Bloggers cheer in the suite seats as Livan Hernandez has one out to go for a complete game shutout 4/17/10

Spring returned to the mean over the weekend with mostly sunny skies, but chilly breezes and gusts with bite. The extreme summer-like heatwave of a week ago appears to have passed. Now the Nats need to get consistency from game to game, although while still holding a .500 record, don’t seem so bad. From Livo’s 8-0 complete game shutout win over the Brewers on Saturday to an ineffectual Marquis lending to a 10-run first inning with no outs on Sunday, I guess we can at least be thankful it didn’t snow in April.

Baseball can be a wild ride, and this weekend demonstrated that in spades. Most fans I know don’t spend both games of a weekend homestand at the ballpark, choosing one or the other. The choice was made for me after being graciously invited to the 2nd offering of a MASN blogger day in a suite. Boy am I thankful! Seeing Livan Hernandez cruise through the win in person was something to behold! Even better was spending it among other bloggers and guests such as former TWTer and current MASN Nationals beat guy Ben Goessling (who managed to run his in-game chat through his Blackberry – impressive!). Debbi Taylor also paid us a quick visit pre-game and Ray Knight watched some of the game with us while eating a hot dog.

Many thanks to Todd Webster and Kristen Hudak for being the hosts with the most. Even the food spread was pretty great!

So yeah, I got lucky. I pity the friends I know attended today’s game instead. While the weather was mostly the same, they endured a completely different ballgame, sitting through the 28 minute first inning of Jason Marquis that included a walk, two hit-by-pitches and 10 runs before it was over (including a grand slam by Craig Counsell given up by Miguel Batista). I’m no expert, but that’s a pretty big hole to start out a game before even coming up to bat. Marquis never recorded a single out before being relieved of duty. The Nationals did rally later in the game, but not enough to overcome the deficit, losing 11-7 by the time the game was over.

Yin yang. Now if the two games could be averaged out as some sort of median… Eh, I can’t quite find a way to word that well. Doesn’t matter — the Nats won 2 out of 3 in the series, holding a winning record for a day. If they keep doing that at least half the time, they’ll maintain a .500 record. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 18th, 2010 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Gameday, MLB, Washington Nationals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.