The four sections of empty seats in dead center field shined like a beacon. Nay-sayers couldn’t wait to stupidly claim Washington isn’t a baseball town.
Don’t believe the hype.
Opening day wasn’t quite the same love fest as last year, no question. Last season was special, the end of a generational quest for native Washingtonians. Nothing beats recovering a stolen dream.
Everyoneseemed to have a good time despite the Nationals 7-1 loss to the New York Mets on Tuesday. Nothing like the first sunburn of the season while drinking beer, eating dogs and watching the game. My version of heaven.
The weather was perfect for the crowd filled with kids. Many adults faked “allergies” and played hooky. The food was better than last year, though $6 for kennel corn borders on criminal.
Dick Cheney didn’t hit anyone in the RFK crowd with the first pitch. The lower seats are painted orange, after all. Cheney’s pitch went far left to a cascade of boos. Gee, kinda figured he would have faded to the far right.
So where were the fans? The crowd of 40,530 meant lots of empty seats. That’s unimaginable for a daytime season opener when schools are on spring break. No wonder the new stadium will seat only 41,000.
“[Last season] was a special moment,” Nats manager Frank Robinson said, “but that’s gone. The way you keep excitement here is to win.”
And that’s exactly what we’ve seen Major League Baseball conspire to do — keep the Nationals from winning.
By endlessly delaying a decision on a new owner, competing baseball teams keep giving Washington the short end of deals with no one to defend the Nats.
MLB essentially gave the Nats’ TV rights to the Dark Lord of Baltimore so most fans couldn’t watch most of the first week. The Nats spent the first week on the road along with 16 of 19 games away with every contest against teams with winning marks last season. So much for momentum.
But guess what — this is still a good baseball town. Maybe the Nats won’t equal last year’s 2.7 million fans, but the kids were still at the fence yelling for autographs three minutes after the gates opened. The line of fans from the metro stop went unbroken to the gate less than an hour before the game. Only a few knuckleheads yelled “Oh” during the national anthem because they’re no longer Orioles fans coming to the game, but Nationals supporters.
Fans knew to dispute a blown third strike against Mets left fielder Cliff Floyd, who naturally hit the next pitch for a sacrifice fly. The crowd then showed class with polite applause after umpire Brian O’Nara needed a moment after taking a foul ball to the hand. They tried to distract Mets third baseman David Wright during a popup.
Washington has great baseball fans for a town whose team left before Richard Nixon’s arrival. It’s also a community that worships front-runners. Robinson knows support is earned.
“The good hard-core baseball people will come,” he said. “It’s those extra people who would rather stay at home when we’re not playing well and listen to the game on the radio or watch on TV. Those are the ones that you attract and bring out to the park when you’re winning or on a good streak and playing good baseball. We wouldn’t have had that excitement [last year] if we had not gotten off to the start that we did. If you turn our two halves around last year, we would not have had the crowds out here at the beginning of the season that we did.”
A new owner will make the difference next winter when fanfests fill malls each weekend. When ownership will encourage players to live year-round in our town. When the hot stove league simmers with news other than a stadium deal and TV and naming rights squabbles.
“We’re still not as secure in the community as we’d like to be,” Robinson said. “That will take time, to feel like part of the community.”
Don’t worry. The Nationals are going nowhere and neither are the fans, baseball owners be damned.
Rick Snider has covered local sports for 28 years. Contact him at [email protected].
