside Nationals Park exhausted from the wildest turn of events just about anyone here had ever experienced. At least anytime in recent memory.

"I would imagine at some point in my life," Trea Turner said when asked if he'd ever been a part of a comparable comeback. "I've played a decent amount of baseball. Probably at a lower level, yeah. But at this level and/or college, definitely not."

This much you can say with 100 percent confidence: Nobody wearing a Nationals uniform had never done this before. The previously largest deficit overcome to win a game? That would be the eight runs they made up against the Braves on April 28, 2015 during a 13-12 win at Turner Field in what has come to be known as the "Dan Uggla Game."

This nine-run comeback topped that epic contest, and perhaps now this will forever be known as the "Trea Turner Game."

Many players made the victory possible, but none more than Turner, who in the span of four at-bats in four consecutive innings produced three hits, eight RBIs and two home runs (the second of them a grand slam that gave his team the lead for good).

"Trea had an unbelievable day, so good for him," manager Davey Martinez said. "I've said this before, but for me, he's an All-Star."

Turner provided the biggest moment of the night with his sixth-inning grand slam, but it was his fourth-inning solo homer that got the Nationals on the board and perhaps provided a much-needed spark to make the later explosion possible.

"When Trea hit the home run, we went 9-1, it felt like we took the lead," Martinez said. "They were jacked up."

A four-run fifth, capped by Juan Soto's two-out, two-run double, made the possibility of a comeback suddenly feel like it was within reach. And then the five-run sixth confirmed it.

Remarkably, the Nationals scored nine runs in those two innings via only five hits.

"I think we've been grinding a lot the past month," said Matt Adams, who went 4-for-5 in his return from a fractured index finger. "This is what this team's capable of. Tonight, we never gave up. We got down big, and we just started chipping away. Put together some good ABs, pitchers started getting outs, and things just kind of fell in sync for us."

The comeback would not have been possible if not for some awfully effective work by the Nationals bullpen, with six relievers combining to pitch five innings after Jeremy Hellickson's disastrous start came to an end.

And then when Turner stepped to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs in the sixth, left-hander Adam Conley (who had retired him in all seven previous head-to-head encounters) on the mound, and smoked a 1-2 fastball into the left field bullpen, there wasn't a quiet soul in the building.

"I was trying to jump to the moon," Adams said. "But I didn't get really high up."

"I mean, it was just ... you could feel the energy from the people there and the dugout," Kelley said. "That was a special inning. Hopefully, that's something we look back on in a month or two from now - or four, five months from now - and be like: 'Man, that changed the course of the season. And Shawn Kelley did it all and got the win.'"

Kelley, of course, threw that last line in there as a joke. But the broader point stands. Will this be the game that turns a season around? The Nationals know better than to assume such things, because they've been burned by it before.

For now, all anybody inside that jubilant clubhouse knew is that they were just a part of something special for one night. Whether it sets in motion a chain of events that leads to something even more special is up to all of them.

"I keep talking about the momentum," Turner said. "I think that game was a huge momentum swing for us. If we can continue to ride that and play good baseball like we did - after maybe the first four innings or so - then I think we can beat anybody."