Saturday evening at Capitol Hill Books featured wine, cheese, and a packed house, which isn’t unusual. The longtime independent bookstore, just a block from Eastern Market, hosts such parties on every second Saturday of the month.

Among the crowd was a new guest, Nationals All-Star closer Sean Doolittle, whose left-arm is about as strong as his love of reading and, specifically, independent bookstores.

The 33-year-old pitcher is on a well-known quest to visit a different bookstore on every road trip during the Nats’ season, and he’s documented his travels on Twitter. Locally, Doolittle is a noted fan of Kramerbooks in Dupont and Solid State Books on H Street NE (which he has previously called his personal favorite). He also encourages his young fans to read more and raises money for local indie shops.

Doolittle, who was in town for the Winterfest event at Nats Park, messaged the Capitol Hill Books owners on Twitter to let them know in advance that he was coming. Once there, he took note of the store’s three stories, maze-like floor plan, and floor-to-ceiling book stacks, marked with witty name cards. “I love used book stores because it’s always an adventure and it feels so good to give old, used books a new home!” he wrote.

He even signed the wedding book for co-owner Aaron Beckwith, who was married earlier in the day. Beckwith’s brother, Dave, was in town for the wedding and stopped Doolittle while he perused the shelves: “Excuse me, do you work here?”

Co-owner Kyle Burk says the pitcher was a good sport about it. “I think I answered for him saying, ‘No, but we’re trying to sign him,'” Burk says. “And Sean laughed.”

Burk says this was Doolittle’s first stop at the store. “I think we’d interacted once or twice on Twitter, and he said he should stop by,” he says. “Also, we live tweeted a few of the Nats playoff games—maybe he noticed?”

The visit shouldn’t be a total surprise, as the store owners and Doolittle have some similarities. Since the 2016 election, Doolittle, hasn’t stayed away from politics, and neither has Capitol Hill Books. The store uses its social media profile to take aim at Trump policies (as well as fans of author Paulo Coelho and other assorted snark), and the pitcher notably decided to decline the White House’s invite after the team’s 2019 World Series win.

He told the Washington Post at the time, “People say you should go because it’s about respecting the office of the president. And I think over the course of his time in office he’s done a lot of things that maybe don’t respect the office.”

But let’s not get carried away. At the end of the day, Doolittle is a bookworm even during the season, and his visit probably had more to do with crossing off some of the 86 titles currently on his Goodreads wish list.

Ultimately, Doolittle walked away with a handful of sci-fi novels and a tote bag, and an appreciation for the store’s list of banned words and phrases (think “like” and “literally.”) He has about a month of uninterrupted reading time before pitchers and catchers are called to report to Nats spring training on February 12.