Mike O'Connell

When you put up a touchdown and two field goals in the first three innings the rest of the game becomes a lot easier.

Such was the lesson for my hometown Washington Nationals yesterday afternoon against the Milwaukee Brewers. The Nats scored 16 runs while socking eight home runs in the game, tying a franchise record. This, mere hours after surrendering eight homers (that’s got to be a record) in a devastating 14-inning loss against those same Brewers. (The final score of that one was 15-14. Damn those Brewers and their two-point conversion.)

Don’t look now but the Nationals have some breathing room in the NL Wild Card race. They are a full game and a half up on the Cubs for the top Wild Card spot, and three and a half up on the Brewers, Mets, and Phillies, who sit tied for sixth overall. Each team in that trio is 64-60, meaning the Nats (67-56) sit four up in the loss column. That’s called sittin’ pretty.

Tuesday, October 1st: Wild Card… book it.

Oh, middle of August… you used to give me just a hint of back-to-school sales as summer was still in full swing.

Nowadays it’s quite different.

On the upside the back-to-school sales are out.

Downside(?) is… they’ve been replaced by Halloween candy.

Two days ago I was in Waldorf, Maryland, to see Southern Maryland Blue Crabs take on the Long Island Ducks. The Ducks and the Crabs play in the “Atlantic League of Professional Baseball,” an independent baseball league sort of affiliated with Major League Baseball and sort of not. There are no formal affiliations between member teams and those in MLB, though players do shuffle back and forth between leagues. You’d recognize some of the names on the rosters. Most prominent among them, I suppose, was the Ducks’ manager, Wally Backman. Yes, that Wally Backman of the ’86 Mets, a few too many YouTube clips, and at one time the manager of the Binghamton Mets.

But it’s really not the players or the teams that provide the interesting arrangement between the Atlantic League and MLB. It’s the rules. You see, the Atlantic League is experimenting with some rule changes, a sort of laboratory being observed by MLB scientists, alterations perhaps one day coming to a big league park near you. Most prominent among these, I suppose, is the electronic wizard that calls balls and strikes. Oh, there’s still a home plate umpire, of course, but he is merely reporting the facts as whispered in his ear by some unseen genie. (It’s like the reverse Wizard of Oz–the one you see is the little old man and behind the curtain is the actual wizard.) Watching the action it’s really not that obvious that there’s a slight delay between the snap of the catcher’s glove and the signal from the ump. Oh, but it does happen from time to time, that a robotic call will come in a bit late and of course it’s never in the home team’s favor. “C’mon, computer!” grumbles the faithful in the stands.

The league utilizes a 12-second pitch clock. That really does zip the game along. That the breaks between innings are only 1:45 instead of 2:05 (or any amount of time)… totally unnoticeable. Ditto 18-inch bases. Eighteen-inch bases? Quick, how big have the bases been for the past hundred years? Well, they’re 15 inches, and yeah, when you stare at them you think, I suppose they look a little bigger. But if I hadn’t known, would I have walked in the stadium and thought what the hell are those giant bases doing out there? Not a chance.

Wednesday I mistakenly reported that the Atlantic League uses a 62.5-foot pitcher’s mound. It does not. That change is scheduled to be implemented in 2020. (Guess I’ll have to go back.) The most jarring change and the most talked about (and viewed on YouTube) is, of course, the theft of first base. Yes, in this league one can actually steal first base. On any wild pitch or passed ball the runner at the plate can advance to first as he would on a dropped third strike. I’ll ruin the suspense–I didn’t get to see one. Oh, there were plenty of opportunities (about every tenth pitch is wild), and you could feel it in the crowd every time the ball went past the catcher. You wanted to see it, you were dying to see it. But alas, it was not meant to be. Are batters just not thinking about it? Or is it really not a good play, metrics-wise? We’ll let the geeks figure that one out.

