The morning after the Baltimore game we all got going our separate ways. Brian was hurting quite a bit from the night before so he kinda dragged his feet a little but the rest of us were feeling great. The Lavoie party had to drive all the way to Connecticut but we were only going about an hour away to the other side of DC to Fairfax, VA, where my cousin Luke lived.
When we got to Luke’s house, his wife, Liz, was on her way out to a bridal shower but us men hung around the house and relaxed with stories of the open road and our tales from across the country. We broke out the Wii once Liz got back, on a conquest to beat the high score of the “3-point shooting” game that their friend had set. We gave it a good run its money but it was out of reach. We grilled out for dinner with some BBQ chicken and brats. The Yankees/Red Sox game was on Sunday Night Baseball which provided us with our entertainment for the night.
On Monday Luke and Liz went to work but since we had both see most of the tourist stuff in downtown DC on previous trips, we headed down to Mount Vernon, to the home of George Washington. Washington took pride in his farming so his home was a farm with almost every type of crop possible for that climate somewhere on the property. It was almost a self contained village because they had all types of crafts scattered across the property. I thought it was most amazing that they still had blacksmiths, which made all the tools, to try to keep the integrity of the era. We checked out GW’s grave, the waterfront and took a tour of the farmhouse and then called it a day.
We scooted up to McLean, VA, to my Aunt Betsy and Uncle Ray’s house where my cousin Mark was just in from his internship in Salzburg, Austria. We assisted him in assembling his keggerator for the upcoming wedding in Maine. Mark invited over one of his friends, who was really into baseball as well. It turns out that the friend (sorry I forgot your name), went to Stephen Strasburg’s first game, and unless you have been living under a rock, you know that was a big game. He was actually the fan that caught the first major league home run hit off Strasburg, and he threw it back! It sounds crazy I know, but he got interviewed on PTI and created his own little 15 minutes of fame.
Another fun fact he told us about was the Presidents race. Like every other team that has copied the sausage race in Milwaukee, the Nationals have a race where the four presidents from Mt. Rushmore race against each other around the warning track. He informed us, from his inside source, that whoever is running as Teddy is not allowed to win! How unfair is that. Teddy is allowed to do anything he wants, as long as he doesn’t win. We ended up crashing at Mark’s house for the night with the Nationals game and more importantly, Stephen Strasburg, on the horizon for the next day.
On Tuesday, we gathered ourselves up after breakfast and made the trek over to Luke’s for showers and to get our stuff. We planned on taking the Metro into the game to avoid traffic and parking fees so the McLean house was the better home base. Around 2:30 we headed down to check out the park ahead of time and maybe get some beers before the game. The metro was a breeze to navigate so we got there with plenty of time but there aren’t really any bars or anything in that part of town so we just headed right to the park.
I’m not sure if the architects did it on purpose or not but, when walking up to the park, it gave the slight appearance of a battleship on the water. It may have just been the angle we were walking up to the park but the bottom levels are covered in a smooth gray façade and the upper deck looked like the antennas and dishes that would be protruding from the deck. That comparison might be a stretch but its better than just thinking it was a just another ballpark.
Right outside the gates, there was a tent set up with a beer garden inside called the Bullpen. This was a great place to hang out, people watch, and get some non-$8 beers before the game. They had some live music and a good beer selection. Also, there was a fast pitch area, which cost $2 (lame), but provided great entertainment from all the fools that could not throw a ball faster than 60. They did have a high score board, where if you beat the speed of the current high speed, you got a free beer and hot dog. Unfortunately our age group’s speed we had to beat was 88 (which is REDICULOUS for not warming up and off flat ground with no rubber) so that was not going to happen.
After a few beers the park opened up so we headed into the park. Right at the entrance was the presidents (the ones from Mt. Rushmore) that do a race around the park in the middle of one of the innings. Since we heard what a hard time Teddy had winning we decided we needed a picture with him. I tried to pump him up and say “it was his night that night” and he got really excited.
We took a lap around the stadium to see what cool stuff there was to see, and you could tell that the nationals didn’t have much history, because they had history from all across baseball, not just Nationals/Expos. However we were there the night when Andre Dawson, an Expo great who had just been inducted to the hall of fame this year, returned and was celebrated at the stadium. There was a little ceremony and video montage of his career before the game for him.
We made our way to our seats (at least our section) way up in the upper deck and there was a definite buzz in there air mixed in with some uncertainty. Strasburg was coming off his first trip to the DL as a professional so people were questioning how good the game would be. On ESPN earlier that day, it was announced that he would be held to a 90 pitch limit, which indicated a short outing anyway.
In the first inning Strasburg brought the heat, throwing 99 a few times, but it was obvious that he didn’t have his best stuff when he walked the second batter. Dan Uggla made him pay for that by crushing a 2 run HR that screamed over the fence. This is when the Nationals fans got there kicks in.
National’s fans seem to be a sarcastic bunch. They loved to cheer for the mistakes that the team made, once Strasburg was pulled early in the game, before even reaching his 90 pitch mark, they were saying things like “Oh here we go, Batista will shut them down”, which he didn’t. Also it didn’t help that Anibal Sanchez of the marlins had a pretty good game on the other side of the frame. He let up no runs through 6 and 2/3 with 7 K’s.
As soon as Strasburg was pulled, looking at the entrance, we could see clearly from the upper deck that people were flooding out of the stadium. By the end of the game there were probably 1/10 of the people that were there for the first pitch. We got to move down close to the field to get a better view though. All in all, it was one of the worst games that we have seen on the trip. An early blow out to a team with no enthusiasm to get back in the game and fans that enjoyed seeing their team mess up. It still beat any day not going to a baseball game though.
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