My First Nats Game!

Thanks to Tim and one of his extra season tickets, I was able to take in my first Nationals game last night, and it just happened to be the first game of the "Battle of the Beltway" series against the Orioles.

This much-hyped, first regular season meeting between teams from Baltimore and DC since 1971 didn't provide too much drama or action to get the crowd hyped up, and the stadium (RFK looks so tiny, by the way!) was 15,000 short of a sellout. See empty seats below:

It was a fun time, despite the late evening chill and the fairly poor showing of the hometown team, who fell 5-1 to the O's. I found myself rooting for the Nats the whole time, but at one point I realized, as if stumbling upon some amazing conclusion, "Wait a sec, I was an O's fan way before I was ever a Nats fan. Actually, I don't even know if I'm a Nats fan." After this inner battle of sports team loyalty -- during which I had to pause for a moment and laugh over how I used to love Brady Anderson -- I realized it didn't really matter and was interrupted by a more important thought: "This jumbo grilled hot dog and cold, overpriced domestic beer is damn good!" Then I remembered why I love baseball games -- it's just choosing between the hot dog/nachos/$9 chicken tender platter that always causes some problems. The home runs and the fireworks (which incidentally we missed as we were walking out of the stadium, oops!) are just fun bonuses.