Rambling Rhoads: 2016-05-15

I’m really sorry this one fell through the cracks when I was putting together my original list of 100 favorite songs, as it probably would have made the top 25 at least. It was a great song when it came out, and I did hear it a few times, but it wasn’t on the 4-disk Stevie Wonder box set I picked up at one point, and I didn’t buy the Songs In The Key Of Life album until a month or two before I went to his concert at Verizon Center in November 2014.

It was still a great song in 2001, when Stevie performed it with Take 6 as the second song in the America: A Tribute To Heroes benefit concert, which aired live on all of the major broadcast and cable networks 10 days after 9/11. It ranks as one of the two high points of the show, along with Bruce Springsteen’s transcendent performance of “My City Of Ruins”, which opened the concert.

And given the state of the world in 2016, it remains equally great and unsettlingly relevant today. One can only hope that it becomes an important theme in the remainder of this year’s Presidential campaign.

May 15, 2016 – Marlins 5, Nationals 1 – Nationals Park

http://m.nationals.mlb.com/news/article/178279854/stanton-fernandez-marlins-beat-nationals

Attendance: 36,786

Game Time: 3:03

Weather: 59 degrees, partly cloudy

Wind: 21 mph

Umpires: Home Plate - Alfonso Marquez, First Base - Chris Guccione, Second Base - David Rackley, Third Base - Larry Vanover

Seventh-inning stretch song: What I Like About You – The Romantics

Highlights – sun was out (!) … not as cold and windy as expected (at least not in our section) … less traffic than usual going down the GW Parkway (probably because I left at 10:45) … ran into the senior member of the Schroeder clan while walking around the concourse … Nats did score a run on Ryan Zimmerman’s inside-the-park homer (Ozuna and Stanton tripped each other up trying for the catch, but fortunately both stayed in the game)

Other – Marlins got one more run than they needed in the third, when Stephen Drew lost a routine two-out popup in the sun … added 3 more in the sixth on a solo homer by Stanton and a bases-loaded single by Jose Fernandez (who fanned 11 in his 7 innings of work) … Nats threatened off the Miami bullpen in the 8^th and 9^th but failed to score