Updated at 1:35 a.m. ET

The Washington Nationals beat the Houston Astros 5-4 in Game 1 of the 2019 World Series, led by Juan Soto who homered and doubled in his first Series game.

Soto also had a single and a stolen base to go with his 3 RBIs. The young standout turns all of 21 on Friday.

“After the first at-bat, I just said, ‘It’s another baseball game,'” Soto said, according to The Associated Press. “In the first at-bat, I’m not going to lie, I was a little bit shaking in my legs.”

The victory gives the Nationals what they wanted: a win in Houston against one of baseball’s best pitchers, Gerrit Cole. It was Cole’s first loss since May.

The Nats lead the Series 1-0.

The Astros, the American league champions, jumped out to an early lead, scoring two runs in the bottom of the first inning off Nationals ace Max Scherzer. Astros slugger Yuli Gurriel doubled home teammates George Springer and José Altuve.

The Nationals responded in the top of the second inning with a solo home run by Ryan Zimmerman on a two-out, first pitch by Cole.

The 35-year-old Zimmerman was the Nationals’ first player to be drafted by the team after its move from Montreal to Washington, D.C. in 2005.

“It’s been a long ride,” Zimmerman said according to the AP. “First at-bat, to hit a home run and run around the bases, you’re kind of almost floating around the bases.”

“I’ll be honest with you, my eyes got a little watery for him,” manager Dave Martinez said. “He waited a long time to be in this position, and for him to hit that first home run and put us on the board was awesome.”

The Nationals evened the score at 2-2 on Soto’s solo home run off of Cole to open the fourth frame.

Washington, the National League champions, took the lead for good in the top of the fifth inning on a single by third baseman Adam Eaton, scoring Kurt Suzuki who had opened the inning with a walk, making the score 3-2. Two batters later, Soto smacked a two-run double to left field, bringing the score to 5-2.

The Astros narrowed the lead to 5-3 in the bottom of the seventh inning with a solo home run by Springer off of Nats reliever Tanner Rainey. They loaded the bases on two walks and an infield hit, when Daniel Hudson relieved Rainey and closed the inning by striking out Yordan Alvarez.

The Astros opened the bottom of the eighth inning with a single by pinch-hitter Kyle Tucker, who advanced to second on a fly-out and then scored on a double by Springer, cutting the lead to 5-4.

Nats ace reliever Sean Doolittle, the fifth pitcher put in play by the team, retired the Astros in the bottom of the ninth inning without incident. The Astros left 11 runners on base, the Nationals only four.

At a sober post-game news conference, Astros manager AJ Hinch acknowledged it was not the opener he had expected.

“[Cole’s] been so good for so long that there builds this thought of invincibility and that it’s impossible to beat him,” Hinch said according to the AP. “So when it happens it is a surprise to all of us.”

“I didn’t have my A-game tonight,” Cole said. “Outside of a few pitches that tacked on a few runs, we worked pretty well with what we had. These are the two best teams in the world right now so you try not to beat yourself up too much, especially if you’ve got to grind in those situations.”

43,339 watched the Series opener in Houston’s Minute Maid Park. Game 2 is Wednesday night.

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The Houston Astros have had a season to remember: 107 regular season wins against just 55 losses. The Astros are heavy favorites to win their second World Series in three years. The series starts Tuesday evening.

Yet a celebratory rant by a senior executive after they clinched the pennant over the weekend has shifted attention to unwelcome subjects off the field, including domestic violence and the team’s handling of female reporters.

On Saturday night, not long after the victory, Astros Assistant General Manager Brandon Taubman targeted a small cluster of female reporters with a profane defense of reliever Roberto Osuna.

According to three eyewitnesses interviewed by NPR, Taubman appeared to be responding to the presence of a female reporter who was wearing a purple rubber bracelet to heighten awareness about domestic violence.

That reporter has tweeted repeatedly about the issue over the years. Taubman complained last year that some of the reporter’s informational tweets — promoting domestic violence hotline telephone numbers, for example — appeared moments after Osuna entered several Astros games in relief.

