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PHILADELPHIA – As Bob Carpenter enters the home stretch of his final season behind the microphone, plans are coming together to honor the retiring broadcaster at Nationals Park.
The Nationals announced today they will honor Carpenter prior to their Sept. 27 game against the White Sox, the penultimate game of the season.
The club will hold a retirement ceremony on the field beginning at 3 p.m. (first pitch is scheduled for 4:05 p.m.), with a video tribute, messages from former players and colleagues and a special gift presentation. Carpenter’s name will be unveiled on the façade underneath the broadcast booth, where it will become a permanent fixture.
The first 10,000 fans in attendance will receive a commemorative “See! You! Later!” T-shirt honoring Carpenter’s signature home run call, and a limited number of special game scorecards will be available as well, reflecting the scorebook he has self-published for decades that has become the industry standard for baseball broadcasters at every level of the sport.
The weekend series also will feature the return of the “See You Tater” concessions concept at the “Change-Up” Food Hall in the center field plaza.
Carpenter, 72, revealed prior to Opening Day this would be his final season as the Nationals’ lead television play-by-play broadcaster, a role he has held since 2006. He has called Major League Baseball games for the Nats, Cardinals, Rangers, Mets and Twins since 1984, in addition to an 18-year stint calling a number of sports for ESPN.
* Perhaps the most surprising part of the Nationals’ recent winning homestand against the Phillies and Mets was the manner in which their bullpen locked down four wins against the top two teams in the division.
The run was capped the last two days, when the relief corps tossed 8 1/3 scoreless innings to win back-to-back games over New York, a stark contrast to long stretches of a season that has seen that corps struggle to the majors’ worst ERA and undergo multiple overhauls.
Particularly notable about this recent hot streak is the performance of the suddenly deep group of left-handers coming out of the Nationals bullpen. A group that in some years featured only one (sometimes zero) southpaws has four of them at the moment: closer Jose A. Ferrer, Shinnosuke Ogasawara, PJ Poulin and Konnor Pilkington.
Though Pilkington has struggled of late after an impressive opening couple of weeks on the roster, the other three have thrived. Ferrer has thrown 9 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings without issuing any walks. Combined with Ogasawara and Poulin, those three have delivered a 1.40 ERA (four earned runs in 25 2/3 innings) with 23 strikeouts and only eight walks since Aug. 4.
“It’s been awesome to have more lefties in the bullpen,” interim manager Miguel Cairo said. “The thing is, they believe. They believe they can do the job. They believe there’s an opportunity here to stick in the big leagues, an opportunity to show the front office, ownership, that: ‘I belong in the big leagues.’ They’re all looking to stick here and be a big leaguer for a long time.”
Cairo threw all four lefties into the fire over the last week, asking them to face some of the top left-handed sluggers in the league: Juan Soto, Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber. By spreading around the opportunities among his unusually deep group of lefties, he’s been able to keep those big-name hitters from getting comfortable against any one arm.
Cairo never specifically asked for so many left-handed pitchers in his bullpen, but he’s happy to use it to his advantage.
“It just happened like that, but I love it,” he said. “A lot of big league teams, the best hitters are lefties. It’s nice to have a few in there that you can use.”
