My annual mid-summer trip to Nationals Park this year coincided with the cameo appearance of the UVA Basketball national-championship trophy.
It was UVA College Night at the stadium. The Arizona Diamondbacks were in town.
The D’backs were over .500 coming into the weekend. The Nats: 31-37.
My wife and I got our pictures with the championship trophy, and Max Scherzer won the Friday night game.
Afterward, I saw photos on Twitter of Ryan Zimmerman and Sean Doolittle, two fellow UVA alums, with the national-championship trophy.
I was reminded of something that I’d written about in the book that I co-wrote with Jerry Ratcliffe on the UVA championship run, Team of Destiny, about how the ‘Hoos had happened to play a game at Clemson in January on the day that Clemson was celebrating its football national championship, and UVA coach Tony Bennett had said to his team that day, as the bus drove by the celebration, wouldn’t it be neat if we had one of those celebrations back in Charlottesville?
But then, I mean, come on, this was a Nats team that was under .500.
We hung around for the Saturday game because it was Sean Doolittle bobblehead day,
Stephen Strasburg started for Washington, and gave up a homer on his first pitch of the game, one of four homers that he would give up that day, on the way to getting touched up for six runs on nine hits in five innings in a 10-3 loss that dropped the Nationals to 32-38 on the season.
From there on, the Nats would finish the regular season 61-31. Strasburg went 16-2 the rest of the way, including a 5-0 mark in the postseason, with two wins in the World Series, earning him World Series MVP honors.
There’s about to be another trophy in Nats Park.
It got paid forward from the visit of the UVA trophy back in June.
It was special seeing the one, and it will be special this weekend seeing the new one.
Column by Chris Graham
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