Rachel Levitin: Ready for another round of October baseball in D.C.

When I first moved to D.C. in 2005 to start my freshman year at American University, my dad used to joke and say, "Good thing they've got a baseball team just in time for you to start. They must've known you were coming." This was funny unto himself, to me, and my family since I grew up and went to grade school within walking distance of Wrigley Field. It's because of that particular upbringing that I developed a love for the game of baseball. The sport's storied history was and still is filled with iconic figures, some of which make for the stories that overwhelm baseball fans with emotion, thereby capturing them as fans for life and not just a singular season. As you can likely tell, I've always romanticized the sport. It's one of the reasons I find even the most boring (at least by other people's standards) ballgames interesting, too. You never know what will happen within a game. Every game's story is different. Every game's story has a different leading man. Every game's story has a victory and loss but the vantage points from either end vary. Nothing is ever the same from day to day and that's what makes it fun. So when I first moved to D.C. in 2005 and Washington finally had their first baseball team in decades, the baseball lover in me got all kinds of excited. To know that I would get to witness so many of the Nationals' firsts as long as I was in the ballpark on a given day was something I was really looking forward to. The first few seasons for the Nationals were tough, but not as bad as the Cubs' 2003 playoff run that nearly broke my high school heart in two. But then, all these thoughtful and strategic trades started happening. General Manager Mike Rizzo started building up the team we now see entering the playoffs Friday with home-field advantage after finishing with the best record in the National League. I even remember being at the lowest attended game in the team's history, and that wasn't even that long ago. The times have changed in Washington and this is a baseball team worth watching if you can snag a ticket, dial up a radio station or turn on a TV. Among some of the most recent Nats' firsts I was able to witness include Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper's respective major league debuts, Harper's first home run, clinching the 2012 National League East championship, and most recently, Jordan Zimmermann's no-hitter. That no-hitter was everything I've been looking forward to since moving to D.C., in 2005. The energy of the crowd, the adrenaline radiating from the field, the scoreboard with zeros across, a sunny late September afternoon sitting at around 80 degrees. To paraphrase manager Matt Williams, it was a perfect baseball day. Therefore, as D.C. waits two more days to start the second stint of playoff baseball at Nationals Park, let us sit back, relax and enjoy the show. This team's got momentum, so now it's time to wait and see what it has left to give in October. But if Steven Souza Jr.'s diving catch to end Sunday's no-hitter is a true indication of how the Nats know how to turn things up a gear when they need to most, I don't know what is. Rachel Levitin blogs about the Nationals for We Love DC. Follow her on Twitter: @RHLevitin. She will be sharing her observations about baseball in the nation's capital as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. 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.