I attended last night’s Nationals-Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. If you’ve never been you should go. The stadium is small but really nice. The food is great,
Chase Utley on his way to 3rd during last nights Nationals-Phillies game.
there’s a speed pitch, trivia challenge, race type thing. Also, the stores are really nice and there’s a thowback Cooperstown store in left field. The jumbotron is enormous and takes up pretty much the entire left field grandstand and there is a huge bell in center field modeled after the liberty bell that they ring after home runs and wins. Since the park plays so small, you have a great chance of seeing a home run if you go. Last night, Ryan Howard homered in the first inning of an eventual 11-3 Phillies win. I had great seats, 12 rows behind the third base bag. The face value of the tickets was $45 which is noteworthy if you know that decent upper deck seats in Yankee Stadium cost $55. I took notes:
- The Nationals have a roughly 10 year old bat boy that travels with the team and carries catcher’s gear around. How do you get that job? That’s way better than summer camp.
- Ian Desmond is a great guy. A few years ago, I witnessed then-Marlin Dan Uggla treat some little girl at a spring training practice very poorly and it really soured
Ian Desmond signing autographs for Phillies fans before the game.
me on him overall (when will this damn hitting streak end?) but last night Ian Desmond was just the opposite. Before the game, Desmond took a bout 10 minutes to chat with, sign autographs for, and take pictures with, a bunch of little kids down the left field line. All of whom were wearing Phillies gear.
- Rick Ankiel is 6’2″, 225 lbs. He is a big guy but he looks like a kid next to Michael Morse. Morse, the big hitting Nats 1st basemen, is 6’5″, 230 and absolutely dwarfs anyone else on the field.
- In the bottom of the 1st, on the very first play of the game, Nats starting secondbasemen Danny Espinosa made an error on a fairly routine ground ball. My first thought was “how fast can you teach Anthony Rendon to play 2nd and how fast can you get him up here.” Despite an impressive 17 HRs, Espinosa is hitting only .225 this year so I’m thinking the Nats front office may be with me on this one.
- The Phillies are tough with 2. Philadelphia scored 2 runs in the 1st inning on a 2-out homer by Howard and then scored a bunch more 2-out runs later in the game. It’s the mark of a good team to be able to score 2-out runs and the Phillies
Rick Ankiel and Ryan Zimmerman before the game.
can definitely do it.
- Michael Morse had 2 hits last night, upping his average to .321. Jayson Werth had a hit but made some solid contact on a couple of loud outs and even Laynce Nix put a couple of real good hacks on Roy Oswalt. If the Nats hitters can all figure it out at the same time, watch out.
- There is a 20 mph difference between Roy Oswalt’s fastball (which sat around 91-92) and his curve (which was about 71). Good Luck.
- Roy Oswalt is an offensive machine. Oswalt walked twice last night, once for an RBI with the bases loaded. In that at bat, Oswalt nearly knocked himself over with a huge cut on a 3-1 pitch. He was clearly thinking grand slam and the way John Lannan was nibbling the zone against him I think he believed it.
- The Nats played sloppy baseball. You could tell that if they played their game they could hang with Philadelphia but they made too many mistakes last night. Errors and walks killed them. Philly ended up scoring 11 runs on only 9 hits as Washington made 3 errors and walked 7.
- Chickie’s & Pete’s Crabfries are phenomenal.
- Chooch can hit. Carlos Ruiz is a professional hitter. He led the team in AVG in 2010 and showed why last night. In the 8th inning, he was nearly knocked down by a 97 mph fastball. On the very next pitch, when most hitters would understandably bail out a bit, he hung in there and drove a ball the other way to the warning track in right field. Impressive.
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Ryan Howard
The Phillies are good. They brought it last night. They were playing a weak opponent and had a big lead by the 4th but they kept up the intensity, didn’t let up and kept adding runs. I was very impressed by Philly last night. Michal Stutes looked real good out of the bullpen, too. On pace for 106 wins, I wouldn’t want to run into them in October.
-Max Frankel
