Washington Nationals’ World Series hero Daniel Hudson on his iconic glove toss…

Daniel Hudson still gets excited talking about recording the final out of the 2019 World Series…

Daniel Hudson needed a couple weeks to decompress after his 2019 World Series run with the Washington Nationals, but in time he came to understand what he, his teammates, his family, and everyone involved had accomplished in earning a championship in his 10th big league campaign.

“It’s pretty funny,” Hudson told reporters early in January of 2020.

“A couple times, especially that first month, in November [2019], we would be sitting down whether we were feeding the baby or finally sitting down for dinner after all the craziness with the other two kids, we kind of settled down, we kind of sit down and realize what we’d all gone through as a family. That type of stuff doesn’t really happen too often to a lot of people, so we just kind of considered ourselves very fortunate to have a really good, strong support system around us with our family and friends, and obviously the Nats’ organization was awesome, letting me — being open with me missing Game 1 of the NLCS [for the birth of his and his wife’s third child] and everything like that, and obviously all the fans as well.

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“That’s kind of how we wrapped our heads around it and kind of came down off of cloud nine a little bit.

“We were able to kind of sit down and really talk, and talk about that, and open up about it, and we’re really grateful to everybody in our lives for that.”

Hudson said then he hoped their two older daughters would remember the experience, and be able to tell their younger sister about it at some point in the future, maybe when one day when she sees a picture of their father tossing his glove in wild celebration, after recording the final out of the 115th World Series.

“We’re definitely going to be excited to let her relive that story through us,” Hudson said.

“And obviously hopefully her older sisters kind of remember some of it too.

“They were there for a lot of it as well. They traveled back and forth from Houston to D.C. and back a couple times.

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“They had a crazy wild ride as well, and obviously I hope my kids kind of remember the parade — they had an absolute blast during it, and to have all these memories for my family is going to be like you said, great to kind of bring that up and rehash that in the future.”

And if asked what led him to throw his glove like he did after closing out the Nationals’ win in Game 7 with the Astros?

In an MLB Network Radio interview last Wednesday, Hudson, who pitched for the Nats in ‘20 and 2021 as well, before he was traded to the San Diego Padres last July 30th, was asked why he did fire his glove to the backstop after the World Series win?

“It kind of started with the Wild Card Game in D.C. against the Brewers,” Hudson explained.

“That whole closing stuff was new to me, and I never really realized what I did after I got the third out of a game, or the final out of the game, I’d just kind of black out and whatever happens happens, and the Wild Card game, that atmosphere after Juan [Soto] drove all of those three runs in, and he made that third out on the base, and I hadn’t thrown a pitch in a little while, so I just was full of adrenaline and the long inning, I was warming up for a while, so I was kind of standing there taking everything in, you could kind of feel everything happening, it was starting to build, the emotion was starting to go crazy, and then that stadium was just erupting, and I had all that emotion, trying to focus it on every pitch, and the guy, I think it was Ben Gamel flew out to center field for the third out and I just turned around and chucked my glove, like I said, I blacked out and I didn’t even realize it

“Well, fast forward to the end of the Division Series in LA, and [Sean] Doolittle actually got the last out, and I was in the dugout, I’d pitched the inning before, so Sean throws his glove kind of like I did, and so it kind of just became a thing, where at the end of the NLCS I threw my glove…

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“And then [in the World Series] I got the third out, and that was the first time I got the guy out in the postseason for the final out with a strikeout and so I got excited it was the final out, and I said, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got to chuck this thing,’ and everybody was running out on the field, so I had to throw it up over everybody that time, I had to put a little air into that one…”

Hudson told reporters back in January of 2020 he knew the iconic moment of that final out of the first World Series win by a D.C.-based team since 1924 would be a moment people watched for years to come.

“Obviously the last pitch of the World Series is going to be played on a loop, if the Nationals ever build a museum that will be played on a loop for a long time,” he said, “… so to be part of that and that image hopefully of me and [Nats’ catcher] Yan [Gomes] embracing before everybody mobbed us is definitely going to be a big part of Nats’ history, and I’m proud to be a part of it.”