Rain Delay

• Giants: X
• Nats: X
• Sold: 24 beers, 19 peanuts/Crackerjack

The rain came in one wave before gametime, then cleared, and I thought it was over. But one of my customers -- claiming to be "a mariner from Seattle" and "a tugboat captain" looked up at the sky and told me we weren't having a game today. It turns out he was right, but he should have told it to the Nationals, who kept postponing until the game until 10:45, after waves of rain fell on the stadium again.

In the meantime, fifteen red-shirted members of the field crew pulled the tarp and pushed at the standing water with rollered squeegees, then pulled the tarp back again, to the disappointment of a wet crowd huddled on the concourse. At 9:33 a thunderclap hit without warning from a stone's throw away, triggering my reflexes into a jump out of my shoes. "Scared ya, didn't it?" asked a guy in the seats who'd seen my leap.

I covered all corners of the park, and all levels in a near-futile effort to sell just a case. I found a group of giggly girls who made a lot of lesbian references -- declaring to be in love with Megan Fox, etc. -- which I took to be just talk, until one of them showed me her lower-lip tattoo. I also sold some peanuts to kids in the stands, at one point testing a kid in a wife-beater to see how many I could balance on his head. I got four perched up there before they slipped off.

It seems the Nationals are snakebit; team is rotten and attendance not any better, so the main draw comes from seeing the opposition. This was a bright spot on the schedule, since most people were here to see Randy Johnson go for a 300th win, and then the rain came, and came again. The only on-field action anyone saw was when a guy ran down the empty rows, hopped from the seats onto the field, and did a soggy prance through the outfield as security closed in from all corners. He ran over the white tarp, rounded what would have been third and headed for home, sliding into a guard at the plate as a baseball-starved crowd cheered. He'll probably be arrested, but I swear he was safe.