Church saves on Good Friday OR Bats as cool as evening temps.

Hooray for Ryan Church! His solo moonshot in the 9th saves the Nats from the indignity of a shutout at the hands of the Diamondbacks.

Well, so much for the good news.

Not much to talk about on yet another night of the Nats getting into an early hole and finding themselves unable to crawl out of it. Jerome William's performance on the mound, while not perfect, was actually really encouraging. He started out very well and gave the offense time and opportunity to try and get off to a better start. I look forward to his next outing, he's going to be interesting to watch.

The weather wasn't nearly as raw as the previous night, but it was still unseasonably cool. Blanket and hot chocolate time, and this time I saw vcndors in the stands selling hot chocolate. Good move, Aramark.

Oddly enough, the Terrace Food Court was closed due to "extremely cold temperatures", even though it was a little warmer than the previous night when the stands were open. Weird.

I like the 16 oz. red Budweiser aluminum bottles and blue Bud Light aluminum bottles with the Nationals logo on them. Very cool looking!

I tried a cheesesteak with peppers from the stand on the 200 level. Tasty, but I still prefer brisket.

HOWARD is back! Having suffered a knee injury on Opening Day, Howard the beer vendor is back in fine form serving around the 100/200/300 level, mostly on the 3rd base side. Welcome back, Howard! (Photo to follow as soon as I can find that lousy camera of mine!)

The Nats320 crew was in fine voice, despite the subdued results on the field. I, on the other hand, am still somewhat hoarse from my Wednesday 9th inning shouts of exhortation and glee.

I got to shake hands and say hello to the father of Jon Rauch! Screech's Best Friend will tell this story better on Nats320, but Mr. Rauch introduced himself to us just after the game ended, and we got the chance to tell him how highly we think of his son's performance so far this season, which is to say quite a bit.

Tonight's game was the first one carried on MASN-2 (channel 671 on DirecTV for me) and I couldn't record the original broadcast because, before I went to work, I went to channel 671 to record it and it read, "To be announced" (!!!!!!) In other words, there wasn't anything that I could do about it. Either DirecTV or MASN dropped the ball here, not sure which. I recorded the game overnight on MASN, just to check out Bob and Don's analysis and see a few highlights.

Onward to Saturday and the second appearance by John Patterson. This should be interesting, as he goes up against the NL Cy Young award winner, Brandon Webb. Let's hope for the best!