Before the 21 year-old even stepped on a major league pitcher’s mound, he was being called the greatest pitcher in the history of baseball. No one could have expected him to live up to the pre-game hype, but he did.
On the mound for the Washington Nationals last night, Steven Strasburg pitched 14 strikeouts with no walks — something no player in history has ever done in a major league debut.
His fastball was clocked at 100 mph and his crazy curve ball dropped in an avalanche that stumped the Pittsburgh Pirates and sealed his first win, 5-2.
The famed Washington sports columnist Tom Boswell wrote: “The return of baseball here five years ago was the most emotionally charged night the sport has provided us so far in the new ‘Nats’ era. But this town has never had one game, one packed-house party, one continuous night-long celebration of possibility, one obliterate-all-expectations career launch that could even remotely approach the electric future that Strasburg’s 5-2 victory instantly foretold.”
(READ his column in the Washington Post)