Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is still recovering from the 9th inning collapse of his beloved Washington Nationals. It has been years since your Maximum Leader has felt that passionately about a baseball game. (Indeed, the last time he felt as crushed by the outcome of a baseball game was Game 7 of the 1991 World Series. Your Maximum Leader, then a Braves fan - as DC was still without baseball - felt miserable for days. NB: He was also crushed by Game 6 of that same series.)

Your Maximum Leader, although it was late at night and he was dead tired, couldn’t fall asleep after the end of the game. He felt miserable for the Nats players who had accomplished so much this year.

All your Maximum Leader can say is, there’s always next year. And Nats fans can hope that, like those Braves of the 1990s, the Nats are perennial contenders. (And unlike the Braves of the 1990s - we can hope they win it all more than once.)

Carry on.