Remember two days ago when I tried to downplay the return of Ryan Zimmerman to the Washington Nationals? Let me keep downplaying it, these wing-winning 8 and 10 run outbursts are surely not sustainable and certainly not over the weekend when I really want some wins.
On Tuesday night, Zimmerman said “Me coming back is not going to make us score 10 runs every night” which Mark Zuckerman at CSN Washington reminded us was technically true. Two nights in a row, the Nats offense has scored over 6 runs, winning all fans in attendance free wings from Hard Times Cafe with their ticket stub. Over 26,000 fans were at the park both nights, so Hard Times could be in for some hard times.
On the mound, Eisler Liván Hernández Carrera was simply the best ¡LIVAN! he could be. A couple of days after more unfortunate allegations in a federal money-laundering investigation tied to drug traffickers (The Wash. Times), ¡LIVAN! might have pitched his best game in his many years wearing a Washington uniform. Only three St. Louis Cardinals reached base last night as he threw a complete game shutout, his 9th of career. It was also his 50th complete game. He even had run support for a change, 10 of them, but he only needed one. ¡LIVAN! has had a tough year on the mound, routinely getting little or no help from the Nats offense.
The future for ¡LIVAN! is quite murky and as I said originally, the best case scenario might be that he’s the Henri Devereaux in this situation. While we wait for the legal outcome, I’m going to try and enjoy ¡LIVAN! and not the dread that one of the most beloved players since baseball returned is a crook. In the meantime, maybe future stories about the various allegations could keep running two days before an upcoming start. Maybe, in 3 days, The Post could run a story and ¡LIVAN! could be inspired to pitch another complete game. Then, 5 days after that, CSN Washington could, followed by The Wash. Examiner and so on. Let’s milk this for all we can.
Michael Morse had two homers and continues to defy all suggestions that he will regress to the mean soon and hard. Danny Espinosa and Jayson Werth also went yard. Zimmerman had a RBI for the second consecutive night. Apparently, batting the pitcher 8th, an old Tony La Russa trick hasn’t hurt, though as much as Jim Riggleman would like, I’m not going to suggest correlation equals causation. Feel free to keep it up if the wins keep coming though.
Oh and on the topic of the new Nationals Park food court options from New York City that everybody seems to be excited about one way or the other — whatever. As long as I can get a Ben’s Chili Bowl half-smoke in the 400 level, I don’t really care much about the rest of the food. If I’m at a weekday afternoon game and the Shake Shack line is short, maybe I’ll try it sometime.
Lastly, I noticed that a certain DC news/lifestyle site missed the point on the new food options because they did not do their research and it did not fit their preconceived notions and long-standing antipathy to baseball’s return. I note that the author got a degree from Pitt in creative non-fiction. Hmmm, seems about right. I stopped reading that site half a decade ago and it appears I missed nothing.