June 22, 2014 – Nationals 4, Braves 1 – Nationals Park

Brave new world? 

Umpires: HP: Mark Carlson. 1B: Tim Welke. 2B: Todd Tichenor. 3B: Clint Fagan.

Weather: 78 degrees, cloudy.

Wind: 0 mph, None.

T: 2:54.

Att: 39,473.

Along with St. Louis, Atlanta had been the Nats’ kryptonite since October of 2012, beating them out for the 2013 NL East title and dominating them in head-to-head play. The trend continued in 2014, with the Braves winning 7 of the first 8 encounters, including a disheartening loss Friday night where the Nats tied the game in the bottom of the ninth with a two-run Anthony Rendon homer off the normally-untouchable Craig Kimbrel but went on to lose in extra innings. Things looked up on Saturday, when the Nats won behind a clutch pitching performance by Doug Fister, so with a victory on Sunday the Nats could at least split the 4-game series.

The Nats took a 2-0 lead off Ervin Santana in the bottom of the first on a walk, two singles and a sac fly. Santana and Nats starter Tanner Roark then traded zeroes for the next several innings. In the top of the fifth, with two outs and Santana on first, Braves second baseman Tommy La Stella worked a walk off Roark with a 12-pitch at-bat, including 5 full-count foul balls. This effort seemed to take a lot out of both Roark and Santana, who had to head for second on each of the 3-2 pitches. After their first-inning outburst, the Nats had had little success against Santana, consistently swinging and missing at his offspeed stuff, but they plated their third run in the bottom of the fifth on a Sandy Leon single, a two-strike sacrifice bunt by Roark, and a double by Denard Span.

Roark was named the player of the game, but the award could well have been shared by all four Nats pitchers who appeared. Craig Stammen relieved Roark with two on and one out in the top of the sixth and retired all 5 batters he faced. Clippard pitched a 1-2-3 eighth. We thought Soriano might need a day off after pitching 4 of the previous 5 games, but he wound up putting an exclamation point on the win by striking the side out in the ninth to earn the save.

No traffic issues either way, with a little bit less of a backup on the Legion Bridge than usual. Went with a bowl of Cincinnati chili from Hard Times.

Shuffle #14 (June 29, 2014)

Long Live Our Love – The Shangri-Las

A Change Is Gonna Come – Sam Cooke

Turn The World Around – Eddy Arnold

Marie – The Bachelors

Summer Side Of Life – Gordon Lightfoot

Blow On, Chilly Wind – Jesse Winchester

True Blue – Madonna

Twisted – Joni Mitchell

Owner Of A Lonely Heart – Yes

Don’t Do Me No Favours – James Hunter

Gerry Goffin

The world lost a great lyricist when Gerry Goffin died this week. While best known for his work with Carole King, he also had some post-King hits collaborating with others.

5 Goffin-King classics

One Fine Day – The Chiffons

Up On The Roof – The Drifters

Will You Love Me Tomorrow – The Shirelles

(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman – Aretha Franklin

The Loco-Motion – Little Eva (OK, and Grand Funk Railroad)

5 more that you might not be aware they wrote

I’m Into Something Good – Herman’s Hermits

Don’t Bring Me Down – The Animals

Just Once In My Life – The Righteous Brothers

Hi-De-Ho – Blood, Sweat & Tears

Pleasant Valley Sunday – The Monkees

3 by Gerry Goffin without Carole King

Saving All My Love For You – Whitney Houston

I’ve Got To Use My Imagination – Gladys Knight & The Pips

Someone That I Used To Love – Natalie Cole

Shuffle #13 (June 21, 2014)

Love Will Lead You Back – Taylor Dayne

Suspicious Minds – Elvis Presley

Never Can Say Goodbye – The Jackson 5

Bulls On Parade – Throwing Wrenches

Living On The Frontline – Eddy Grant

If I Can Dream – Elvis Presley

Charlie Brown – The Coasters

Crawling Back – Roy Orbison

Try Me – James Brown

June 18, 2014 – Nationals 6, Astros 5 – Nationals Park

Not quite déjà vu all over again

Umpires: HP: Larry Vanover. 1B: Angel Hernandez. 2B: Adrian Johnson. 3B: Paul Nauert.

Weather: 94 degrees, partly cloudy.

Wind: 5 mph, In from RF.

T: 3:42.

Att: 25,453.

The Nats started their two-game miniseries with Houston on Tuesday night with a 6-5 victory that took 3:41 to play. On Wednesday, they again won 6-5, in a game that actually took one minute longer to complete.

Other than that, the scripts were not particularly similar. On Tuesday, the Nats took a 6-1 lead into the eighth and then survived a 4-run implosion by Tyler Clippard. Starter Tanner Roark didn’t have his best stuff and only lasted five innings, but pitched out of a bases-loaded-no-out jam in the fourth inning, only allowing one run to score.

On Wednesday, the Nats successfully played small ball to score single runs in the first and third without the benefit of an extra base hit, relying on walks, singles, a sac fly by Adam LaRoche, and stolen bases. (Over the first five innings, the Nats swiped five bags without being caught off the Feldman-Castro Houston battery.)

