Top of the ninth. Two outs. You're on the mound trying to nail down a 2-0 victory for your club. Your opponent gets back-to-back doubles to make it 2-1. With the tying run in scoring position, the pressure is on.
But this is no ordinary game. You're trying to close things out for the first victory in your team's history ... after 15 straight losses.
That's the situation left-hander Lucas Knowles faced Friday as he tried to complete a two-inning save for the Fredericksburg Nationals.
Knowles struck out Salem's Alex Erro to make it official: The FredNats finally had one in the win column. The Low-A affiliate of the Nationals was set to open its inaugural season in 2020, but the entire Minor League season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They waited a long time for what took place at FredNats Ballpark on Friday night.
Fredericksburg scored a run in the second inning on an RBI single by Jeremy Ydens, and another in the third on a wild pitch that scored J.T. Arruda from third. Starter Karlo Seijas turned in his best outing of the year following a rough start to the season, yielding just three hits while walking none and striking out eight over seven innings.
Now that the FredNats are on the board, they'll need to start working on that run differential -- it's -114. But one battle at a time, as they say. For now, the club can celebrate finally putting one on the winning side of the ledger.
Hey, at least the FredNats aren't the 0-21 Orioles of 1988, right?