Nationals Park

Nationals Park
Originally uploaded by bdinphoenix

So my son Khary and life-long friends, Ross and Cheryl, have now gotten me interested in baseball again. So on May 10th my brother, nephew, and I went to watch the Washington Nationals play a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

In Nationals Park in Washington, DC, you do not watch baseball as much as you experience it. Most of my previous baseball watching was at the Vet in Philadelphia. Generally considered one of the world's worst stadiums, the Vet is now history, but Nationals Park is very much in the present and it is very, very nice.

From clear sight lines to the field to its game pavillions and food courts, it is possible to go to Nationals Park, never see the game and leave well fed and thoroughly entertained. I chowed down on a half pound burger with all the trimmings while my brother became very familiar with a bratwurst smothered in onions and peppers. I think I will find my way back to this place.

There was a game too and I saw once again why bad teams stay bad. Pittsburgh has been bad a long time. I remember the Pirates of Mazeroski, Clemente, and Stargell. Later there was a sprinkling of Bonilla and Bonds. Now they are the Pirates of botched double plays and errors on routine ground balls. Not that the Nationals were much better. Today they won but I don't know if they were better than the Pirates or Pittsburgh was simply worse than Washington.

Managers get paid a lot of money to be the brains behind the team but in a contest where hits were flying everywhere and errors were common, one of the managers tried a sacrifice bunt with no one out and runners on first and second. Now if the pitching were going good or the hitting was going poorly this might have been sound strategy. Today however, the hitting was going great and the pitching was putrid so playing for one run in a middle inning made no sense. The sacrifice failed, the hitting continued, and excitement wise the game was worth it. Oh, and today the Nationals were the better team.

Now it is on to Camden Yards and the Baltimore Orioles, another team that used to be good.