By Patrick Hynes on 4.18.05 @ 12:04AM
Baseball is the last thing Washington needed.
Washington, D.C. may have a Major League baseball team again,
but it's still a minor league town.
The long-suffering residents of our nation's capital are
twitterpated over the Washington Nationals, the first Major League
Baseball team in Washington since the expansion Senators moved to
Texas in 1971. As a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, who lived through
thirty-two years of that franchise's eighty-six year curse, I find
the monomania over the displaced and hapless Montreal Expos a bit
affected and tedious. Moreover, there is perhaps no place on earth
less deserving of a baseball team than the town that brought us the
steroid-in-baseball show trials.
Regardless, it's here. And I am forced to suffer in ways like I
did last Thursday, the day of "the Nats" (Gnats?) home opener at
RFK Stadium.
You see, I work in downtown Washington, D.C., and I live in
Annapolis, Maryland. That means I endure the crowded and jerky
Orange Line on the D.C. Metro, with its omnipresent scent of urine
and squalid padded seats, every morning and every evening. As
torturous as my commute already is, it just got worse, because RFK
Stadium sits right on the Orange Line.
Boarding a train at Metro Center Station last Thursday evening
on my commute home from work took three tries. Each train,
including the one I eventually boarded, was packed to the rank
armpits with all the usual mole people plus the geeked out losers
in Nationals caps who don't even know what they're all excited
about yet.
Amidst the sardine can was a plump, surly woman who shouted,
"I'm getting so f---king irritated," and about fifty other people
who offered the unhelpful admonition, "Move back folks, move back."
Any further back and an attractive woman smushed against the side
door would have spilled out onto the track itself, left for road
kill. But thanks for the tip.
The only comic relief, for me at least, came when a guy who had
obviously enjoyed some pre-game refreshments blurted out randomly,
"See you in Hell, Trebek," reminiscent of the Sean Connery
caricature on the long-running Saturday Night Live Celebrity
Jeopardy! sketches. His impression was way off, but
valiant. I laughed. So did he. Everyone else seethed.
The city fathers who orchestrated this
baseball-returns-to-our-nation's-capital contrivance obviously
didn't think through how people would get to and from the games.
But neither were the food hustlers at the stadium prepared. The
morning after the home opener, rumors reverberated all over town. A
forty-five minute wait for chicken fingers. Three innings missed
while buying a hotdog. Apparently they didn't prepare enough food
in advance of the game. They just started cooking when the home
plate umpire yelled, "play ball!" How could they live in this town
and not know about the rapacious entitlement mentality of its
average citizen? Every other person in this swamp is on some form
of government assistance. When they want a hotdog, dammit, you
better have a hotdog for them. Make that a government-subsidized
hotdog.
As for one key constituency of paying customers, well, they're
really fans of some other team back home. They're unlikely to form
any lasting emotional bonds with the Gnats. A huge portion of the
population in Washington and Northern Virginia is transient. Young
people move here from all over the country, their suitcases bulging
with high ideals. They nab a gig on Capitol Hill; a Congressional
page, an intern, an LA, an LD, what have you. Things will be
different when I'm in charge, they say. Only it stays the same or
gets worse. So, burnt out, our subject grows disillusioned inside
of two years and moves back to wherever it was he/she came from.
How do the Gnats plan to build a loyal following when they are a
living example of how useless, pointless and corrupting this town
is?
See you in hell, indeed, Trebek.
topics:
NATO
