Max Power

I was planning on doing a trip to Washington over the summer to visit Jon and go to a Nationals game, but we couldn’t figure out a weekend that worked for both of us.  The solution was to not wait until the summer and see the Dodgers in May.  I also wanted to go to West Virginia.  I was in West Virginia once and didn’t get a beer from West Virginia.  I considered doing a minor league game, but none of the minor league teams in West Virginia are particularly easy to get to.  The solution was to take a second trip to Harpers Ferry.  This was the third different city where I've stayed with Jon on my baseball travels, with Pittsburgh (getting back there for another baseball game might be a thing to do next year) and Baltimore being the other two.

I got in late on Friday night and just went to Jon’s apartment.  He had some beer in his refrigerator from Washington DC (Right Proper Raised by Wolves), so I was able to add that to the list of places I’ve had a beer from. It was a solid end to the night after a long bus ride.  The next morning we were off to Harpers Ferry.  The forecast was questionable, but it all worked out.  It pretty much stopped raining as soon as we got there.  When I went there four years ago, we did a little hike with a park ranger.  That was up above the town.  It was cool, but we didn’t see all the historical stuff down in the town.  There are some little museums and they also have John Brown’s fort.  That’s where he was holed up during the raid until he was captured.  The fort has been moved from the original site, but the original site is marked.  We also walked up to St. Peter’s Catholic Church, which has been there since 1830.  During the Civil War, they flew the Union Jack above the church as a flag of neutrality.  We finished up by stopping at the Potomac Grille.  They had some beer from the Mountain State Brewing Company on tap. I had an Almost Heaven Amber Ale.  It was very good.  My one gripe was that it was served in a frosted glass.  I want the beer to be cold, not the glass.  You give me a cold glass and that’s just creating condensation which waters down the beer.  So the only states I have left to drink a beer from are Indiana, Arkansas, and Alaska.  Indiana and Arkansas should happen this summer.

If I'm going to drink a beer from all 50 states, I might as well drink one from our nation's capital as well.

John Brown's fort

There were a lot of Irish immigrants who went to St. Peter's in the 1800s.  It might have made sense to fly the Irish flag during the Civil War, but Ireland was still controlled by the British at the time.

We headed back to Washington for Dodgers-Nationals.  This was my fourth game at Nationals Park.  The last one was in 2014.  I like Nationals Park, but I have one gripe.  They have the whole nation's capital red, white, and blue theme going on, but then the wall is green.  Why not have a blue wall?  What up with that?  Anyway, we were there for the second game of a split doubleheader.  The Dodgers took the first game 4-1, with Max Muncy driving in two runs.  The second game was pushed back an hour because of the doubleheader.  I was originally hoping to be able to see the end of Game 3 of Celtics-Cavaliers.  Because of the later start, that wasn’t possible.  I didn’t miss much.  It was Rich Hill vs. Max Scherzer.  The Dodgers took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first on an RBI single by Max Muncy.  Rich Hill lasted two pitches because of a blister problem.  He became the first starting pitcher to have no batters faced in a game since 2016.  Who was the pitcher for that game?  Rich Hill.  We got some food while Scott Alexander warmed up.  I had a Half Smoke All the Way from Ben’s Chili Bowl.  It was quite tasty.  There was some light rain during the game, but fortunately we didn’t have to deal with a delay.  The Dodger bullpen was very solid for most of the game.  They had a combined no-hitter through five innings.  Max Muncy homered off of Max Scherzer to give the Dodgers a 2-0 lead.  But the Nationals scored four in the bottom of the sixth to take the lead.  Max Scherzer was very solid, going seven and striking out 13 (he also had an RBI single).  As an aside, I like writing my blog posts, but I often have trouble coming up with titles for my post.  This time it was pretty easy with Muncy and Scherzer:

It was an exciting finish to the game.  With Dodgers trailing 4-2 in the eighth, Cody Bellinger hit a home run to cut the lead to one.  The Nationals led 4-3 going to the ninth, but Matt Kemp hit a pinch hit two-run double to give the Dodgers the lead and Kenley Jansen got his second save of the day as the Dodgers hung on to win 5-4.  According to Dodgers' play-by-play man Joe Davis, it was the 262nd time in Major League history that a team won a game where the bullpen recorded all 27 outs.  That's more rare than a no-hitter.

We actually spent most of the game watching from a marginally better view.  After we got food, we sat in some open seats in the same section that were a few rows down and closer to home plate.

The next morning I went to the 8:30 mass at St. Joseph’s on Capitol Hill.  I walked over to the Capitol and Supreme Court and took a couple of pictures.  And then I was headed back home.  It was a good trip.  My next baseball game is likely to be my first Citi Field game of the season when the Dodgers come in to town at the end of June.  My next trip will be in July.

Despite my feelings about Congress and the Supreme Court for pretty much my entire lifetime, I do appreciate what these buildings stand for.