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Kearns, Nats Caught in the Headlights
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When Zimmerman followed with his second error of the season, Arizona led 2-0. Kearns kept it there in the fifth, gunning down Arizona catcher Miguel Montero at the plate.
"It didn't help us score any," he said.
Other than Ryan Church's way-too-little, way-too-late solo homer in the bottom of the ninth, nothing helped in that regard. The Nationals' best chance came in the fifth, still down by two. With the bases loaded on two walks and a hit batter, Owings faced Zimmerman for the first time since the pitcher was at Georgia Tech and the hitter at the University of Virginia.
"He's gotten a lot better," Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman was looking for an off-speed pitch, and Owings started him instead with an 89-mph fastball, taken for a strike. The next fastball came in at 93, and Zimmerman fouled it back. And, in an 0-2 hole in a key spot in a game, Zimmerman couldn't lay off Owings's next offering -- an 88-mph, chest-high fastball that he simply swung through.
"It was a bad pitch for me to swing at," Zimmerman said.
That chance gone by, Young hit his three-run bomb off Williams in the sixth. "Fastball down the middle, and he teed off on it," Williams said. "That's my fault."
So Kearns tried to create something in the sixth. Down 5-0, Kearns was on third after a walk, a wild pitch and a groundout. Brian Schneider hit a grounder to Tracy. Kearns danced off the base.
"I thought I could sneak a run in there . . . and ended up looking like an idiot out there," he said. He got caught up in a rundown, an easy mark.
"Maybe some guys [are] trying to do too much, like with his base running," Manager Manny Acta said. "We're down by five runs."
What could be left? In the eighth, a low liner off the bat of Conor Jackson sunk as Kearns charged, glancing off his body for an RBI single. He did all he could, picking his grass-stained body up off the ground, turning and walking back to his spot in right, the glare of the lights shining down on him the entire way.
