There Will Be Blood

Yesterday was an excellent day for sports. Well, for my teams, anyway.

For the Reds, rookie pitcher Johnny Cueto had an outstanding first start, hurling seven innings of one-hit ball. I didn't get to watch the game, since it was a Thursday businessman's special, but I did catch it over the fantastic Gameday service. I'm amazed how much that tool has improved over the past few years. It now includes data on every pitch's release speed, speed at the plate, break, drop, and position over the plate. The next frontier is data on the trajectory of batted balls, I'd wager.

After work, I joined Sarah & Paul and Zina & John at the Capitals-Lightning game. Washington pretty much had to win in order to stay in playoff contention. And despite the disparity in the two teams' records, it was a close thing for the first two periods. But things got awesome in the third. The Caps scored three goals, some brutal hits(Blood on the ice? Check), and a decent fight with about 20 seconds to go (if you are in to that).

We went to the game because of Zina, who got us a nice deal that also helped out Margie Shapiro's Team Spirit. She is trying to make the Olympic triathlon team, and Zina vouched for her. She sounds like a class act. And those tickets were 1) cheaper and 2) included a visit to the Dewars Lounge for free drinks and food. Paul estimated that at Verizon Center prices, the food we ate was worth more than the price we paid for the seats. If we didn't come out ahead, we may have broken even.

So it was a really fun outing, and capped a really nice day. In all, though, my favorite moment may have been during the first intermission peewee hockey scrimmage, when one kid (probably about 8 years old) got out on a breakaway and scored.