That’s no coincidence: Osuna’s contract was acquired by the Astros from the Toronto Blue Jays. While with the Blue Jays, he was arrested and accused in Canada of assaulting the mother of his then-3-year-old child. Osuna did not face charges after agreeing to the equivalent of a restraining order.

The scene after the game

Teammates mobbed second baseman Jose Altuve on Saturday night after he hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to clinch the pennant.

In the clubhouse, lockers and walls were sheathed in plastic sheeting, and reporters were clad in raincoats as players doused each other with Champagne.

Osuna had given up a three-run homer in the top of the ninth, but Altuve’s blast made a winner out of him.

“Altuve picked us up, picked me up, and we’re here,” Osuna told local station KHOU.

Later that evening, at the other end of the clubhouse, Taubman held court and chomped on a cigar.

“This was after most of that chaos has dissipated,” says Stephanie Apstein, a baseball writer for Sports Illustrated who had been covering the Yankees pennant drive. She ducked into the Astros’ clubhouse to get color for her story. “Most of the players were either with their families or on the field or getting dressed. So it was actually kind of unusual. You don’t see that many front-office people in those celebrations.”

In addition to the three eyewitnesses, NPR conducted four additional interviews to report this story. The Astros did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment. NPR is not currently naming the reporter or her outlet as she asked not to be drawn into the growing public controversy.

Celebrating Saturday in the clubhouse, Taubman shouted loudly and profanely at a cluster of female reporters, according to several accounts: “Thank God we got Osuna! I’m so [profanity] glad we got Osuna!”

Taubman is considered part of the front office’s nerd squad — executives who place high importance on data analysis in service of success on the baseball diamond.

Astros pledged $300K toward projects against domestic violence after hiring Osuna

The team’s number crunchers considered Osuna a steal, because he was damaged goods, or in financial terms, a distressed asset.

The Astros pledged about $300,000 toward domestic violence projects after local activists raised objections, according to press reports.

“When these teams trade for players with reprehensible pasts, they say that they understand this is the start of a conversation and that they want to,” says Sports Illustrated’s Apstein, who was one of the three female journalists subjected to Taubman’s tirade.

“They think that they can raise awareness for the topic and they want to keep talking about this. But then when people ask them to talk about it, they act like they are the aggrieved parties in this situation.”

In a column revealing the incident, Apstein did not focus on her colleague. She wrote that Taubman’s outburst reflects a “forgive-and-forget” approach by major league baseball to domestic violence. The league put out a statement Tuesday saying it takes domestic violence seriously and will investigate the incident. It noted that the Astros were disputing her account.

In a formal statement, the Astros defended Taubman aggressively, calling Apstein’s column “misleading and completely irresponsible” and saying the executive was just supporting a player. The team said it was “extremely disappointed in Sports Illustrated’s attempt to fabricate a story where one does not exist.”

The Astros have had a rocky relationship with the media in the recent past. The club tossed a reporter from the Detroit Free Press out of the team’s locker room after star pitcher Justin Verlander didn’t want to take his questions. The team barred another reporter from the hometown Houston Chronicle.

“It’s just arrogance. That is what the organizational philosophy with the Houston Astros is,” ESPN baseball columnist Jeff Passan said on Outside the Lines. “The Astros always, when they are attacked, will attack back. And that’s what this was, despite the fact that we’re on Day 1 of the World Series … talking about this and not Gerrit Cole versus Max Scherzer.”

Subsequently on Tuesday, the team issued a more contrite statement pointing to its involvement in domestic violence initiatives. And on Tuesday afternoon, Taubman released his own apology, saying he was overexuberant — and misunderstood.

“My over-exuberance in support of a player has been misrepresented as a demonstration of a regressive attitude about an important social issue,” he wrote in the statement. “Those that know me know that I am a progressive member of the community, and a loving and committed husband and father. I hope that those who do know me understand that the Sports Illustrated article does not reflect who I am or my values. I am sorry if anyone was offended by my actions.”

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Another round of federal criminal charges has hit the plea deal holdouts in the Varsity Blues college admissions bribery scandal that broke earlier this year.

