Hi, this is Doug, I live in Cincy right now (moving to DC for good in September) and I recently attended the Columbus Clippers v. Louisville Bats game last night in the beautiful Louisville Slugger stadium. No, seriously this stadium was amazing…it even had a Merry-Go-Round in the outfield for the kids to ride and watch the game as they ride around in their Louisville Bat painted horses in circles.

As far as the baseball went, it was a great pitching matchup between Billy Traber and Phil Dumatrait, two guys who have been in the majors this year and both have great stuff. Traber gave up a long home run to Aaron Herr on the 1st pitch right after my buddy Ryan (who is a Reds fan) stated that Herr has no shot to make it to the majors. We had pretty good seats so I like to think that he heard him and was proving him wrong. As far as Nats go, Langerhans looked pretty bad at the plate going 0-3 (shocker i know).

There was a good surprise for me though. I consider myself a pretty intelligent Nats fan and know a good amount of our AAA players. Jonathon Albaladejo is not a name that has ever really come up before as a serious prospect. He impressed me more than anybody making some of the Reds players (including the Reds best prospect Jay Bruce) look silly chasing pitches at the plate. Although he did give up a 420 foot home run to Joey Votto (the second best Reds hitting prospect) he really had great stuff for 2 innings. His numbers back it up too: 12 games in AAA, 21 IP, .86 ERA, 16/7 K/BB, .151 BAA….his numbers in AA were very solid too. He’s only 24 and he could be another quality arm to add to the already loaded bullpen we have.

The best part of the night had to be the minor league atmosphere though. After attending so many Major League games, I had forgotten how much more laid back the atmosphere at a minor league game is. It helped that the San Diego “Famous” Chicken was in attendance too and made for a fun night. In the bottom of the 3rd, the Bats let him coach 1st base in which hilarity ensued including holding up posters to Billy Traber, mocking of umpires and Clippers players. He even got the entire Clippers team into his act by starting a water balloon fight with a Clippers coach and then the entire Clippers team coming out of the dugout and nailing the giant chicken with water balloons of their own. Good times and something that we would never get at a night at RFK or any other Major League park. All in all, it was a great experience getting back to the fun of the game, and if you are ever in the Louisville area, make sure you check out Louisville Slugger stadium, one of the best places to catch a fun AAA game.

Wow! What a game…it was great being in the ballpark when a moment like Felipe’s grand slam happens. It would have been much better if I had been in DC where there would have been loud cheering and celebration, but I still got some sort of sick pleasure watching the Reds fans file out after Felipe’s Slam.

Just to show the amount of home run success Felipe Lopez has had in Great American compared to every other field in baseball, I looked at this stat. For his career Felipe has hit a home run in every 31.8 Plate Appearances in Cincy vs. every 50.8 Plate Appearences elsewhere and that was before the bomb he hit last night. Here is my picture of Felipe trotting home, unfortunately I couldnt get a picture of all the Reds fans filing out or when we moved to 4 rows behind the Nats dugout because my camera ran out of batteries

Other highlights of the night were Matt Chico with another great outing (minus 2 pitches). Also, it was a historic night as Ken Griffey Jr. (who recently became my favorite non-Nats player) just tied Harmon Kilebrew for 8th alltime with 573 home runs! Congrats to Griffey! Somebody who has played the game the right way since he began his career and barring his unfortunate injuries over the last 5 years or so, someone that we might be cheering for to reach 700 or even break Aaron’s record.

Anyway, I know this blog is supposed to stay positive so I will simply post a picture of the silly error of the night that got me pretty upset, anybody that watched the game knows what I am talking about.

Overall though another great game (well worth the $5 bleacher prices!) and the Nats scoring 8 runs on the night was a season high. Looooving the offense, keep it up boys!

Hi! I’m Doug and have the pleasure of guest bloggin for the three lovely ladies of “We’ve got Heart” that I met at a Nats game at Wrigley a couple weeks ago. I live near Cincy for now (moving to DC for good in the fall) and am a huge Nats fan, so when the Nats had a four game series against the Reds, I jumped at the oppurtunity to go to the game and blog about it.

