August 17, 2014 – Nationals 6, Pirates 5 (11 innings) – Nationals Park

Winning ugly is sweet

Umpires: HP: Andy Fletcher. 1B: Mike Muchlinski. 2B: Tom Woodring. 3B: Mark Wegner.

Weather: 87 degrees, partly cloudy.

Wind: 3 mph, Out to RF.

T: 3:42.

Att: 34,430.

“Winning ugly is sweet” is the name of one of the ice cream stands at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, where I had seen a White Sox game two days earlier. It certainly applied to Sunday’s game, with its unusual 5:05 start time. Both teams took turns self-destructing, with the Nats falling behind, taking the lead, falling behind again after a 3-run top of the ninth, tying the game in the bottom of the ninth, and finally winning it in the eleventh. Each team committed two errors and tossed two wild pitches. It was a long, ugly victory, but we’ll certainly take it, along with the sweep of the typically-troublesome Pirates.

The first five innings moved along briskly, with Fister and Volquez giving up two hits each and neither one allowing a runner to get as far as third base. Things started getting weird in the top of the sixth – five batters in, the Bucs had scored twice and had the bases loaded with no outs, partially due to an error by Desmond on the Pittsburgh leadoff batter and a bad throw by Rendon two batters later. Fister managed to get two consecutive batters to ground into force outs at home, and escaped the inning without further damage.

Washington cut the deficit in half in the bottom of the sixth on an RBI single by Desmond, who at least partially atoned for his error and two previous strikeouts. After the seventh-inning stretch, the Pirates reciprocated Washington’s earlier generosity. The Nats loaded the bases with one out, when Michael Taylor was ruled to have been hit by a pitch following a successful replay challenge, and pinch-hitter Kevin Frandsen and Denard Span followed with singles. Jared Hughes came in to relieve Volquez and did his job by inducing ground balls from Cabrera and Rendon. Unfortunately for the Bucs, the grounders resulted in wild throws home by Ike Davis and then by Pedro Alvarez, allowing all three inherited runners to score.

With a 4-2 lead, Tyler Clippard shut down the Pirates in the eighth, but Rafael Soriano produced an ugly top of the ninth all by himself, hitting the first batter and eventually allowing one run to score on a wild pitch and two more on a double by Gregory Polanco.

The Nationals, however, were far from done. Against Pittsburgh closer Mark Melancon, Jayson Werth pinch-hit, drew a one-out walk, and scored the tying run on singles by Span and Asdrubal Cabera. After remaining in the game to play right, Werth struck again in the bottom of the eleventh with a leadoff double. Span advanced him to third on a grounder, and Scott Hairston (pinch-hitting for winning pitcher Ross Detweiler) hit a fly ball to left that was plenty deep enough to score Werth and win the game.

I drove down unnecessarily early to get a Bill Taft bobblehead – despite being delayed 5-10 minutes by slow traffic on the 270 spur and a stretch of the Outer Loop, still got to the parking lot around 3:00. Given the hot weather, I grabbed a lemon chill before heading upstairs, saving my sub for a little later in the day.