You wait days for a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpitching phenom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to make his debut and then two come along at once.\u00c2\u00a0 Aroldis Chapman wowed the Royals, scouts and speed guns yesterday; today it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the turn of the Washington Nationals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Stephen Strasburg.\u00c2\u00a0 The Nationals are playing the Detroit Tigers today, with first pitch set for 18.05 GMT.<\/p>\n
In days of old, this would be smothered in politics: Chapman from Communist Cuba against a Star Spangled Strasburg.\u00c2\u00a0 There may still be a bit of that in the background, but for the majority of us it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just pure baseball.<\/p>\n
Chapman came on in relief of Bronson Arroyo yesterday evening, British time, after the Reds\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 starter pitched two perfect innings.\u00c2\u00a0 That sequence was broken straight away as fellow Cuban Brayan Pena singled to lead off the third inning, although it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to bother Chapman all that much.\u00c2\u00a0 He ended up pitching two scoreless innings, striking out three batters in the process.\u00c2\u00a0 The only live commentary on MLB.com was via the Royals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 radio crew, the Reds\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 being conspicuous by their absence, but they did a great job of putting across the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcevent\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
A small crowd of just over 2,000 meant that the loud \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcoohs and ahhs\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I had anticipated didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t thunder over the airwaves, or the Internet in my case.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, the appeal of listening in to the game was not so much that it was a big moment in itself, but that it was the start of what could be a very promising career. The comments<\/a> after the game, most lyrically described (as always) by Joe Posnanski<\/a>, suggested that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I remember listening to his Spring Training debut\u00e2\u20ac\u009d tales will be broken out in years to come.<\/p>\n The same applies to Strasburg, although in his case MLB.TV subscribers will be able to say they \u00e2\u20ac\u0153watched\u00e2\u20ac\u009d his debut.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s scheduled to pitch two innings today and they are sure to be two of the most-watched innings of Spring Training.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You wait days for a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpitching phenom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to make his debut and then two come along at once. Aroldis Chapman wowed the Royals, scouts and speed guns yesterday; today it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the turn of the Washington Nationals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Stephen Strasburg. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[173,122,553,174,109],"class_list":["post-6948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-aroldis-chapman","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-mlb-2","tag-stephen-strasburg","tag-washington-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6948"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6950,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6948\/revisions\/6950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}