Marty Niland: Cubs-Nats series is loaded with history

If a date with the World Series champions and a potential postseason preview won't give Nationals fans enough to talk about this week, the Nats' series with the Cubs will offer plenty of history.

The two teams, as well as mangers Joe Maddon of the Cubs and Dusty Baker of the Nationals, have a more than bit of a past between and among them, and we only have to go back to last season to start.

The Nationals were coming off a blistering 16-7 April and had won three of their first four in May when they blew into the Windy City for four games against the Cubs, who were loaded with talent but hadn't won anything yet. No one on the Nats was more red-hot than Bryce Harper, who followed up his 2015 MVP campaign with a .286/.406/.714 April with nine homers and 24 RBIs. He had hit his 100th career homer - one of two grand slams during a Player of the Month campaign - and had just gone 2-for-5 with a homer in a 13-5 romp over the then-champion Kansas City Royals.

But Harper logged just four official at-bats in the series, thanks to 13 walks, including a major league record-tying six in the final game. While only four of the free passes were intentional, it was clear that Maddon had ordered his pitchers not to let Harper beat them.

Instead, the Cubs hurlers gave their best stuff to Ryan Zimmerman, who went just 2-for-19 behind Harper and drove in only three runs. The result was a four-game sweep that brought the Nats and Harper down to Earth with a thud. For Harper, it started a tailspin that would see his average drop to .243 by the end of the season with just 12 more homers. Those who don't believe some phantom injury derailed Harper's season blame Maddon and the Cubs for getting inside his head.

It wasn't the first time the Nats had been infuriated with Maddon. In June of the Nats' breakout 2012 season, Maddon and Nats skipper Davey Johnson had a war of words that lasted even after Maddon's Rays left town having lost two of three. In the eighth inning of the first game, Maddon sent Joel Peralta in to relieve starter David Price, but Peralta never threw a pitch. Johnson had the umpires check Peralta's glove, and they found pine tar, so they ejected Peralta. After the game, Johnson said one of his players had tipped him that Peralta, a former Nat, liked to use the foreign substance to help his grip on humid days. TV replays showed a smirking Zimmerman in the dugout as Peralta was being ejected.

Maddon accused Johnson of bush league tactics and called him a coward, insisting that pine tar use is common on every major league team and shouldn't be illegal. He even suggested that free agents should avoid signing with the Nats because their teammates would rat them out when they moved to another team. For his part, Johnson called Maddon a "weird wuss," mocked Maddon's use of social media and touted his own doctorate of letters in humanities. It was clear after the series that there was no love lost between Maddon and the Nats.

Then there's Baker's own history in Chicago. The Giants basically rode Baker out of town after he took them to the 2002 World Series, and the Giants squandered a 3-1 lead to the Angels. He landed in Chicago, where he took over a team with top-notch starting pitching, a powerful lineup and a suspect bullpen. (Sound familiar?)

Baker guided the Cubs to their first division title since 1989, and their first postseason series win since 1908 in the National League Division Series against Atlanta. The Cubs were six outs away from beating the Florida Marlins in the National League Championship Series, with a 3-0 lead in the eighth inning of Game 6. The rest is baseball lore, as the Marlins rallied after fan Steve Bartman caught a ball that seemed headed for outfielder Moises Alou's glove, and Cubs ace Kerry Wood fell flat in Game 7. Baker lasted one more season in Chicago before the Cubs let him go.

The Nats are now trying to remain on of the NL's elite teams in 2017, while the Cubs are struggling to regain their form of last year, when they raced to the league's best record. If that's not enough motivation, the history the teams and managers share is sure to provide it.

Marty Niland blogs about the Nationals for D.C. Baseball History. Follow him on Twitter: @martyball98. His thoughts on the Nationals will appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our site. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.