June 4, 2023 – Phillies 11, Nats 3

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/WAS/WAS202306040.shtml

 

Time: 2:57

Attendance: 29,546

 

Another way to put it: a win for the Phillies fans (like me) who were there, and a loss for the Washington fans who continue to loudly boo former Nat Bryce Harper. (Admittedly, Bryce wasn’t a big factor in Philadelphia’s victory, although he did have a double and drew two walks.)

 

The game was close for the first five innings. Neither starting pitcher managed a 1-2-3 inning, but both mostly managed to pitch out of trouble. J.T. Realmuto kicked off the scoring with a 2nd-inning home run off Washington starter Trevor Williams. Two innings later, the Nats tied things up when Joey Meneses led off with a triple and scored two batters later on Stone Garrett’s sac fly. The visitors answered right back when Drew Ellis, who was just called up when Alec Bohm when on the IL, took Williams deep.

 

Things turned for good in the top of the sixth. After fanning Realmuto, Williams issued a four-pitch walk to Brandon Marsh. He recovered to strike out Kody Clemens, but Ellis beat out an infield single to put two men on for leadoff hitter Kyle (“Mr. June”) Schwarber. With Williams at 101 pitches, Davey Martinez elected to go to the bullpen, although Williams had struck Schwarber out in two of his previous three times up. Andrés Machado came in, and Schwarber did what he does, putting the visitors on top 5-1.

 

It only got worse for the Nats from there. Philadelphia added 3 more off Machado in the seventh, highlighted by Ellis’s third major league home run (and second of the afternoon). Schwarber added an exclamation point with another three-run shot in the top of the ninth. Meanwhile, Ranger Suárez put together an efficient one-run, 7-inning outing to notch the win.

 

I took advantage of the absolutely perfect weather to stroll down to Sweetgreen for lunch, then walked by the river to head to the park. I also took a post-game walk to (successfully) avoid the peak post-game crowds on Metro. The subway was also surprisingly empty on the way down, although I left 5-10 minutes earlier than usual.

 

And the escalator behind Section 301 was, to my amazement, working after the game! Quite an afternoon.

Tina Turner

https://variety.com/2023/music/news/tina-turner-dead-singer-pop-rock-queen-1235624415/

 

The obit in Variety accurately describes her as “[r]aw-voiced, leggy, peripatetic and provocative onstage”, going on to highlight her acting career as well. Somehow I missed the fact that she did the theme song for the James Bond movie GoldenEye.

 

Favorite songs:

What’s Love Got To Do With It

Proud Mary*

Nutbush City Limits*

Let’s Stay Together

It’s Gonna Work Out Fine*

I Don’t Wanna Fight

Private Dancer

Ooh Poo Pah Doo*

We Don’t Need Another Hero

River Deep, Mountain High*

 

* - Ike & Tina Turner

May 21, 2023 – Nats 6, Tigers 4

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/WAS/WAS202305210.shtml

 

Time: 2:49

Attendance: 20,580

 

Washington’s offense has relied much more on base hits than power to score runs in 2023, and they carried this approach to perfection in the bottom of Sunday’s first inning. Lane Thomas, Jeimer Candelario, Joey Meneses, and Stone Garrett led things off with four consecutive singles to bring in two runs, and a later groundout by Dominic Smith plated a third. The team wound up with a robust 18 hits for the game. They changed the script on a leadoff homer by Riley Adams to start the 2nd and a two-run shot by the normally power-challenged Ildemaro Vargas an inning later. They continued to get men on base over the final five frames but weren’t able to bring any of them home, going 2-for-18 for the game with runners in scoring position.

 

Josiah Gray, who’s currently among the league leaders in ERA, was on the mound for the Nats, but he had to weave his way in and out of trouble, due primarily to walking an uncharacteristic 6 Detroit batters in his 5 innings of work. With some help from his defense, however, he was able to limit the damage to a single run. The Tigers narrowed the gap against Washington’s bullpen, as Andrés Machado gave up a pair of runs in the 6th, retiring only one of the five batters he faced. Kyle Finnegan put out that fire but allowed an unearned run the following inning, cutting the home team’s lead to two. Carl Edwards Jr. and Hunter Harvey restored order to close things out, each pitching a 1-2-3 inning to cement the victory.

 

The weather was perfect – 10 out of 10 according to the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang. Our early arrival at Nando’s for lunch seemed to catch the staff a bit by surprise. Metro was fine both ways. With low expectations, we were not at all surprised to find that the escalator behind section 301 was, once again, not operating after the game. The attendance was quite a drop from Saturday, which drew over 30,000, fewer than a third of whom received one of the promotional Star Wars shirts.