Friday, August 22, 2014

August 21, 2014 – Nationals 1, Diamondbacks 0 – Nationals Park



Umpires: HP: James Hoye. 1B: Bob Davidson. 2B: John Tumpane. 3B: Bill Welke.
Weather: 87 degrees, overcast.
Wind: 3 mph, Out to RF.
T: 2:51.
Att: 32,311.

Well, if you have to be in a rut, a 10-game winning streak with 5 walk-off wins in the last 6 games isn’t a bad rut to be in. The latter hasn’t happened since July of 1986, when the Astros somehow managed 5 walk-off victories in a row.

The starting pitching was extremely effective on both sides. (Stop me if you’ve heard this before.) Gio Gonzalez, who was shaky in his previous outing on Saturday, matched Tanner Roark’s effort the night before with seven scoreless and mostly drama-free innings.

Meanwhile, the Nats collected 8 hits and 6 walks (one of which was intentional) off Arizona starter Wade Miley in his 6.2 innings of work, but somehow managed not to score a single run, wasting opportunity after opportunity. As destiny would have it, the game remained scoreless until the bottom of the ninth, when Denard Span singled with one out, stole second base, and scored when Diamondbacks third baseman Jordan Pacheco threw away Anthony Rendon’s ground ball.

This 4:05 game was not in our regular plan, so Terry and I were in our “bobblehead section” (107, EE, 12-13). We headed down early, had a leisurely lunch at Nando’s, and then walked down to the Park. We found our old friends (and former section-mates) the Schroeders waiting in line for the Ian Desmond bobbleheads, so spent some time socializing with them before the game began. Weather.com had claimed that there wouldn’t be any rain before 7pm, but it actually started around 5:00, ranging from light to somewhat less light. It never got heavy enough to stop the game, but we got tired enough of it by the fifth inning or so that we decided to find some unoccupied covered seats in our usual upper-level section. We still had some Washington Post coupons to use up, so filled up on $1 ice cream bars and souvenir sodas (and refills of same).

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