It doesn’t happen all that often, but occasionally the Washington sports calendar features a Nationals game during the day and a Capitals game at night.  My family has talked many times about doing the doubleheader, but never made it happen.

That is until the 2016 Nationals schedule came out and the team’s home opener coincided with Capitals tickets we already had for that night.  The only complication was timing.  In years past, the Nationals opener has been at 1 o’clock, making a 7 p.m. Caps game no problem.

But for whatever reason, this year the Nats played at 4, meaning we could expect to see maybe 7ish innings before jetting up the green line to the Caps game.  If we were lucky, a pitcher’s duel with lots of strikes would get us a complete game in time.

Things didn’t exactly work out that way.  During the second inning, a little rain started.  We pulled on ponchos and quickly noticed that even with some sunlight breaking through the clouds, the rain was suddenly accompanied by hail.  And then a lot more rain.  Like, a LOT more.  The game was delayed for an hour and a half.

Add in that the two starting pitchers had serious struggles in finding the strike zone during the early innings, the game wasn’t exactly screaming along.  By the time we had to catch the last train that would get us to the Caps game on time, the Nats were batting in the bottom of the 3rd.

My brother and I had the Caps game, leaving our mom behind at Nats Park.  It turned out the pitching didn’t speed up the game at all after we left, and combined with 10 total runs, the games ended up finishing close to the same time.

In fact, without knowing it, we all ended up on the same orange line train out of the city.

Both the Nats and Caps lost, making it not quite the ideal sports day we were hoping for, but we still had a great time.  Hopefully the Nats will better take into account our scheduling needs in the future and make their opener a little earlier.

And for those wondering, the double losses did not prevent me from setting a new record of consecutive games I attend with my chosen team winning.  Fortunately I went to a Nats spring training game last week where they beat the Twins, pushing my streak to a new all-time high of eight.

Time to start a new streak.