The last time the New York Yankees played a regular season baseball game in Washington, DC was on September 30, 1971, the last day the second incarnation of the Washington Senators played, and it wasn’t a happy scene:
In the final game, RFK Stadium was filled with angry jilted fans that continually interrupted play by throwing things onto the field. This would continue throughout the game, and into the 9th inning where the Senators were leading. The fans would then take a turn for the worse by streaming on to the field, and started a riot with 2-outs in the 9th. Order was unable to be restored and the game was forfeited, bringing an ugly end to a wonderful 71 years.
Baseball did not return to Washington, DC until 26 years later, when the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals. Last night, the Yankees returned to RFK for the first time since that ill-fated final game.
This all could have been remembered simply for the return of the New York Yankees, who last stepped on the turf at RFK Stadium in 1971, when they played the final game here against the old Washington Senators, a game that never ended because fans stormed the field with two outs in the ninth, so dismayed were they over the departure of baseball from the District. That night, the Senators had the lead, but the Yankees won by forfeit.
The events of last night, though, will be remembered for the legions of Yankees fans on hand and the lead that was coughed up in a far more traditional fashion. In front of the largest crowd at RFK since baseball returned to Washington — 30,000 more than attended that final game 35 years ago — Nationals relievers Gary Majewski and Chad Cordero wilted against the Yankees, who overcame a two-run deficit and used Bernie Williams’s tiebreaking homer in the ninth to seize a 7-5 victory.
And most of those fans were apparently, there to root on the Yankees:
[W]hen Williams submerged into the visitors’ dugout, the crowd chanted “Ber-nie! Ber-nie!” as if they stood in the Bronx, not just to the east of Capitol Hill. And that was it. Cordero gave up two more hits and another run, and by that point, Yankees closer Mariano Rivera was already in the game.
And I hope be witness to the same scene when we go to RFK tomorrow.
