Copied from the Washington Post -
Pitcher Stephen Strasburg makes his major league debut for Washington Nationals
They drove to work with baseball talk on the radio, tweeted breathlessly from their office cubicles, checked their favorite blogs for updates, sneaked glances at the handy countdown ticker that ran all day on ESPN, wished each other "Merry Strasmas." And finally, at 7:06 p.m., they rose as one from every corner of
Nationals Park, with cameras and camcorders held aloft for posterity, to glimpse the most significant moment in the history of the Washington Nationals.
It was the first major league pitch of Stephen Strasburg's career -- 97 mph fastball, inside, ball one -- the dawning of a new era for the Nationals franchise, and the spectacular collision of two of the most powerful forces today: a once-in-a-generation baseball phenom and the assembled might of the media hype machine in the Internet age.
If it was possible to live up to that hype, the tall, sturdy kid with lightning in his right arm and the hopes of a beleaguered fan base in his hands did it, pitching magnificently for seven innings in a 5-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates in his major league debut. The strikeouts piled up -- 14 of them in all, a Nationals team record, each raising the electricity level in the stadium -- and the innings rolled by. Only one slip-up, a two-run homer in the fourth inning, marred the scorecard.
"Everybody is impressed with what this kid did today," said Iván Rodríguez, the Nationals' veteran catcher and a presumed future Hall-of-Famer. "He completely dominated."
When the team announced in the middle of the seventh inning that Strasburg had set a Nationals team record for strikeouts, the sell-out crowd of 40,315 demanded a curtain call, and Strasburg obliged, climbing the dugout steps and doffing his cap to all sides, his buzzcut hair glistening with sweat.
