As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)

Saturday, March 16, 2019

March 15, 2019 – Nationals 11, Mets 3 – Port St. Lucie FL


 
Attendance: 6,599
Game Time: 2:40
Weather: 81 degrees, cloudy (had some rain driving up, but it was dry and comfortable for the game)
Wind: 13 mph, R To L.
 
Section 205, Row U, Seat 1 – just to the right of home plate, 3 rows from the top of the stadium
 
Washington’s offense started out in high gear and continued slugging through the 4th, with 7 home runs in their first 23 plate appearances. Adam Eaton led off the game with the first dinger, and the Nats added 4 more tallies in the frame, climaxed by a 3-run shot by Yan Gomes. They piled on with 3 more runs in the 2nd off Steven Matz, with Rendon and Zimmerman going back-to-back. The explosion continued even after Matz’s departure, as Gomes hit his second of the day in the 3rd, while Rendon (again) and Matt Adams went deep in the 4th off New York closer Edwin Diaz to finish the Nats’ scoring for the afternoon.
 
Meanwhile, Jeremy Hellickson pitched his usual efficient 5 innings, allowing just 2 runs. (An error by Victor Robles, who also looked shaky on an earlier fly ball, made one of the two unearned.) Matt Grace, Jimmy Cordero, Henderson Alvarez, and Justin Miller went an inning each to close things out.
 
It was a little sad to see Danny Espinosa, who played with the Nats from 2010-2016, lead off the bottom of the 9th for the New Yorkers. (He grounded out to second.) Now 32 years old, Espinosa is in the Mets minor league camp and has just 2 hits in 29 at-bats this spring.
 
Best points about First Data Field – lots of covered seats (so you’re unlikely to be sitting out in the bright sun or rain), good pizza, friendly staff
 
Worst points about First Data Field – narrow concourse, long concession lines (so get your lunch early), hard-to-read scoreboard (dim red lights for most of the critical items)
 
Traffic exiting the field winds up in two lines, which are forced to turn either left (the way most people come in, with lots of slow traffic) or right. I wound up in the “turn right” line, which did feature periodic directional signs for I-95. I finally realized that these were sending me to a different interchange, north of the usual one (and thus farther away from West Palm Beach). Naturally I wound up getting behind a school bus, stopping for a train at a grade crossing, and enduring a mile or two of slow traffic when a lane was closed for road work (on the section of I-95 that I normally wouldn’t have even been on). Other than that, traffic was smooth until I got to West Palm Beach, where it crawled for the last 4-5 miles (normal Friday rush hour?).

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