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Nationals let Game 1 slip away in sixth inning and Cubs claim 3-0 victory

Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant is congratulated by teammates after scoring a run against the Nationals during the sixth inning Friday.
(Michael Reynolds / EPA)
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In Washington, a city that has gone nine years short of a century without postseason success, this will be a play that will live in infamy.

It was a ground ball, hit hard but not impossibly so, hit directly at the man that committed the fewest errors of any everyday third baseman in the major leagues. Anthony Rendon fielded the ball, lifted his glove to transfer the ball to his hand and ... dropped the ball.

“It’s like when you have a car accident,” Rendon said. “It’s not a car purpose. It’s a mistake. We’re human.”

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The mistake did not seem immediately ominous. Stephen Strasburg, the pitcher for the Washington Nationals, was throwing a no-hitter. This was the sixth inning. Of the first 15 outs, eight had come by strikeout. He had thrown his fastball as hard as 99 mph.

So what if Rendon had just made his first error in three months? Strasburg retired the next two batters, one on a sacrifice bunt. He should have been out of the inning.

He got strike one, then strike two on Kris Bryant, the defending National League most valuable player. In his previous at-bat, Strasburg struck him out on a change. He went fastball here, a fastball intended to wander high and outside. The pitch did not escape the strike zone, and Bryant poked it into right field, an 0-2 mistake that ended Strasburg’s no-hitter and shutout all at once.

“I didn’t even know he had a no-no, to tell you the truth,” Washington’s Bryce Harper said. “Sorry about that. It’s pretty cool that he had one.”

The Nationals, the team that never has advanced past the division series, instantly went from being 10 outs from celebrating a no-hitter to losing yet again. A raucous crowd went silent, sensing October doom yet again.

Bryant had taken second base on the throw home, Anthony Rizzo, like Bryant, had struck out in each of his first two at-bats against Strasburg. And, like Bryant, he singled in his third at-bat, and the Chicago Cubs had a 2-0 lead.

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The Nationals never did score. The defending World Series champion Cubs beat the Nationals, 3-0, in Friday’s opener of the best-of-five division series. The home- field advantage shifted to the Cubs, with Jon Lester lined up to start for Chicago here Saturday, but Harper said the untimely inning did not trigger images of another postseason defeat in the Nationals’ heads.

“That’s why we play five,” he said.

Kyle Hendricks might not have been the headliner of the evening, but he was the star. Hendricks throws his fastball in the high 80s. Strasburg was throwing his changeup harder.

No matter. Hendricks, the unheralded right-hander from Orange County, pitched seven shutout innings, giving up two hits: a single to Harper in the first inning, and a single to Michael A. Taylor in the second inning. The Nationals did not get a runner into scoring position — or a hit, for that matter — after the second inning.

Hendricks works in the shadow of Lester, who starred for the Cubs and Boston Red Sox in October, and Arrieta, the 2015 NL Cy Young award winner.

It was Hendricks who started Game 7 of last year’s World Series. And it is Hendricks who has a 1.98 postseason earned-run average — better than Lester, better than Arrieta, better than the only man to beat him in October: Clayton Kershaw.

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Hendricks thrives on postseason adrenaline, even if he seldom shows it.

“I’m a laid-back guy,” he said, “but you’re definitely feeling it.”

Strasburg pitched seven innings, walking one and striking out 10. Never had a Nationals pitcher struck out so many in a postseason game. He did not give up an earned run.

But he and the Nationals lost. They must win three of their next four games, or their autumn will be cold and bitter yet again. Rendon insisted their October failures did not creep into their heads as a no-hitter tilted into defeat.

“That’s 2016, 2015, 2014,” he said, apparently forgetting the Nationals had lost in 2016, 2014 and 2012. “What year is it this year?”

2017.

“There you go,” he said, and off he went into the night.

bill.shaikin@latimes.com

Follow Bill Shaikin on Twitter @BillShaikin

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