Unfortunately, Game 1 didnt turn out as I had hoped, but on the brighter side we scored 7 runs and 3 home runs! Pretty good for a team that ranks dead last in runs scored and HR’s in all of Major League Baseball. Maybe the tide is turning on the struggling offense as Zimmerman is starting to heat up.

It was a wild first inning as Felipe Lopez hit a bloop single into the outfield and Dunn proceded to try to throw it to second in a bizarre flip while on his back that landed far away from the bag. I know Dunn isn’t in the lineup for his defense but this error was horrendous (the only semi-logical explanation of this would be that maybe the sun was in his eyes???)
Anyway, after this the floodgates opened, Guz walked Zimmerman doubled and Dmit doubled. I’ve barely had 2 sips of my beer and the Nats are up 3-0 against Bronson Arroyo!

Schneider would later single to center and after the first inning its 4-0 Nats, needless to say the Reds fans were not pleased, especially this man sitting in front of me who could barely even lift his head after Bronson gave up 4 in the first including a walk to Speigner (Many obsenities were heard and I don’t think he appreciated a Nats fan behind him screaming at the run production; I moved after the first inning). In the second the Nats added 2 more as Kearns hit a shot just over the left-center wall (Count: HR #1). After this I was in disbelief as I don’t recall the Nats ever having a 6 run lead this entire season and especially so early.

But, in the bottom of the second Hatteberg hit a 2 run shot (Count: HR #2) to close the gap to 6-2. The bottom of the third, Griff hits an absolute rocket out to deep right (Count: HR#3) and Gonzalez and Hatteberg hit doubles off Speigner to get within 1 at 6-5. After the inning, I knew we were in for a real offensive treat, which as a Nats fan doesn’t happen very often. So, I went up to the Skyline booth and got myself a Cheese Coney (for those unfamiliar with Cheese coneys they are a hot dog with chili and cheese on top). I sit down take a bite of my coney and the next thing I know Zimmerman hits a shot over the left-center wall (Count: HR #4). I drop the coney to get a picture of Ryan “The Franchise” Zimmerman trotting the bases.
Just to throw this stat out there, today was his 3rd multi-hit game in his last 6, and he is now the team leader in RBI, so it looks like he might be breaking out offensively just like he did last year. After this though, our Nats would only be able to get 2 more hits. Thankfully, Winston Abreu came in and pitched beautifully for 3 full innings and only gave up 1 hit! Awesome outing Winston, I didn’t know how he would do in the big leagues but he is really starting to prove himself. Rivera came in and shut down the seventh for us. When the 8th inning came around, I slyly commented to my Reds friends “Lock it up, Rauch and Cordero are gonna shut you guys down”

Despite my confidence in one of the finest set-up men in the game, Rauch started out giving up a single to Dunn and then confusion by Nook and Kearns off a Hatteburg (AGAIN!!!) shot to center-right went past them for a double. I’m not quite sure why this was ruled a hit rather than an error as from what I saw both Nook and Kearns could have gotten the ball but they were afraid to hit each other (maybe the Nick Johnson incident still fresh in Kearns’ mind?) and both kind of laid up at the last minute. Maybe the replay on TV showed something different but that is what i saw. Anyway, Valentin pinch hit and hit an absolute monster home run that nearly left the park(Count: HR #5) right inside the right field post. Weathers closed it out and the game was over. Reds 8 Nats 7.

Despite the 6 run lead that ended in a loss, all in all there were many positives.
A) I got to see a ton of offense including 15 total runs, 7 of which were by the Nats (they’ve only put up 7+ in 2 other games this season)
B) Abreu pitched his butt off for 3 innings and is looking like a legitimate big league reliever
C) Zimmerman is looking like he is about to heat up and
D) it was an amazing night for baseball at Great American Ballpark and there were some fun people in the stands

Let’s keep the offense coming and see if we can take these next three against the Reds!