The ball made a loud sound off Stone Garrett’s bat, a 105-mph bullet, and headed in the air toward deep left-center. A Father’s Day crowd of 25,339 at Nationals Park that had little reason to get excited most of the afternoon briefly rose with the kind of anticipation you’d expect from such loud contact at a big moment in a ballgame.
And then everyone slinked back into their seats as Jonathan Davis hauled in the ball at the warning track to end the bottom of the sixth, the Nationals still trailing the Marlins by two runs. Garrett, who came about 20 feet shy of giving his team the lead, slammed his helmet in frustration as he arrived at first base.
"I thought it was gone off the bat," teammate Lane Thomas said. "I think he did, too."
"We thought once he hit it," manager Davey Martinez said, "it was going to be a different ballgame."
The feeling of frustration was mutual throughout the ballpark as the Nats slogged their way through yet another loss to the division foe that somehow has become their white whale.