Frank Howard gets enshrined into the “Ring of Honor” tonight at Nationals Park. A fitting tribute for one of the greatest Washington Senators of their final team before owner Robert Short would rob 
Washington D.C. fans of hopes and dreams generations of D.C. baseball fans that spanned for over 3 decades. Frank Howard kept his permanent home in Washington D.C. area in rural Virginia.
The memories of Hondo and Zim closing RFK Stadium to baseball in 2007 will always be a great memory of passing the torch. Let us hope that tonight is just as special as we have some more glimpses of Frank “Hondo” Howard with Ryan Zimmerman as we always thought of them as the “Faces of the Washington Franchises”. The picture (to the right) was actually produced by our own Allstars_S2 back in 2007 for a tribute piece to them. Congratulations Frank Howard!
The Nationals players, coaches, Dusty Baker, and Mike Rizzo must have finally slept well. Poorly played games can sometimes keep you up at night. Max Scherzer had one of the most important wins of the season for this Nationals team as they widened their lead back up to 8.0 games in the NL East with 35 left to play, but more importantly split this mini 2 game series and got off of the four game losing streak.
The fight in this team was shown on Wednesday night that they don’t give up even when behind by 7 runs in the final half inning of a game. That was also evident in their play on Thursday.
Tonight it is the Colorado Rockies in Washington, D.C., and tonight’s starters are Gio Gonzalez who once again goes for career win #100 versus rookie prospect Jeff Hoffman.
Hoffman was the 9th overall pick of the 2014 draft by the Blue Jays and was traded in the blockbuster deal for Troy Tulowitzki. The righty Hoffman did not have a good debut which was against the Chicago Cubs who pounded him over 4 innings of work. Not the right combination to debut in Coors Field against the Cubs. Hoffman is a power arm where he will hit 97mph on his fastball and sit at 94-95mph. His changeup is the pitch to sit on when he is ahead in the count. Hoffman also throws the slider and will mix in some curveballs.
Washington Nationals and Colorado Rockies
Stadium: Nats Park, Washington, DC
1st Pitch: 7:05 pm EDT
TV: MASN, ROOT-Rockies, MLB.tv
Line-ups (subject to change without notice):
- Trea Turner CF
- Jayson Werth LF
- Daniel Murphy 2B
- Bryce Harper RF
- Anthony Rendon 3B
- Ryan Zimmerman 1B
- Danny Espinosa SS
- Jose Lobaton C
- Gio Gonzalez LHP
