Washington

GAME 3

RFK Stadium, 2006

Date: Monday, July 3, 2006, 7:05 PM
Florida Marlins vs. Washington Nationals
RFK Stadium
Washington, DC
Major League Baseball, National League
Promotion: None


The Stadium & Fans:
RFK Stadium is... RFK Stadium. I hear they have a nice new baseball stadium in the works, but until then, they play in this concrete monstrosity. Watching a game here feels more claustrophobic than one in a dome.

The fans, however, were enthusiastic and knowledgeable, and largely made up for the grim environment.


Scorecard:

Marlins vs. Nationals, 07/03/06. Nationals win, 9-1.

The scorecard was $4 as part of the official program. It was cardstock-type paper with largish boxes, but the blue background made it hard to see anything written on it.



Miscellanea:
It is very rarely that you know exactly how much a piece of real estate is worth. Although seats were open in the Diamond Boxes behind home plate, I demurred on the $110 price tag, so I sat one section back in the first row of that area, for a more sensible $50. However, stretching out my feet to over the chairs in front of me, my legs had made a journey of $60.


Travel & Other Non-Game Activities:
The District of Columbia is so amazingly Byzantine and user-hostile that analogies to the government it houses are strictly superfluous. The Beltway system is particularly worthy of note, as it has been deliberately designed to make you lose your will to live. As much as I'd like to chalk it up to incompetence rather than malevolence, it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Incompetence would simply be not placing road signs at all. But in Washington, they do have road signs that lead you to a certain point, and then disappear mysteriously or change names without explanation at critical junctures.

Making the whole travel ordeal even more onerous was the insane heat that baked the capitol that day. Once I found the one parking lot in the entire city, I remembered that the Smithsonian museums were free admission, and so I went to the Museum of National Air Conditioning, and the Smithsonian Gallery of Dear God I Think The Soles of My Sneakers Are Melting. Along my museum journeys, I got depressed as I walked through the hall that supposedly showed all the constraints that are in place on presidential power and realized how Bush had managed to subvert each and every one of them.

On my way out of the city, my plan was to drive as far to Philadelphia as I could stay awake. Having unknowingly had some caffeinated soda at the game, I was wired for sound long into the night. At one transcendent moment crossing out of Maryland, the 1,000 Homo DJs cover of Black Sabbath's Supernaut came on my Shuffle, and I transformed into an overclocked beam of light flying up I-95 at speeds my car could not register, as my speedometer pegs at 90 MPH. I eventually ditched to a hotel for the night near the Delaware/PA border.


The Game:
I was solidly behind the Nationals in this game because the Marlins were higher up in the NL East than they were. The Nationals crushed the Marlins, 9-1, with Alfonzo Soriano tearing up the place with two home runs and four RBIs. And after seeing it for the first time ever a few nights before, I again saw a player pinch-hitting for the pitcher get two at-bats.

Click here to see all the pictures from this trip.

2006 The East