I wonder how many in the Atlanta Braves organization will be watching this week’s Fall Classic. Major League Baseball’s time to shine in the spotlight is this week when the Houston Astros collide with the Washington Nationals in the World Series. 

Watching the World Series this week might not be recommended for Braves fans who understand how close this team was to playing for baseball’s biggest prize. 

After all, consider this if you’re a Braves fan. The Washington Nationals, the team the Braves held off  by four games to win the National League East Division and the same squad the Braves won 11 out of 19 meetings against this year, is about to play in its first World Series. The team that scored 10 runs in the first inning of game five of the National League Division Series in stunning the Braves in Atlanta, the St. Louis Cardinals, scored six runs in being swept by the Nationals in the National League Championship Series.

Oh what might have been for the Braves. Baseball is a funny game sometimes. Would it be fair to suggest the Braves were better than the Nats throughout the season? Sure it would, the standings and series back it up. But with the way Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg are pitching these days, to suggest the Braves could have fared that much better than the Cardinals did this postseason would be a difficult assessment. 

But I think we can all agree the Braves are better than what our lasting memory of this year’s team will be — a Game 5 obliteration at the hands of a rather ordinary Cardinals squad.

All that being said, this speaks to the frustration of how the season ended for Braves fans. A team that was destined for so much more than a game five flameout is left to watch the team it owned during the regular season play on baseball’s grandest stage.

Hopefully, this will serve as motivation. After all these same Nationals had become notorious for excelling during the regular season only to not find that same success in the postseason prior to this year. Now, they have a chance to dismiss those demons of seasons’ past.

The Braves will have to wait till next spring to find their redemption. Until then, they’re stuck watching or ignoring the World Series this week and wondering what might have been.