With Chad Billingsley on the mound in the top of the 1st inning, the Washington Nationals loaded the bases with no outs — with Billingsley reeling from a walk, a hit batter and two singles. But the Nationals could only muster a single run in that inning, as Billingsley ended the threat with three straight strikeouts, and went on to tame the Nationals and secure a 3-1 L.A. victory.

The Nationals’ defeat brought the team to a disappointing 3-6 record on their Atlanta-Houston-L.A. road trip as they headed home for a crucial set of games against their N.L East opponents. “We should have [broken it open] in that first inning,” Nationals manager Davey Johnson said. “We couldn’t put the ball in play with nobody out, and that hurt us. And then Billingsley settled down and pitched an effective ballgame. We swung and missed a lot today.”

Like Billingsley, Nationals starter Jason Marquis was shaky in the early going: the Washington righty gave up two early runs, but then settled down to pitch six innings, while giving up three runs on five hits. “It was a battle,” Marquis said of his outing. “I was trying to keep my team in the game as best as possible. I had some unfortunate breaks. That’s the way the game goes. We just weren’t able to break through.” How effective was L.A.’s pitching? The Nationals were only able to muster two hits for the entire game, and never had another one after the first inning.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: There are all kinds of grand slams — there are regular grand slams, there are walk-off grand slams (a victory when a grand slam provides a walk-off victory by more than a single run), there are “ultimate” walk-off grand slams (a walk-off grand slam that gives a team a victory by a single run), there are inside-the-park walk-off grand slams (you get the idea), and then there are “ultimate” walk-off inside-the-park grand slams.

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The Nats will host Roberto Clemente Night on Friday night when they face off against the Florida Marlins. As I recall, I saw Roberto Clemente play six or seven times, almost all of them in Milwaukee County Stadium. This must have been in 1964 and 1965 — at the peak of his career with the Pittsburgh Pirates. I saw him two more times after that, in 1969 or 1970, at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Clemente was only 25 when he played on that great 1960 world championship team that took the series in seven games from the Yankees — the one where Bill Mazeroski hit the walk-off in the ninth inning of the sevnth game. Clemente was young, just 25, and hit .314 for the season.

Clemente won the MVP award in 1966 at the age of 31, his greatness established: he hit .317 with 29 home runs and he had 202 hits. He was a hitting machine — at the end of the 1972 season (just before he was killed), his hit total stood at exactly 3000. He had at least three more good years left in him in baseball, a lot more in life. The Clemente years were good years for the Pirates: they won a world championship in 1960 and 1971 and Clemente was surrounded by good players, some of them were very good: Matty Alou and Dick Groat and Don Hoak and Willie Stargell and Al Oliver and Bill Mazeroski and legendary pitchers Vern Law, Harvey Haddix and Bob Friend.

I remember Clemente playing right field, but I don’t have any specific memory of him hitting and I remember the way that he ran because it was so distinctive. He was scary quick, midwest quick. And you knew, when you saw him play, that he had a very special ability. I had heard he had a legendary arm and I saw it — once — though I don’t remember the exact details. Close enough thought: I remember the game. It was in Milwaukee County Stadium and it was a day game featuring the home team lame-duck-no-account 1965 headed-out-of-town (I’m still bitter about those) Milwaukee Braves against the mighty Pirates. The Braves were at bat with two outs, but there wasn’t anyone special at bat (like Aaron or Mathews); but some light hitting lug – and I didn’t much like many of them anyway. It was someone like Woody Woodward or Dennis Menke or someone like that. I would like to think it was Menke, one of my least favorite players. Dennis “boot ’em” Menke.  

Anyway, whoever it was came up and hit a scorcher down into the right field corner (a hell of a hit) and tore around first and the ball was hit on a line just inside the first base bag. The ball headed to the corner and it took one high bounce against the green wall. And Clemente went and got it and caught it on the bounce as it came off the wall and Menke (or whoever) headed to second and just kept going. A clear triple. And Clemente turned and rifled the ball over the head of the second baseman and into third where Pirate third sacker, young Bob Bailey was waiting.

I remember it well: the ball caught up with Menke about halfway between second and third and Menke looked at the ball as it passed him. I saw his head turn. Everyone saw his head turn. And Bailey just kind of spread his legs and leaned down and the ball took one bounce and Bailey applied the tag and flipped the ball to the ump. We were all on our feet with Braves fans (what there were of them) ready to cheer this fantastic triple and the air just came out of the stadium and everyone, just everyone, kind of looked at their shoes and shook their heads and went back to their popcorn. What was amazing about it really was that when Bailey applied the tag, Clemente was already halfway to the dugout — he was on the lip of the infield grass. And I remember thinking: well, I saw that.