Day 13: Washington

First of all, we would like to wish Happy Father's Day to all those father's out there, especially our own.

Today we sat in a raucous crowd at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. as the Washington Nationals hosted the New York Yankees. It was a great game, and the Yankees took a 2-1 lead late on an Alex Rodriguez double off the wall. However, Ryan Zimmerman hit a 2-run walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th to give the Nats a thrilling victory. Ben, even though he did not want them to win, had chosen the Yankees, so I took the win and move to 7-3 in picking games against him on the trip.

It was another classic game, and we have now seen a walk-off home-run in 4 out of the 10 games we have attended, unbelievable. The crowd at RFK was very good, over 45,000 for a sellout, and there were almost as many Yankees fans as Nationals fans. Both sides would go back and forth with their chants, often having both take place at the same time. The overall atmosphere was electric.



My girlfriend, Katey, was able to join us for the game, as we had complimentary tickets from Joe Benkowski that were great seats, just to the 1st base side of home plate on the lower level. Katey has a knack for picking games, and with the Nationals trailing 2-1 in the bottom of the 9th, I said to her, "I thought you said the Nationals are going to win." She replied, "They are, just watch." Zimmerman went deep on the next pitch, proving for the 2nd day in a row, that blind squirrels do find nuts!



If you are planning on trying to scalp tickets outside of RFK, I would not recommend doing so just outside the METRO stop at the stadium. While waiting for Katey to arrive, we saw one of the most physically imposing policemen come and calmly explain to all of the scalpers that if they continued to “solicit, buy, and sell tickets, they would be put in jail.” Ben then made the very accurate comment, “I’m glad that guy is on the good side of the law.” Another funny conversation that we overheard between 2 scalpers went something like this.
Scalper 1: “Hey man, let me take some of those tickets down to the next block to try and sell. How much you want me to get for them?
Scalper 2: “I don’t know dawg, just get enough for a pound of weed or something.”
Glad to see that they are using the profits they make for productive purposes.

While walking into the stadium, we were stopping to get some water, and Ben asked the street vendor how much a bag of peanuts cost. She said, “$3.” Ben mumbled, “That figures, and started to walk away.” As I was paying for the water, the vendor said, “Will you pay $2.00?” and Ben said yes. So, in a sense, Ben out-haggled a professional haggler, classic Pauluhn as many of you know.

We left Newark, DE this morning, and had to fill up with gas over $3.00 for the 1st time on the trip, a bit of a disappointing experience. After about 2 hours, we found free parking about 20 blocks from the stadium and made the long walk. Following the game, we walked back in the scorching heat and strolled around Capitol Hill, and also saw the Washington Monument and Union Station. Then we grabbed dinner at Johnny Rocket’s, an excellent 1950s style hamburger joint that was delicious.



We have now finished 10 games, or 1/3 of the total games we will see. However, we have only driven about 1/5 of the total distance we have to cover, so things will be picking up from that aspect starting tomorrow, with the drive to Boston.

Special thanks to my Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Hubie for letting us stay at their house in Newark, DE last night. The home cooking was delicious and we had a very nice stay.

Here are the statistical updates:
1-end of day odometer: 20,535
2-miles traveled today: 141
3-miles traveled total: 3,892
4-states traveled in today: Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C.
bonus stat: in the interleague games we have seen on the trip, pitchers are 0-10 with 9 strikeouts while at-bat