The Loop
Juan Soto celebrates Nationals' NL pennant with grape juice because he doesn't turn 21 until next week
Will Newton
Man, what a bummer. You've just had your breakout postseason, one that will put you up alongside Ronald Acuna Jr. in the best-young-player-in-baseball discussion. You just broke the Nationals' postseason duck, jumpstarting a three-run comeback in the 8th inning of the NL Wild Card before navigating the NLDS and CS with ease on the way to your city's first World Series berth since Teddy Freakin' Roosevelt. And yet, while all your teammates, co-workers, and peers are hooking themselves to a Budweiser IV to celebrate, you're stuck drinking Welch's sparkling white grape juice because you don't turn 21 until next week. Thus is the predicament of Juan Soto.
Now, there's nothing particularly wrong with Welch's sparkling grape juice (though we'd opt for Martinelli's sparkling cider), but this is how the 21+ Nats celebrated their first-ever NL Pennant last night...
...and this is how Juan Soto did.
Here's hoping Uncle Zimmerman slipped the kid a pop or two under the the table, because Soto certainly deserves it, driving in seven runs on nine hits, including two homers, so far this postseason. Before Team Don't Let the Kids Play goes and gets their cotton knickers in a knot, we hope they ask themselves when they had their first beer and if that sinful indulgence was the result anything nearly as special MAKING THE FREAKIN' WORLD SERIES.
The good news for Soto, however, is that if the Nationals do manage to pull this off, rallying from 19-31 in June to a World Series title in 10 days time, he'll be officially official by then. Sayonara grape juice, it was nice knowing you.