Last year I saw Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg strike out 10 batters in his electrifying second start as a major league pitcher.

Then he hurt his elbow, had surgery and spent months outside of my baseball-watching world.  Until last night.

Strasburg walks to the dugout after pre-game warmups

I had a ticket to check out his previous start, which happened to fall on a workday and during a week in which it rained constantly in the Washington, D.C., area.  I figured there was no way they would actually play the game, and decided to grab a few more hours of sleep before my overnight shift instead.  They played.

The next night was one of the games in our 14-game ticket package.  It rained, but we made the effort to go into the city determined to watch the game, which of course was canceled before we even made it to the stadium.  Fortunately though, we were able to trade those tickets in for any future game and ended up with a Strasburg start.

Our normal seats are down the third base line, so it was extra fortuitous that the replacement tickets just happened to put us right next to where Strasburg was warming up before the game.  Here’s that, plus what he does best — striking people out to end innings:

He ended up pitching six innings, allowing one earned run on four hits and striking out three.

The Nats lost the game in 13 innings, but I was able to see a few interesting things along the way that had nothing to do with the game.  First, there were two ceremonial first pitches.  I didn’t know that was technically possible.  In the bottom of the 12th inning, the remaining fans mounted an impressively long version of the wave that seemed to grow stronger and stronger each time it went around the stadium.  That is, until Jayson Werth struck out looking, immediately everyone so much there was no will to continue.

There was also the unprecedented second running of the Presidents Race, which typically happens in the middle of the fourth inning.  But with the game stretching deep into the night (actually it was pretty quick for a 13-inning game), the presidents made it out for a second run.  I took video of the first one, which will surely satisfy your lifelong desire to see a leprechaun tackle Teddy Roosevelt:

If you are into such things there is a blog devoted entirely to the Presidents Race.  And yes, I’m jealous I am not responsible for it.