Kearns's 3-Run Blast Lifts Nats

In the third, they had runners on first and third with one out, and D'Angelo Jimenez grounded into a double play. In the fourth, they had runners on first and second with one out, and Robert Fick popped a lazy foul to third before Jesus Flores followed a walk with a bases-loaded groundout.

And in the seventh, with pinch runner Nook Logan on first, Ryan Langerhans failed to get down a bunt. Worse, with two strikes, he tried to do it again. Logan was running. Langerhans popped the ball up -- directly into a double play.

"I should've swung away," Langerhans said. "I should've been smarter about it."

So in the dugout, there were concerns.

"We couldn't get a bunt down," Manager Manny Acta said. "We couldn't get a guy over. We couldn't drive them in from third with less than two outs. Just name any type of execution. We had our chances."

The final chance came in the eighth, after Chris Booker had relieved Redding and recorded a key strikeout with two men on in the seventh, after Jon Rauch had pitched a scoreless eighth. Jimenez started the winning rally with a bouncing, two-out single to right. When Jimenez advanced on a passed ball, Rockies Manager Clint Hurdle elected to walk Ryan Zimmerman to get to Kearns.

Julio, the well-traveled reliever who had blown save opportunities in his first two career appearances against Washington, missed with his first pitch. He came back with a slider, and Kearns drilled it into the mezzanine level in left.

"That, today, makes me a lot happier because of the fact that it didn't scrape the wall," Acta said. "It was an upper-deck shot. It tells me the power's still there, that if he continues working on the hands and the timing, he's going to hit more."

Kearns, though, said it didn't matter. Upper deck, off the foul pole, whatever. He needed one.

"It could've hit a glove and bounced over," he said. "I don't care."

Afterward, he packed his bags and headed north. He and several teammates planned to attend a Toby Keith concert last night outside Philadelphia, where the Nationals open a road trip Tuesday. Yesterday morning, Kearns had driven to the park cranking one of his favorite country singers. He had the Nationals' staff play "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" before his at-bats.

But as the Nationals filtered out of the clubhouse, another Keith standard, "How Do You Like Me Now?", blared through RFK's speakers. The chorus:

How do you like me now

Now that I'm on my way?

Austin Kearns might have blasted that song all the way up Interstate 95, desperate to use one homer to send him on his way.