Washington Nationals @ Miami Marlins (2)

The second game of this three game series featured two starters I'd never heard of. The Washington Nationals' starter was Tanner Roark, making his first MLB start, up against Nathan Eovaldi for Miami, who's been around for a few years, but not made a really big splash yet. I ordered the taxi earlier today, and got to the stadium the direct way, and in time for the first pitch.

This game went the opposite way of yesterday's game, with the Nationals jumping out to a quick lead, highlighted by Ryan Zimmerman hitting a 2-run homer in the 1st inning and following it up with a solo shot in the 3rd. Eovaldi was lifted for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the 3rd, but the game was pretty well lost already, as Roark threw 6 shutout innings and the Marlins only picked up a couple of runs in garbage time at the end.

Overall, there were more people there today, I thought. There were about a dozen in my section (226) this evening. Either the acoustics of the building with the roof closed are set up to reflect and magnify everything, or the Marlins are pumping cheering noises through the sound system to augment the crowd - some of the screaming that is encouraged and the shouting seems to me to be far in excess of what you might think a crowd of that size could produce - and it's certainly way louder than the crowds in Toronto managed.

Now the MLB official box score puts the attendance at over 28,000 - pull the other one!

Many teams have a so-called 50/50 raffle where you buy tickets and half the prize fund goes to a worthy cause and the other half is the prize money for the lucky holder of the winning ticket. The prize money in Cleveland with fewer than 10000 fans was over $500; the prize money from 3 times as many fans in Miami was $1000. There are three possibilities: the fans in Cleveland are kind-hearted extremely generous souls; the fans in Miami are super-tight-fisted Scrooges; or the fan numbers in Miami have been grossly inflated.

It could be all three, I suppose ...