Tuesday, June 23, 2009

25




I've been thinking about this for a while, but my best count is that I've been to MLB games in at least [update] 25 (I forgot a couple.. sorry Jary Park) ballparks during my miserable existence. Some don't exist anymore. Most for good reason.

Anyhow, the last one was Nationals Park in Washington, where Your Boston Red Sox play for the next three nights.

I paid my first visit to Nationals Park a couple of weeks ago to see the titanic matchup between the Nats and Redzzz.

To be honest (for a change), the Nats park is the first of the new parks I've seen that I didn't take a shine to.

It has a lot of amenities. In fact, all it has is amenities, most of which were closed after the 2 hour rain delay and the club sent most of the workers home. So, that was odd. Of course it was a rain-delayed Tuesday night game between the two NL powerhouses, but still there couldn't have been more than 7,000 in the park when the "game" began.

The Nats have some good (or formerly good) position players, so their woeful record is attributable to pitching and defense, I guess.

The most distasteful thing about the experience was the monstrous, ginormous, big fucking scoreboard in center field. Holy Mother of Ahmadinejad, that bitch is big. And, it overpowers everything. I was sitting there, 6 rows from the field, watching the game on the screen. It was reflexive, and makes no sense, but I kept doing it and catching myself. Check it out on NESN this week.

I was really looking forward to seeing the park, since I lived in DC during the Ford administration (look it up), and never saw a pro ball game, except having to go to Municipal Stadium in Baltimore. I did see an oldtimers game in RFK where Luke Appling, age 75, hit a homerun.

Also, after two hours of rain, the brand new field didn't drain very well.

My night at the park:

But, they had Pilsner Urquel on tap, so that was good.

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