Eleven defendants, including actress Lori Loughlin, were charged Tuesday by a grand jury in Boston with conspiring to commit federal program bribery by paying employees at the University of Southern California to admit the defendants’ children as athletic recruits or other favored admissions categories. One of those parents, John Wilson of Lynnfield, Mass., is charged with two additional counts of bribery conspiracy for allegedly paying to get his children admitted to Harvard University and Stanford University.

Seven university coaches and other university officials also face new charges
of conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud as well as honest services mail and wire fraud. Three of them — former USC athletics administrator Donna Heinel, former Georgetown tennis coach Gordon Ernst, and former UCLA men’s soccer coach Jorge Salcedo — face additional charges of committing federal program bribery.

The latest charges increase pressure on the defendants, whose arraignment dates have not yet been set, to plead guilty prior to their cases going to trial. On Monday, four other parents entered plea agreements before the new charges were made. Of the 52 people ensnared in the admissions scandal, a total of 29 have now agreed to plead guilty.

With these new charges added to previous ones, the defendants who insist on their innocence and have rejected plea offers now face up to 45 years in prison if found guilty on all counts.

The wealthy business people and celebrities facing new charges include Full House actress Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli. They are accused of paying a $500,000 bribe to officials at USC to get their two daughters admitted as recruits for the university’s crew team. Neither of them had even practiced the sport.

Meanwhile, Desperate Housewives actress Felicity Huffman started serving a 14-day term in prison last week after entering a guilty plea in the scandal.

The conspiracy to commit federal bribery charges are based on a federal statute that’s triggered whenever a bribe of at least $5,000 is given to an organization that receives more than $10,000 from the federal government. Virtually every higher education institution in the country, both public and private, would fit that category.

The $25 million college admission scandal’s mastermind, William “Rick” Singer, has pleaded guilty to four federal charges and is cooperating with federal prosecutors.

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The World Series will begin Tuesday night, as the Houston Astros host the Washington Nationals. The first pitch will be thrown at 8:08 p.m. ET, in a series between clubs that can each boast of having three aces.

The Astros clinched the American League championship by beating the New York Yankees on Saturday to win their second pennant in the past three years. Now they’re hoping to win their second World Series and cement themselves as one of the best teams of the decade.

For the Nationals, the matchup is historic, marking the first time the team has reached the World Series. The last time Washington, D.C., sent a team to the World Series was in 1933, when the Washington Senators lost in five games to the New York Giants.

The Nationals swept the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship Series, giving them six days of rest compared with Houston’s two. Houston is entering the series as heavy favorites, after winning a league-best 107 games this season.

Both teams bring elite starting pitching to this series. Fronting the Houston rotation is Gerrit Cole, who is 3-0 with a 0.40 ERA this postseason. Washington will counter in Game 1 with ace Max Scherzer, who is 2-0 with a 1.80 ERA in the postseason. And when the Astros tap starters Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke, the Nationals will answer with Stephen Strasburg, Patrick Corbin or Aníbal Sánchez .

The Nationals made their climb to the Fall Classic after starting the season with a horrible 19-31 record, beset by injuries and a shaky bullpen. In February, the Nationals lost star outfielder Bryce Harper after he agreed to a record-breaking 13-year, $330 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.

But the team powered through, with third baseman Anthony Rendon bringing in a major league best 126 runs in the regular season, and 20-year-old emerging star Juan Soto helping to energize the club.

The Astros have their own powerhouse lineup, led by 29-year-old Jose Altuve, whose home run in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 6 of the American League championship catapulted Houston over the Yankees. At 5 feet, 6 inches, Altuve is one of the shortest players in the majors, but he’s also one of the most fearsome. He was named the Most Valuable Player of the AL championship.

Houston also proved it can make stellar plays under pressure in the AL series, as outfielders Josh Reddick and Michael Brantley shut down the Yankees’ comeback attempt with dramatic catches.

The first two games in the best-of-seven series will be played in Houston. The series then heads to Washington for the weekend. Games 6 and 7, if necessary, would be played in Texas next week.

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