Stevenson's first career hit comes in unconventional fashion

Any child who has ever picked up a bat has dreamed of recording his or her first big league hit. And anybody fortunate enough to become a professional ballplayer starts dreaming of that moment in more realistic terms, wondering when, how and against whom it will occur.

Andrew Stevenson is no different than any other young ballplayer. He had envisioned what his first major league hit would look like. And this ... was not it.

"No," he said. "It was off a position player. But it still goes down as a hit. I'll take it."

Yes, 50 years from now when Stevenson is retelling the story to his grandchildren, he'll no doubt laugh a little as he explains that the first hit of his big league came not off a Cy Young Award winner, not off an elite closer, not even off a pitcher. No, it came off Hernán Pérez, the Brewers' 26-year-old utilityman.

Yes, given the fact the Nationals led the Brewers 15-2 in the bottom of the eighth Thursday afternoon, the man on the mound for Milwaukee at that moment was Pérez, a position player pressed into pitching duties so as not to burn up any other members of his team's beleaguered bullpen.

Pérez's repertoire?

"Slow and slower," Stevenson said.

Of the 17 pitches Pérez threw during a scoreless inning - yep, he did post a zero - none registered more than 83 mph on the radar gun. His average fastball velocity was 74.9 mph.

The pitch Stevenson wound up lining to right field for a one-out single actually was a curveball, a 70 mph heave that was down and over the plate. The rookie made solid contact, raced to first base and then watched as the ball was relayed back to the Nationals dugout to be authenticated and presented to him afterward.

"Put an asterisk on it!" some teammate yelled, Stevenson recalled.

There's no asterisk, of course. It's an official hit in an official major league game, and nobody can ever take that away from Stevenson, who had been 0-for-4 with two strikeouts since his promotion from Triple-A Syracuse over the weekend.

"You always want to get the first one out of the way," he said. "It's kind of a weight off your shoulders. Now I can just go from here."