A few words on the venue, Regency Furniture Stadium… it’s much cooler than the silly corporate name it carries. Everything about the park is easy: easy to get to, easy to park, easy to get in and out, and once you’re inside the place is kind of a palace as far as minor league parks go. It’s got probably 20 skyboxes—amazing for a minor league stadium—and a bunch of bells and whistles to keep the “experience” folks entertained. A swimming pool (which had paddle boats but no one swimming), a basketball court, jungle gym, moonbounce. (Thankfully I saw no selfie station.) Home run seats? Yeah, if you don’t mind sitting on a grandstand bench. One can walk around the entire field, a luxury I’ve encountered only at the biggest of Triple-A parks. Well done, Regency, well done.

In all I found the experience to be, well, pretty good baseball. The changes to the game are subtle; you are still watching something Doubleday or Cartwright would recognize. The caliber of play is probably AA or AAA, and as stated, the park itself is on par with some of the best I’ve seen. I happened to go to a game that had probably its lightest attendance of the year (11:05 a.m. start accommodating various local summer camp groups), but it was still an event worth blogging about.

One criticism: the Blue Crabs’ mascot, Pinch… totally copied (pinched?) from the Binghamton Mets and its “Ballwinkle.” Ballwinkle entertained B-Mets fans for nearly a quarter century before “retiring” when the team changed its nickname to the Rumble Ponies.

I’d lodge a formal complaint but come on, it’s a fuzzy blue sports mascot… how different can they really be?

Waking up a little later than usual this morning I thinks to myself, would it not make sense to replace all current Monday holidays with simply the days after the Yankees play the Red Sox on Sunday nights? I know last night’s example was pushed a bit by a rain delay, but I think that further serves the point: divine intervention is often at play in making these games into epic affairs.

No complaints, by the way. Just a thought about what to do the morning after.

Herbie Hancock is a standing ovation performer. He walks on stage, you give him a standing ovation. That’s the kind of recognition you earn from 60 years in the music business. “Legend,” “icon,” “luminary,” etc. There’s a status reserved for a select few folks who’ve walked this earth and picked up an instrument. Herbie Hancock is one.

Saxophonist Kamasi Washington was born in 1981. He’s an old man by pop standards, but a kid in the jazz world. Last night at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts new legend met old legend, backed by a host of young stars and veteran stars, and the performances were, well, worthy of a standing ovation.

There aren’t many “jazz” acts that’ll fill an amphitheater, let alone an amphitheater and a thousand people sitting on the lawn. Whoever’s idea it was to put a jazz icon (at a point you just run out of superlatives) on the bill with the up and coming jazz star: good one. Last night’s crowd was an interesting mix of young folks and old folks, sandals and boat shoes, ties and tee shirts, head bangers and head nodders… people who clap on one and three and people who clap on two and four. This was the political message too: no matter what any of us look like or where we come from, we’re all hip and we’re all here to experience something beautiful.

I’ll admit that at times the music got a little weird. Both Kamasi and Herbie got a little “out there” in their sets, and yeah, it was a little more than funky. I was especially impressed, though, with the way the young Jedi was able to rein in his band of thirtysomething all-stars, then stretch out again into something you’d expect more from the Grateful Dead than guys who play “jazz.” What I experienced last night I wouldn’t call jazz at all. Charlie Parker would have been just as confused as an 11th-century monk versed in Gregorian chants. Bird died in 1955, a few years before a young piano player named Herbie Hancock came on the scene and spent the next few decades breaking all manners of musical boundaries. Fusion, funk, ambient, free… Herbie Hancock was and is sort of the O.G. of this wave of straight-eighth “jazz,” and last night it was in full display.

The night closed, of course, with what you wanted to hear: the familiar opening riff of Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon,” brought to you by the master himself on… wait for it… keytar. Yeah, Herbie brought the keytar, and wailed like Hendrix before a crowd that did not leave its feet. Did I mention Herbie’s 79 years old? Yeah, he can still bring it. Kamasi came out to jam with Herbie’s band, a moment of musical kismet Ed Sullivan or Dick Clark could only dream of producing.

It was worthy of a standing ovation.