The Washington, D.C. area greeted last week’s inaugural season of the Washngton Nationals with enthusiasum. High ticket sales were boosted as much by the fact that baseball had finally returned to the Nation’s Capital as the fact that Nationals themselves were playing suprisingly well. Well, its year two of the Nationals saga, and it appears that reality may be setting in.
When all the fans settled into their seats under the sun, long after Vice President Cheney had skipped his ceremonial first pitch into the dirt in front of Washington Nationals catcher Brian Schneider — and received boos on his way off the field — there was still none of the juice, none of the spine tingles, that came at this point last season. Last April, baseball returned to the District for the first time since 1971, and anyone who was there will remember the night for good.
But yesterday afternoon, a placid crowd gathered at RFK Stadium for the Nationals’ home opener, and banks of empty seats in the upper deck greeted the team. The Nationals responded to the listless nature of the event in kind, providing a 7-1 loss to the New York Mets in which they managed all of three hits, sending the announced crowd of 40,530 home as quietly as it arrived. The result: Washington, which has lost six of its first eight games, is four games under .500 — a point they never reached during the 2005 season.
Washington has had two turns at hosting a Major League Baseball team. After the original Senators left town for Minneapolis-St. Paul, a second team came town only to leave for Texas ten years later. In both cases, the main reason cited for the move was lack of fan support. When the Nationals debuted last year to raving fans, most commentators seemed to think that the old curse had been broken and that Washington was ready to support a baseball team, even one that didn’t win all the time. This season, and the ones that follow will be the test of that hypothesis. If it proves false, the probability of the Nationals moving to a more hospitable home is not at all out of the question.
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