Opening Day in Natstown

No major city on the East Coast has less of a baseball history -- or less interest in baseball generally -- than Washington. There are several reasons for this. In the first place, Washington's baseball teams have almost always been terrible. Not terrible in a cute or charming or cursed way -- like the Cubs, say -- but simply plain old "start-the-season-9-and-20-and-spend-the-summer-at-the-bottom-of-the-league-terrible." There are no romantic stories of Washington blowing a pennant (like the 1969 Cubs), or suffering heartbreaking defeats in October (like the Red Sox), or being involved in devastating scandals (like the White Sox). After Washington's last pennant (in 1933), the next 39 iterations of the Senators were pretty much all eliminated from serious playoff contention by the middle of May. And the Nats have picked up that tradition.

In the second place, Washingtonians are not natural baseball fans. Most of the old baseball towns -- from New York to Cleveland to Detroit -- were factory towns that were full of immigrants in the early 1900's. Baseball was perfect for those people. To this day, baseball employs the terminology ("manager," not "coach") and the aesthetic (vicious tactics like bean balls and spiking are common) of early 20th-century capitalism. And before night baseball, the games started at 3 P.M. so that guys could see a game after their shift was finished. From Boston to St. Louis, the immigrants who fell in love with baseball passed that love from generation to generation, and now every old baseball city features huge numbers of people who can remember watching the local team with their parents and grandparents. But Washington was never a factory town, and the college-educated types who dominate it have always preferred football and basketball -- the two big college games.

Finally, the weather here isn't great for baseball. Modern baseball was developed in the mid-19th century in the greater New York area, and the game was designed to be played in New York's climate. For decades, baseball has represented the beginning of spring and the best weather of the year for fans in places like New York and Boston. But down here -- as in most of the South -- the best weather is in the fall. April and May are tricky months in D.C. -- they usually feature cold nights and lots of rain. Then around Memorial Day, Washington starts getting the weather of Alabama -- lots of days in the 90's, lots of thunderstorms. Then in August we're usually in a sort of drought, with just one hot, sticky day after another as you watch the grass turn brown. None of these conditions are really great for watching baseball. September and October are really nice, but by then the kids are back in school and, of course, it's football season.

So ever since the Redskins won the 1937 NFL title during their first season in Washington (after they moved here from Boston), the Nation's Capitol has been, first and foremost, a football town. I don't think there is another city with teams in both the NFL and MLB where the gap in interest between the two sports is this large.

On the other hand, Washington is a town that loves pageantry, and many of us learned to love baseball in our hometowns before ever coming to D.C. In offices all over town, you will find signs that this or that high-powered attorney or key government official grew up loving baseball -- a framed Cal Ripken jersey here, an autographed Yankees baseball there, pennants and bobble-head dolls and little stadium models and other baseball paraphernalia clutter desks and wall spaces all over the city.

So Opening Day is a big deal here. It's always been a big deal, even back when the Senators only drew about 5,000 people per game. From the 1910's to the 1960's, the American League would usually start its season in Washington, and the President would usually appear to throw out the first pitch. Washington, which loves to see the President more than any other city in America, was very fond of this ritual, and even the weakest Senators teams would draw big crowds on Opening Day. These days, of course, Presidents generally don't want to be photographed having fun in D.C. -- they want to tell the rest of the country how eager they are to return home. So while we still keep track of Presidential appearances -- and are still thrilled to be there when one occurs -- the old ritual has faded somewhat.

But even without the President, the Nationals drew a the typical sellout crowd to their home opener on Thursday against the Reds. It's the one day of the year that all of the season tickets are actually used by the ticket holders, and not passed along to family members, clients, or office mates. January to May are brutal months for almost all of us who work in D.C., as a lot of legal and political work gets crammed into the period between New Year's and Memorial Day. So it's nice to play hooky for a few hours -- although the lack of cellular service inside the Stadium made people nervous, as they could only imagine the voice mails and e-mails that were likely piling up on their smart phones.

Because of work commitments, I didn't reach the game until the middle of the fifth inning, and when I got there two guys were eager to take my cab because they already needed to return to the office. I walked through Washington's new stadium that is meant to look old -- like so much of the architecture in D.C. -- taking in the joy of so many middle-aged men who were almost giddy with the prospect of leisure on a Thursday afternoon. Many of them were wearing the free caps given away by the Nats, and a lot of them had brought their kids (many of the schools in this area are on spring break). We spend so much time fighting in D.C. over bills and lawsuits and elections, and I think all of us were pleased to watch others duel in a contest that, from most of our perspectives, just isn't that important.

So it was a festive atmosphere of a particularly Washington type. All over the stadium, you could see men carefully filling out their scorecards (Washingtonians tend to like filling out forms more than most people), explaining the game to their neighbors (Washingtonians love to explain things, and many of the attendees at a social event like Opening Day barely know the rules of baseball), and cheering from time to time in an earnest but not desperate manner (we would all love to see the Nats do well but we don't expect it, and we aren't going to be heart-broken if it doesn't happen).

I came in just as the Nats scored two runs to take a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the fifth, and I spent the next few innings basking in the beauty of the old game. The Nats play the sort of National League baseball I learned to love as a kid -- very solid pitching and very little hitting -- and the innings buzzed along quickly. Going into the ninth, it looked as though our two runs would hold up, but some weak pitching and shaky fielding game up two runs, and so we waited to see what Our Heroes could do in the bottom of the ninth.

They came close. They loaded the bases with one out, and for the first time the whole crowd stood up and really gave a full-throated baseball cheer -- the type you could hear in Philadelphia or Chicago. After all, this would be a great story back at the office -- how the Nats blew a two-run lead but then won in the bottom of the ninth. But it didn't happen. Instead, we got a weak grounder to the pitcher that quickly became an inning-ending double play.

And with that, thousands of us started heading for the exits. Deep down, Washingtonians are not good at playing hooky, and those unanswered voice mails and e-mails were demanding attention. (When I finally got a signal, I found 11 e-mails waiting for me.) It would be nice to live in a world of pageants and leisure, like so many people in national capitals throughout history. But Washington belongs to a capitalist society, and capitalism allows little time for such frivolities. Within a few minutes, I was on a Metro train headed back to the office. At one point, I heard a brief cheer as someone's smart phone told them that the Nationals had won the game in the bottom of the tenth. But by then, of course, the bright fun of the afternoon was over, and most of us were again thinking about our own jobs.