The rematch that never was

— -- WASHINGTON -- Two years ago, in the second week of October, the San Francisco Giants sat on an airplane on a runway in Cincinnati, getting ready to fly to D.C. to go play the Washington Nationals in the National League Championship Series.

As you might recall, that's not exactly what happened.

In Washington that night, a 6-0 Nationals lead turned into a shocking loss. The Giants turned the plane west and went on to win the World Series. The Nationals turned off their TVs and cell phones and tried to pretend none of that ever happened.

So how cool, how amazing, how cinematic is it now that here they both are, two Octobers later, finally getting ready to meet in what could be an epic NL Division Series?

"It's funny. We would have played those guys," mused the Nationals' Ryan Zimmerman on Thursday, on the eve of Friday's NLDS opener, Stephen Strasburg versus Jake Peavy, 3 p.m. ET. "Kind of ironic. Isn't it?"

Um, more than kind of, actually.

Two years ago, the Giants won the World Series that the best team in the NL, the 98-win Nationals, thought they were supposed to win.

Two years later, after an 8-0 rise-above-the-din wipeout of Pittsburgh in Wednesday's NL wild-card game, the Giants talk and act like a team about to go on one of those here-we-go-again postseason rolls.

And the Nationals talk and act like a team that has a chance to rewrite its October script.

Perfect, isn't it?

"It's a funny game," said Nationals closer Drew Storen. "And things come full circle."

Yeah, and Storen is one of those things. Two years ago, he started the ninth inning of NLDS Game 5 trying to close out the biggest game in the history of his franchise. Instead, he lost a two-run lead, lost his closer job, temporarily even lost his spot on a big league roster.

But he used all that bad news as fuel to fix his delivery, get that closer gig back and give himself an opportunity to author that happily-ever-after ending he never got to live.

"When you really get tested is when you get challenged," he said Thursday, with the satisfaction of a man who'd just nailed a 1.12 ERA and gave up zero earned runs in his final 23 appearances. "That's when you really get to learn something about yourself."

But the perfect plot line, the learning and the challenges don't stop with him. Could it possibly be more fitting that the Nationals' Game 1 starter Friday will be Strasburg, the ace whose shutdown two years ago hung over every minute of his team's postseason adventure?

You may be stunned to learn that topic came up when Strasburg trudged into the media room Thursday. So will you also be stunned to learn it didn't appear to be his favorite question of the day?

Asked if not getting to pitch in 2012 made him more appreciative of the start he's about to make, Strasburg worked to squash that subject in as few words as possible.

"I don't know," he said. "I mean, I've been asked that question so many times, and I try not to look back on what it was like two years ago. I'm just trying to live in the present, and I'm excited for getting the chance now."

And the fact that he's getting that chance in Game 1, instead of  Jordan "No-Hit" Zimmermann, is a fascinating topic of conversation, both in D.C. and around baseball.

The reality is that Strasburg has never quite become the electrifying, Kershaw-esque must-watch dominator he was supposed to be. But he's still coming off a season in which he tied for the league lead in strikeouts, and finished the year with 20 straight shutout innings. So this night, this series and this postseason represent an opportunity for him, too -- to remind us that that greatness is still in there, and these games can bring it out.

And for the team he pitches for, this is an important moment in time. The Giants' Tim Hudson has already questioned if the Nationals have the, uh, guts to match San Francisco's talent. Plus, they have a 2012 postseason nightmare they badly need to erase.

"If you gave me the same situation we had in that Game 5 this year, I'd take it," said Ryan Zimmerman, whose own role in this series is in question as he recovers from serious hamstring issues. "I mean, up six runs in that game, up two or three in the ninth inning. If you tell me that this series will go five and we're in that same situation, I'd take it every time."

Meanwhile, no matter how you run the numbers through your favorite hard drive, this Giants team they're playing isn't as good as the Cardinals team the Nationals lost to two years ago -- or as good as the Giants team that won it all that year. But if you watched these Giants play in Pittsburgh, and if you're familiar with their October work, particularly in even-numbered years, you can't help but ask:

Does that really matter?

It may be true that this team was seven games under .500 in its final 99 games. And that it blew a 9.5-game lead in its division. And that its rotation, the foundation of what the Giants have always been all about, had the sixth-worst ERA in the league. But if any of that is relevant now, you'd never have known as you watched them dismantle the Pirates.

Asked if that wild-card game performance surprised him at all, their manager, Bruce Bochy, drew on a memory bank full of October euphoria and basically answered: Are you kidding?

"I don't know how you could be surprised with how many times they have been in that situation and I have seen how they've handled it," Bochy said. "It didn't surprise me at all. I knew they would not be affected by the crowd. ... Watching these guys, how they perform in pressure games, we kid around, you know, that it's in their DNA. As many times as they have done it, they find a way to play their best ball when their backs are to the wall."

And you can look that up, too. Over their past two postseasons, they've won a record-tying seven straight elimination games, with many of the same cast of characters climbing out of the same crypt. And they're plotting more of the same this October.

"We've got a really good group," said their ace, Madison Bumgarner. "We may or may not be the best team on paper. I don't know. But as far as a group of guys on a ball team, playing in the postseason, we're hard to beat."

So here we go -- the fascinating "rematch" of the Series That Never Was. It's October theater at its finest.