The Right Voice

Ah, August baseball. the time of the year when the Braves have already wrapped up the division and have put the scrubs in to get a taste of the show. Wait a minute, something is not right here. Let’s see where the mistakes are. Let’s see…August? Check. Scrubs in the game? Check. Ah yes I see it now. The Braves have not wrapped up the division. In fact, the Braves are 19 games below .500 and 17 Games Behind the Mets with only 25 left to play. Well, I went to the game today to see if they could avoid being swept by the worst team in the majors.

Thanks to generosity from former coworkers friends, I was able to watch the game from awesome seats. The weather was perfect, if not a little hot, but that was taken care of by the third inning, or so. I took advantage of Twitter and “tweeted” live commentary during the game. The scrubs were out in full force today. No Chipper, No McCann, no, ah, ah, I guess those are our only stars. This guy played though. This guy pitched. He also hit, but thankfully, he does not get paid to hit. The free Nationals program featured a cover story on Pat Corrales. That was kind of cool. It was also nice to see old friends like Langerhans (I always liked him) and Don Sutton.

The Braves scored 1 in the first. I started to get excited because we scored early and Jurrjens was on the hill, so we were in good hands. Ishould not have been so foolish. The Nats came back for 2 in the bottom of the inning. I tweeted cautiously:

nats get 2. not looking good for the non-hitting braves

That was the score until 4th inning when Escobar hit a three run shot to make the score 4-3. the Nats refused to quit though and came back with one in the bottom of the inning to make it 4-3. Jurrjens settled down after that. He seemed to be going strong. No sooner than I said this:

Jurrjens has retired 7 in a row

I said this:

  Jurrjens being lifted for a pinch hitter. I don”t agree with Cox on this move

Sadly, I was proven right.

Boyer was brought in to pitch the 7th. He shut the Nats down in order. Then Elmer Dessens came out to pitch the 8th. I astutely tweeted this

no idea why Boyer was taken out with the pitcher’s spot due up third in the 9th

Elmer Dessens did not last long. He gave up 5 runs in 1/3 of an inning capped by a three run homer by Aaron Boone. This happened about 4 batters too late. The Braves lost 8-4 and got swept by the Nats. The Nats are playing well right now, but come on.

One last thing before I sign off. I am really impressed with Josh Anderson I think he is going to be a solid player for us (or wherever he ends up). At the Nats games they have the President Race and Teddy Roosevelt has never won. Today was no exception. There’s always next year.

Todd