My First Game at Washington Nationals Park

In all the years that Washington didn't have a major league baseball team, the lack of a true hometown team left me with a certain empty feeling. Having grown up in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, for the first 44 years of my life until 1983, I was a devoted Boston Red Sox fan. I had moved to DC to pursue a career with Uncle Sam in '64, but kept up with the Sox until the Orioles took the World Series in '83. Then with DC still lacking a team, I figured my roots here in the mid-Atlantic were strong enough to switch to the Orioles, so I did, and the Orioles never got to the World Series after that. Even worse, they had 10 losing seasons from '98-'07. Finally in '05, the Expos came to Washington and were renamed the Nationals. Since then, despite the Nats being way down in their division except when they were briefly in contention in the '06 season, I don't feel that emptiness any more.

So I just had to get out for a game at their beautiful new ballpark before more of the season passed, and my wife and I went on Saturday night. I congratulate the Nats and the city for doing just about everything right to make going to a game at the park a nice experience.

We took the team's and city's recommendation to go via Metro, and the trip was easy despite a good size crowd. On the way, we had seats on both trains and had a short walk from the Metro to our seats. Next time we'll take the escalators from street level; walking up the ramps had us puffing a little, although it probably did us good. Total trip from our door in Bethesda to our seats at the park was about 1 hour 20 minutes. We easily could have spent that much time driving and parking and then getting to our seats, especially on a week night when we would be driving to the park against traffic during the rush hour. We had to stand on the more crowded trains part of the way home, but the trip home by car I believe would have been longer. The Metro staff were very good in their management of the crowd.

Ordering tickets on line was easy and the price for what turned out to be good seats was comparable to what we would pay for most live theater performances in and around DC I felt a little intimidated by the seven minute time limit for completing my ticket order. I am sure this would fluster even more someone even less computer savvy than I or someone who still has a dial up Internet connection. I was glad to be able to print out the tickets at home to avoid standing in line at a will-call window, which has not been a good experience in the past. However, I don't see why the NATs put on a $1.75 extra charge for doing that. After all, by printing tickets ourselves, we are saving them labor and paper costs.

Our seats gave us an unobstructed view of the entire field of play, and we could easily see every replay and information about the players on the giant TV screen. Those sitting in center field couldn't easily see the TV screen in back of them, but they could see a smaller electronic scoreboard along the third base line.

The Nats have taken steps to make their new park pro-environment. As a non-smoker, I appreciate their restricting smoking to certain designated areas. I well remember the clouds of smoke one could see against the lights at a night game at Fenway. I noticed a garden on the roof of one of the vending stands and wondered what was planted. I have also read in the press that the lights are the most energy efficient of any in baseball.

I thought the food and drink prices were high. $7.50 for a beer and $4 for a bag of peanuts seem excessive. My wife and I had chicken sandwiches, which had lettuce and tomato on them--fairly nutritious for ball park food, but my sandwich bun was cold and became soggy.

Still, it was a nice evening even though my new hometown team did not come out on top.