Let’s not get too worked up about the Nats taking two of three from the Orioles.
Oh, it’s great to win, but it’s not like that series had the same cache as a Yankees-Mets, Cubs-White Sox or even a Giants-Athletics interleague matchup. I have every confidence it will in time. But when both clubs are second division caliber, it’s more of a curiosity than anything else.
And hey, what’s with this “Battle of the Beltway” label that someone slapped on it? “Battle of the Parkway,” maybe, but at least make it plural — “Beltways” — if you’re going to use the former. Even some of the announcers for both teams used the singular. Must be out-of-towners.
Baltimore print coverage of the series was interesting. One Baltimore Sun columnist described Friday’s crowd as “sparse.” I don’t know about you, but I think any time a Major League Baseball team sells 30,000 tickets to a regular season game between a pair of also-rans, it’s anything but sparse. About 95,000 tickets were sold for the weekend. By way of comparison, the last time Baltimore played Washington at RFK — Labor Day weekend of 1971 — the entire series drew only 25,000. When the Nats play in Baltimore in late June, will the Orioles sell as many tickets? We’ll see.
Also, some Baltimore reporters were entertained by the “Ohhh” shout during the anthem and subsequent booing of it by Washington fans. Those of us who have attended multiple games at RFK since baseball’s return know it’s no big deal — it happens every night. Hopefully, the day will arrive when it’s never heard during the anthem in Washington or anywhere else. I’ve always found it rather disrespectful, actually.
And friends, we know about the shortcomings of RFK Stadium. There’s nothing new you can add to that debate. It is what it is, and don’t give me that prattle about how it’s even worse than Memorial Stadium was. It’s not. A dump is a dump. I can promise you that, to Redskins’ fans anyway, RFK evokes the same kind of nostalgic high old Colts and Orioles fans get when talking about their former palace on 33rd Street.
Here’s the good news: the buzz inside baseball about the Washington franchise is palpable. I’ve mentioned before I spend a lot of time talking to scouts. You’ll always learn more about what’s going on inside the game from them and active players tell you virtually nothing. More than a couple scouts believe the franchise will be among baseball’s elite in a very short period of time. To quote one: “The guy who’s running that club [Stan Kasten] knows more about how to hire the right people than anyone in baseball …”
In the long run, that ability will determine the success of the Nationals. For the past decade we’ve seen how a lack of that ability has damaged what was once an elite franchise in Baltimore.
Phil Wood has covered sports in the Washington-Baltimore market for more than 30 years.
