View From The Cheap Seats

How can I write about anything else today besides baseball?   Today, for the first time in forty-eleven years (Who knows how many? Every thing I read and see has a different number), a loooong time, there will be a post-season baseball game in Washington, DC.

Back in 2005 when the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals and season tickets went on sale I was among the first in line (my account # is in the low 400's).  I've been a baseball fan (and player in youth) my entire life then suddenly I lived close enough to the ballpark to walk to a major league game.  (As an aside, I attended the very first National League Championship Series game between the Braves and Mets in 1969, but that's another story).   How could I not have some kind of season ticket?  It was only a 20 game ticket for two seats in the "cheap seats", but it was baseball.   And as I learned to say in during some lean years as an Atlanta Braves fan, "Bad baseball is better than no baseball at all."

Then the Nats moved to the new ball park, and after one season there I upped my tickets to 40 games and split with a close friend who loves and enjoys the game as much as me.  Since then there have been times when neither of our wives could go so we ended up going to a lot of the games together.  So, suffice to say in the 8 seasons the Nationals have been playing, I've seen a lot of baseball, and been in the park for more then several crushing defeats as well as glorious walk off wins.

My friend and I will be in Nationals Park today.  It happens that both our wives are out of town with work.   And win or loose, we, along with thousands of others and the entire city of DC will be celebrating the long awaited fruit of the initial return of baseball to DC, of planning, persistence, patience, and above all hope.

We're still in the "cheap seats" but today every seat in the ballpark is a box seat!    GO NATS!

Thanks for indulging a little sentiment today.