How I Spent My Saturday Night and Sunday Morning: Braves vs. Nationals

So...we went back to see the beloved Braves play again Saturday night. And much like the previous weekend, to say the game was bizarre would be a gross understatement.

Read about the Braves Jinx from last weekend RIGHT HERE

Yes, we caught a lot of grief for going to our first game of the year last weekend, which just happened to coincide with the Braves 14-game winning streak ending.

That was strange, the game this Saturday made that one look tame. And unfortunately, now means The Lovely Bride and I will be watching the playoffs on TV rather than in person.

The middle weekend in August was gray, dark and dreary in the Atlanta area. And we had tickets to the Braves/Nationals game on Saturday night.

Good tickets. Expensive ones even. We were behind the 3rd base dugout.

And when the P.A announcer came on at 6:50 p.m as the steady drizzle began to dissipate, to say the 1st pitch was delayed, that's when I knew we might be in trouble.

A little backstory: The past few Braves/Nats games have been ugly due in large part to an incident at the beginning of August where Braves pitcher Julio Tehran hit Nats star Bryce Harper with a pitch after Harper admired his home run the previous at bat. Harper got testy, benches cleared and a war of words has ensued since.

Which was all well and good until Friday night.

Harper got hit not once, but twice. Neither was deliberate because it was a close game, but it did not make Washington happy.

And it got worse. After the Nats scored 2 runs in the top of the 1st, Jason Heyward hit the 3rd pitch he saw from Nationals ace Stephan Strasburg and hit it into the right center field stands.

You can see the video with this LINK

That's when things got weird.

Strasburg hit the next batter, Justin Upton on the butt on the next pitch. Upton shook his head and quietly jogged to 1st base. Umpire Marvin Hudson, knowing the history, came out and warned both teams that the next one would be an ejection.

Fair enough.

Which brings us to the second inning. The Nats added 2 more runs before the Braves hit. That's when Strasburg went wacky. He walked Jordan Schafer on 4-pitches and then threw the next pitch to Andrelton Simmons 10 feet away in the dirt.





The next two pitches went BEHIND Simmons, prompting Hudson to toss Strasburg and then manager Davey Johnson.

15th inning 

Fine.

Nobody on the field believed Strasburg was throwing AT anyone, but it was done.

The game continued, slowly.

Three hours later, after debating about leaving in the 8th, we stayed. And in the bottom of the 9th, the Braves were down to their last out, trailing 7-5. A runner on base.

That's when Heyward stepped up and hit a 2 run home-run. Tie game.

As Skip Caray used to say: "Free Baseball in Atlanta"

However....we got 6 innings of "Free Baseball".

And as the drizzle came back, the game essentially ended when former Brave and current Nat, Adam LaRoche hit a Kris Medlen  pitch deep into the damp, cool Atlanta night.

At 12:55 a.m. In the morning. 5.5 hours after it started and 7 hours after we got there, the game ended.

And to be honest with you, since the Braves had run out of position players and relievers, as did the Nats, the only thing missing from this game was this: