WASHINGTON -- “You could write a book,” Nationals right fielder Adam Eaton said as the late hours of Wednesday night turn into Thursday morning as the club celebrated its first World Series championship.

He certainly has a point. The path to the Nats' title was anything but smooth, almost certainly not repeatable, and if you would’ve told someone how it would have played out on May 23, and maybe even Sept. 23, it would have been laughable. But the Nationals are World Series champions, and before they march down Constitution Avenue for their parade on Saturday, their improbable path is worth revisiting.

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Here’s a look back at their improbable journey:

Overcoming 19-31

How did the Nationals respond from one of the most disappointing starts in team history? With the best 80-game stretch in team history. You almost certainly know by now the Nationals fell to 19-31 on May 24, which at 12 games under .500 marked their lowest mark since the final day of the 2010 season. It also marked the worst 50-game start for any World Series champion.

From that point on, the Nationals got healthy and played like a juggernaut, ripping through the next 80 games at 54-26, the best stretch in club history. The Nationals ended up winning 93 games during the regular season, grabbing the top NL Wild Card spot and becoming the ninth team in MLB history to make the postseason after bottoming out so far, even if it only guaranteed their season would last for one more day.

And only the 1914 Boston “Miracle” Braves before them had ever rebounded to make the postseason after such a slow start, but those Braves teams did not have to go through a postseason gauntlet quite like what lie ahead for the Nationals.

Wild Card comeback

Winner-take-all games had not been kind to the Nationals before. They had lost all three such contests in club history before this past October -- exiting after Game 5 of the National League Division Series in 2012, ’16 and ’17. So, before they would win three winner-take-all games in '19, they had to get the proverbial monkey off their back in the NL Wild Card game against the Brewers.

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Washington was down 3-1 in the eighth inning against Brewers closer Josh Hader, who weeks later earned the Trevor Hoffman National League Reliever of the Year Award. But in Juan Soto’s first postseason game, he ripped a two-run single into right field off Hader that, combined with an error from Trent Grisham, became the game-winning hit. Winning that first winner-take-all game and needing a comeback to do it would serve as a good preview for what was to come the rest of the month.

Knocking off the best

It’s possible that the Nats just completed one of the more difficult stretches for any champion in recent history, including the 2018 Red Sox, who beat a pair of 100-win teams in the American League and the Dodgers coming off back-to-back pennants en route to their World Series title.

The Nationals continued their journey with an upset victory over Los Angeles to stop their pursuit of a third straight NL pennant, winning the series in five games thanks to a grand slam in extra innings from Howie Kendrick in Game 5.

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Here’s a peek at just how difficult the road was for the Nats to win the World Series: They knocked off a 106-win Dodgers team in the NLDS and a 107-win Astros team in the World Series. And they hung losses on the following pitchers: Hader, Clayton Kershaw, Jack Flaherty, Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander. This was no cheap win.

Capturing the pennant

The NL Championship Series showed the strength of the Nationals' pitching. They overwhelmed and overmatched the Cardinals’ lineup, flirting with a no-hitter in the first two games, and cruising through the NLCS with a four-game sweep. Their series win was also the middle of an eight-game postseason winning streak, which matched an MLB postseason record and helped seal the first World Series appearance in franchise history.

Winning all four World Series games on the road

To win the World Series, the Nationals needed to become the first team to win all four games on the road during the LCS. That had never happened, not just in MLB history, but never in the NBA or NHL either. Yet, the Nationals went down three games to two to the Astros and went into Houston to win both Games 6 and 7 at Minute Maid Park to secure their first championship.

Last month alone, the Nats played in five elimination games. Five games where a loss would have meant their season would have ended. And they trailed at some point in all five of them. Twice -- the Wild Card Game and NLDS Game 5 -- they trailed by two runs down to their final six outs, and in Game 7 of the World Series, they trailed by two runs down to their final nine outs. And yet, Washington came back to win each of those games.