Philadelphia Phillies @ Washington Nationals (2)

The final game of the series say the Phillies send Cloyd to the mound to face a Zimmerman-fest, with Jordan Zimmerman pitching and Ryan Zimmerman playing 3rd base for the Nationals. The Phillies were never really in this game, as Bryce Harper, the new young star for Washington, hit a couple of doubles, scored runs early on and was part of two rallies for 3 runs in the 5th and 5 in the 7th to cap the scoring, with Wilson Ramos doing the major damage with 4 hits on the day.

There were lots of player substitutions in this game, which led to the home plate umpire having to confer with the manager of one team to get all the changes registered, then use hand signals to the official scorer and scoreboard operators to let them know what the changes were, and then relay the information to the opposing manager. This particular set of changes took so long, that the new pitcher had completed his warm-up pitches and the batter was ready - they were just waiting for the umpire. The home plate umpire is supposed to count the warm-ups (as the number the pitcher is permitted to throw is limited) but it's nice to see a sport in which the players just count it out themselves and carry on doing the right thing. I suppose it's easier to not try anything when it's all televised for so many angles anyway, but generally, players seem to try to do the right thing most of the time.

The Presidents' Race was won by Teddy! Only his tenth ever victory - it was a big sensation not so long ago when, after many years of never winning, he finally won a race. There's a new president since I was last here - William Taft ("Bill"), plus George (Washington), Abe (Abraham Lincoln), Teddy (Theodore Roosevelt) and Tom (Thomas Jefferson)

A brave pigeon decided to walk around the infield during one inning, completely unfazed by the pitcher on the mount. The pigeon calmly waddled around the back of the mound, without interrupting play. It's quite brave for birds to be in the infield and some haven't been as lucky. After the game, during the "Kids Run The Bases", Teddy was trying to chase the pigeons away too.

Some of the very young base runners weren't quite sure about some of the presidents, either!