Strasburg's debut a masterpiece
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Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg struck out 14 batters in Tuesday's game at Nationals Park in Washington.
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WASHINGTON -- Boiling excitement all along the Potomac could scarcely be contained even before rush hour had its legs. Something pretty urgent is going on when you're bumping into celebrities three hours before a June baseball game.
Ken Burns, Scott Boras, celebrated saxophonist Jaared, Sandra Bullock.
All right, not Sandra Bullock, but who would have been surprised?
Actually, Jaared was behind the plate at beautiful No Naming Rights Stadium in the 4 o'clock hour practicing the national anthem, which is an occasional gig here in his hometown. Jaared's toured in South Africa, Austria, Germany, Poland, Dubai and elsewhere, but this was the date he was hoping to line up.
"I thought, 'Wow, if I could be there the night Stephen Strasburg makes his debut, that would be something," he said in the umpires tunnel. "That rehearsal was kind of rushed. There's so much going on. I've really been looking forward to it."
He and all of baseball.
Few will remember that Jaared blasted a soaring and elegant Star-Spangled Banner to warm up for Strasburg on June 8, 2010, a performance that ran to technical perfection in octaves an alto sax doesn't really have, but none among its witnesses will ever forget Strasburg's Washington inaugural, a seven-inning, 14-strikeout monument to pitching virtuosity.
The most heralded rookie pitcher since perhaps David Clyde, whose straight-from-high-school debut performance 37 years ago this month with the Texas Rangers would stand as the highlight of an injury ravaged career, Strasburg dazzled an SRO crowd with 100-mph heat and the assured speed-changing guile of a 10-year major league veteran.
He struck out every Pirate in the lineup.
He struck out seven in a row as the Nationals closed the curtain after 94 pitches, costing him a chance to tie the big league record of 20, even as his manager later admitted he could have thrown 194.
First Published June 9, 2010 12:00 am
