Washington Nationals 2, Miami Marlins 0
Randy's Perspective
Our trip to Washington for Opening Day came out of nowhere. We were planning to Penny’s sister, Peggy, and her husband, Mart, for the Easter weekend. Visiting every Major League city was not even a small idea at the time. In fact, Plan A for our trip to Peggy’s was not even Opening Day at Nationals Park. Plan A was to take in the NCAA East Regional basketball final at the Verizon Center. Only when we decided we couldn’t logistically make that work did we decide to try and get tickets to the Nationals’ home opener.
It was an excellent turn of events. The basketball game was a rout. Syracuse hammered Marquette. The baseball game, on the other hand, was a lot of fun.
Opening Day was a Monday afternoon game, and it was a mismatch. It was the Bryce Harper-Stephen Strasburg show. Strasburg pitched a shutout against a bad Marlins team. (This was obviously a sign of things that wouldn’t be coming for the next few months.) Harper hit two screaming homers on his first two at-bats.
Here are some random observations:
1. Penny became a big Bryce Harper fan. She liked him a lot. I mean a LOT. I told her he’s too young for her, not even old enough to buy beer. And being a Mormon, when he buys beer he’ll be sneaking it. But sometime around the sixth inning, I officially also joined the Harper fan club. I told Penny at the time that what he did in the field was equally impressive to the two home runs hit. Harper caught a fly ball to left – and not a shallow left fly ball, either - and threw an absolute dart to home plate to chase a runner back to third. Don’t see that every day.
2. The stadium had a great feel. In strolling around, I didn’t find a bad place to sit. Even the upper deck seats were looked good. We sat down the left-field line, 35 rows up, about midway between third base and the foul pole. Going forward, our idea on this excursion is to see every park, but we’re trying for good seats when we can.
3. The park is in a great location in Washington. Down close to the Navy Yard. You can take the train within a few blocks of the stadium. We started at the end of western line, made one train switch and ended up two blocks from the stadium.
4. We’re choosing, in most cases, to be fans of the home team. We got our Nationals caps on the way in, and we got the easy way. First 20,000 into the park got free ones.
5. The scoreboard was excellent, by the way.
6. Oh, yes, one more thing. Everybody seems to be getting into the “racing game” these days. Racing bratwursts in Milwaukee, racing pierogies in Pittsburgh. In Washington, they have racing presidents. I agree with what Penny said in her blog. Funky, big-headed racing presidents had great potential. But it was lame.
7. Bryce Harper is good.
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