Gio Gonzalez, making his first start since returning from the DL, walked the leadoff batter in each of the first two innings (and, after I silently complained about that, allowed a double to the first batter in the top of the third). He managed to survive unscathed so far, thanks in part to a first-inning double play and a second-inning caught stealing, but was not so fortunate in the fourth. He walked the leadoff batter again, and wound up with the same bases-loaded-no-outs situation that Roark faced the previous evening. Gonzalez, however, managed to allow 4 runs before the inning ended – the Astros second 4-run frame of the series. He allowed the leadoff man to reach again in the fifth, but got out of the inning before Matt Williams mercifully pulled the plug.

The Nats cut the lead in half in the bottom of the sixth on Espinosa’s second bunt single of the night, a successful sacrifice by Ross Detweiler, and a double by Denard Span, who unfortunately made the final out trying to stretch the hit into a triple. They gave the run right back in the top of the seventh, however, as Detweiler walked the leadoff hitter (*&%$@#!), who eventually scored on a wild pitch.

Perhaps inspired by the 7^th-inning-stretch rendition of “Dancing in the Streets” (so whatever happened to “Take on Me”?), the Nats dented three Houston relievers to take the lead for good in the bottom of the inning, starting with a Rendon home run and ending with a pinch-hit sac fly by Nate McLouth. Clippard redeemed himself with a 1-2-3 eighth, and Soriano again took care of business in the ninth for his 15^th save. By that time, however, the crowd had really dwindled – our section was about as empty as I’ve ever seen it during a game.

Our upper-deck seats weren’t too uncomfortable despite the heat, especially after the sun went down. I took advantage of the “Dollar Dogs” special for dinner, and later bought a lemonade after finishing my bottle of water. Metro did not distinguish themselves in the afternoon; there were fewer inbound Red Line trains than usual (I did overhear a garbled announcement about a medical emergency somewhere), so from Dupont Circle on my car was so packed that I don’t think anyone was actually able to get on at Metro Center. I just missed a Green Line train at Gallery Place, and the schedule sign indicated that the next one wouldn’t arrive for another 10 minutes, with 3 intervening Yellow Line trains. Needless to say, the second leg of my trip was sardine-like as well. I just breathed a sigh of relief that the pressure of those trying to get on at L’Enfant Plaza or Waterfront didn’t force them to offload the train. Fortunately, the trip back was relatively uneventful, although due to the molasses-like pace of the game I didn’t arrive at Shady Grove until midnight.

Shuffle #12 (June 19, 2014)

Stranger In Town – Del Shannon

Shower The People – James Taylor

Troublemaker – Olly Murs

I’m Into Something Good – Herman’s Hermits

Give It Up, Turn It Loose – En Vogue

Million Dollar Bill – Dawes

Mary Anne – Marshall Crenshaw

When My Time Comes – Dawes

Talk To Me, Talk To Me – Little Willie John

#47 So Much In Love -- The Tymes (1963)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsGy-ndBhUc

Philadelphia’s Tymes were sort of doo-wop after doo-wop had stopped being cool and popular. Like “Do You Believe In Magic”, this is one of the great summer songs of all time that never actually mentions summer in the lyrics. You’ll especially love it if you’re into snapping your fingers.

#48 On And On -- Stephen Bishop (1977)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYM0z-IgGUs

It was probably inevitable that Stephen Bishop would be underappreciated as a singer-songwriter, given that he chose to work in a purely pop-rock idiom, but he has a number of great tunes to his credit. This one has a great island vibe to it, despite the bittersweet lyrics about moving on after lost love.

Serendipity #15

Fade Like A Shadow – K T Tunstall (2010)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiYx9glnt6M

Heard 6/18/2014 shortly after noon, at Boston Market in White Oak

Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes at the Birchmere, 6/13/2014

Southside Johnny and the crew were in fine form, playing for over two hours at the sold-out (or nearly so) Alexandria music hall. I was particularly impressed with the work of Jeff Kazee, not just on keyboards but also when he shared vocals on several of the later songs in the show. The early part of the performance included mostly songs I couldn’t remember hearing before (since I’m most familiar with SSJ’s first couple of 1970s albums), but was enjoyable nonetheless. The show really caught fire midway through with the classic “Talk To Me”, and proceeded through “Broke Down Piece of Man” and other numbers requested by various members of the audience. The main set ended with “I Don’t Want to Go Home” and was followed by a first encore that included a great version of “Love on the Wrong Side of Town”. The band then came back a second time, sending everyone home happy with “The Fever”, which for me goes down as the best-ever cover version of a Springsteen song. (I’ll admit that you could make a case for Rage Against the Machine’s take on “The Ghost of Tom Joad”.)

I decided to go with the chicken quesadilla for dinner – nicely done, although probably not the best choice diet-wise. Traffic down (via Falls Road and MacArthur Blvd. rather than 270 and the Maryland section of the Beltway) was actually not too bad. On the way back, I did manage to miss the ramp from Glebe Road onto I-395, so we stayed on Glebe through Arlington and eventually did wind up on the GW Parkway – a scenic although not especially efficient detour.