'Mr. National' will live forever in franchise lore

It is one of baseball’s enduring beauties that there are still stories like Ryan Zimmerman, who came to the Washington Nationals as a kid and stayed. It does nothing to diminish the stars of the sport who leave. But the ones who stay matter, mostly to their own fans. Zimmerman stayed.

You know by now that Zimmerman retired after a 17-year run with the Nationals, and as the team’s all-time leader in games and home runs and hits and RBIs and runs and total bases. And class.

Zimmerman was 20 when he arrived, in 2005. He is 37 now. And maybe the best part of his story, the very best part, is that in 2019, a season that started out 19-31 for the Nationals, he was finally part of a team in Washington that ended up on top of the world.

When you heard the announcement that he was retiring on Tuesday, then read his pitch-perfect statement to his fans, how could you not remember the night of Game 7 against the Astros in the ’19 World Series? How could you not remember the sight of Zimmerman, T-shirt champagne soaked, in the winner’s clubhouse?

One of the things he said into the camera that night was this:

“I’ve spent my adult life here.”

He was not the biggest star on his team when they made their run through the World Series, when they came all the way back from being 12 games under .500, when they came back in an NL Wild Card Game and came back in Game 5 of their NL Division Series against the Dodgers, came back from being three games to two down against the Astros in the World Series before going on the road for Games 6 and 7 and closing the deal against a Houston team that won 107 games that year.

There were bigger hitting stars for the Nats, for sure. Other pitching stars. Ryan Zimmerman, the face of the franchise for such a long time, was still in the middle of it all.

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He got a hit in the NL Wild Card Game. He ended up with 14 postseason hits that year. He batted .286 against the Dodgers, when the Nationals weren’t supposed to beat a team that had won 106 games and somehow did. And when he really did make it to the World Series, Game 1 against the Astros, he hit a home run his first time up.

Here is something else he said when that Series was over, and the Nationals really had become as storied a comeback team as baseball has ever seen:

“We’ve come a long way as an organization, as a city. World Series champions. Can’t take it away, ever, ever. No one can take it away from you.”

He was still the veteran, beating heart of the team. He was a few weeks short of turning 21 when he showed up in Washington. He had just turned 35 when the Nationals became champions of the world. Nationals fans know better than anyone that the title wouldn’t have been the same if Zimmerman wasn’t around to be a part of it.

There is an Al Kaline quality to how things finally worked out for Zimmerman. Of course, he wasn’t the all-around player -- the hitter or fielder -- that Kaline was. But there was a time when Kaline had to wonder if he would ever play in a World Series with the Tigers. He had first shown up in Detroit as a teenager. But then, in a different world, he went his whole career without making it to October, until he finally did in the 1968 World Series, when it was the Tigers who were the comeback team, coming from three games to one down against the Cardinals to become champions of the world themselves.

No one could ever take 1968 away from him the way no one will ever be able to take October of 2019 away from Zimmerman. Al Kaline is a baseball immortal. But Zimmerman sure was one with the Washington Nationals.

“I’ve never felt better than this,” he said when it was all over in ’19, except for the shouting all around him while he and his teammates celebrated their victory.

Zimmerman ended up with a .277 lifetime batting average. He played the game hard and well for such a long time. He played hurt, a lot, as all Nationals fans know. Shoulder injuries. Hip. Injuries to his feet. A lot happened after he was the first Draft choice in the history of the Nationals franchise. There were so many heartbreak Division Series in his career, when he was in his 20s and in his prime, you feel like you can lose count looking back. Zimmerman did everything with the Nationals, except stop believing that some day it would be his time, and their time.

"When we first met, I was a 20-year-old kid fresh out of the University of Virginia,'' he wrote in his statement. "I had no idea how unbelievable the next 17 years of my life were going to be.''

Not just for him. For the fans of his team. On the occasion of Ryan Zimmerman, great National, leaving, those fans know the best part for him, and for them. He stayed. Some still do.